Vikram's Tech Dispatch

Drag each repair job onto a technician's column, and that technician opens their phone to see the visits for the day in order.

Who this is for

Vikram Rathi runs Cool Point AC Services out of a one-room office near Palasia in Indore. Four technicians, two of them on bikes with their own tool bags. In May he takes thirty to forty calls a day, gas filling, water leaking, remote not working. The moment that matters is 8.40 in the morning, when all four are standing outside the shutter waiting to be told where to go.

How the job is done today

Calls land on Vikram's phone all day. He writes them on the back of old service cards and stacks them under a stapler. At night he sorts the stack into four rough piles by area, Vijay Nagar, Sudama Nagar, Rau, and the rest. In the morning he reads out addresses aloud while technicians save them in their own phones. Half the day is then spent on calls. Where are you. Did you go to that Nipania flat. The customer is ringing me, she says nobody came. When Vikram is out on a site himself, nothing moves at all.

The screens, in order

1. Today's board — Shows every job that came in on the left and a column for each technician, so the person doing the dispatching can drag a job across and see the day fill up.
2. New job — Takes down one customer call in the same order it gets spoken, name, phone, address, area, what the problem is.
3. My visits — What a technician opens on his phone, his own list for the day in the order he should do them, address first and big.
4. Job page — Where the technician marks a visit done, not done, or needs a second trip, and types what he charged.
5. Yesterday — Lets Vikram look back at any past day's board to see who went where and what came back unfinished.

What it keeps track of

• Jobs — customer name, phone, full address, area, what is wrong, which day, which technician, what order in his list, done or not done or coming back, amount collected
• Technicians — name, phone number, whether he is working today
• Customers — name, phone, address, which machines they have, past visits

The one decision that matters

The real decision is whether the board is a shared live thing or something Vikram prints and hands out. Live means the moment he drags a Rau job to Salim, Salim's phone shows it, even at noon when a new call comes in. Printed means the day is fixed at 9 and every change goes back to shouting on the phone. Go live. The whole reason a new person can run this desk is that moving a card is the entire instruction, and the technician finds out without anyone explaining. If the drag does not reach the technician, the software is only a prettier notebook.

What to leave out of the first version

Leave out route optimisation. Do not try to work out the shortest path between six flats in Vijay Nagar. Vikram already knows that Sudama Nagar first and Rau after lunch is how the traffic works, and a new dispatcher learns it in a week by watching the technicians reorder their own lists. Also leave out automatic messages to customers. One wrong address sent to sixty people is worse than a phone call.

How you would know it worked

A new boy who joined on Monday builds the whole board by himself on Thursday before Vikram reaches the office, and nobody rings Vikram to ask where to go next.

Build it

Paste this in and let it run.

I run an AC repair business in Indore with four technicians. I want a website where I can type in each repair call as it comes, customer name, phone, address, area and what is wrong, and all of today's calls sit in one list on the left. On the right I want one column per technician so I can drag a call into his column and drag it up or down to set the order he should visit. When a technician opens the site on his phone he should see only his own visits for today, in order, with the address big and tappable to open in maps, and he marks each one done, not done, or needs another trip, and puts in what he collected. If I move a job at noon his phone should show the change. I want to be able to open any past day and see what happened. Someone new must be able to sit at this without me explaining it.