The Dispatch board

Dispatch (sidebar → Operations → Dispatch) is where you run the day: every driver's run in one view, an Unassigned pool, and drag-and-drop assignment. Broker and private-pay trips appear side by side.

Layout

• Week strip — pick the day; each day shows its trip count.
• Search and Filters — search by member, trip # or address; filter by Status, Driver (including Unassigned), Vehicle, Facility, and Payer.
• View toggle — By stop (the default, described here) or Run board, an alternative run-centric layout.
• Export — download the day's trips as an Excel file.

The Drivers rail

The left rail lists All drivers, each scheduled driver, and Unassigned at the bottom. Each driver row shows their vehicle and seat usage (for example "Van 3 · 2/6 seats"), shift hours, a completion progress bar, and trip/stop counts. Click a row to focus that lane; the Unassigned row shows how many trips still need a driver.

Driver lanes

Each driver's lane lists their stops in run order with columns #, Stop, Member, Address, Scheduled, Actual (a live ETA until the stop is done, then the actual time), On board, and Status. The lane header shows member count, pickups/dropoffs, the run's time window, a capacity pill (peak riders vs. vehicle capacity), and a late count.

Note: Watch the capacity pill and the per-stop warning icon — they turn red when the vehicle would be over capacity at a stop.

Assigning trips

Three ways to get a trip onto a driver:

1. Drag — drag any trip card onto a driver in the left rail ("Drop on a driver to assign").
2. Stop actions menu — open the stop's ⋮ menu and pick a driver under Move to driver (or Unassign).
3. Batch assign from the Unassigned pool — click the Unassigned rail row, tick the trips you want (clusters that share a facility or address can be assigned together with Assign all), then use the Assign button and pick a driver. The menu also offers Assign temporarily… for date-range moves that auto-revert (see Temporary schedule changes).

Round trips and recurring trips

• If the trip has a linked return leg, ZeitRide asks "Assign Leg B too?" so both legs land with the same driver in one step.
• If the trip is recurring, you choose the scope: Just this day, Every occurrence of that weekday, or Every day (whole series) — then Confirm.

Will Call band

Trips waiting on a member call appear in a collapsible Will Call band at the top of the board. Pick a driver, set the pickup time, and click Dispatch — see Will-call trips.

Route groups

When a driver's run comes from a transport route, the board groups those stops into a collapsible section under the route's name with its rider count. Broker-connected routes also show a confirmation count (for example "7 riders · 7/7 broker-confirmed") that fills in as your broker transmits each day's trips. Stops that don't belong to a route appear under Other trips.

In the run's edit mode you can reorder stops inside a route section or move a whole route's block up or down in the driver's day. On save, choose This day only or Save as standing order — the standing choice writes the new pickup order back to the route's roster, so future days generate that way. Everything else — stop actions, statuses — works exactly the same for route stops.

Driver lane extras

• The lane header shows the driver's phone number — click it to call without leaving the board.
• Once a stop is fully finished, it collapses into a "Completed" block at the bottom of the lane, keeping the live work on top. Expand the block any time to review times.
• A driver holding a pending will-call return shows a gray "Waiting on return · dropped X ago" badge in their lane header, so you don't double-book someone who's waiting on a member's callback.

What the driver sees

As soon as a trip is assigned, it appears on that driver's Trips screen in the driver app for the day. Status changes the driver makes (picked up, dropped off) flow back to the board live — the Actual column and status badges update without a refresh.

Next: Managing stops for per-stop actions, and Run order and editing for reordering a run.

Related: NEMT dispatch software