How Can I Dispatch a Crew?

ESC allows you to easily create Crews and add technicians to these Crews.  You can then schedule a Crew on a dispatch rather than adding several techs for the same date and time.  Crew members can easily be shuffled from one crew to another to meet the demands of the day. Once a crew has been assigned to dispatch you can track all the crew member's times separately or together.

Creating a Crew

To create a new crew, go to Dispatch → Enter Technicians add or edit the technician who will lead the crew. Manually enter the name of the crew in the Member of Crew field (Team 1 in the example shown below) and save the technician.

Now recall or enter another technician to add to the crew on the same screen. In the Member of Crew field, click on the combo box to display a list of existing crews. Select the desired crew and save. Repeat this procedure until your entire crew has been created.

Dispatching a Crew

Begin by creating a new dispatch as you normally would (Dispatch List → Add Dispatch). Before saving it, go to the Schedule tab and click the Add Technician button.
Note: Clicking the search box in the technician field will NOT produce the same results. .

Use this button:

Not this one:

This will display the following screen. Crews will appear at the top of the list. Select the desired crew and click Add.

Set the date and time you want the crew to start work and click OK.

This will automatically place all the members of that crew on the dispatch with the same Promised Date and Time.

From this point forward, any time you change the status of one crew member you will have the ability to change the status of all the members of that crew. Simply answer Yes to the following screen to track their times together, or No to track their times separately.

Changing Crew Members

At some point you will need to change the people who make up the crew. ESC makes this process easy. Simply head to Dispatch → Enter Technicians and recall the technician you want to work with.  Change the contents of the Member of Crew field by selecting another crew from the list, manually typing in a new crew name or clear the field to remove the technician from all crews.

Note: This has no effect on dispatches that have already been assigned to a crew. It only changes the crew members that will be assigned to new dispatches created from this point forward..

Deleting a Crew

To delete a crew, make sure no technicians are currently assigned to it. You can quickly see which technicians belong to crews by double-clicking the tech on the Enter Employees screen.

Select the technicians that are still assigned to the crew you wish to delete and either clear the Member of Crew field or assign them to another crew. Once the last crew member has been removed, the crew will disappear as well.

Note: This has no effect on dispatches that have already been assigned to a crew. It only prevents the crew from being used on new dispatches from this point forward.