Dispatch Board

The Dispatch Board is a single screen for assigning work across your team. It lays your technicians out as rows and the day or week as columns, so a dispatcher can see everyone's schedule, time off, on-call coverage, calendar events, and scheduled tickets side by side — and assign the waiting work to the right person in a couple of clicks.

Overview

The Dispatch Board lets you:

• See every technician's day or week at a glance — work schedule, approved time off, on-call windows, calendar events, and the tickets already scheduled for them
• Read each technician's capacity at a glance: how many open tickets they hold, and their booked hours versus their working hours
• Work through an Unassigned queue of tickets that still need an owner
• Assign and schedule a waiting ticket by dragging it onto a technician, or with an inline Assign to… picker
• Switch to the Timeline view to schedule a ticket to a precise time within a technician's working day and see how their day stacks up hour by hour
• Open any ticket on the board — scheduled chips and unassigned cards link straight to the ticket's detail page
• Narrow the board to just the work you care about with filters and search — by client, priority, status, technician, or free text
• Rebalance work without leaving the board: drag an already-scheduled ticket from one technician to another, or back to the Unassigned queue
• Get a warning when you schedule a ticket onto someone who has approved time off during that window
• Watch the board update itself live as other dispatchers make assignments
• Keep a busy board readable — cells with many tickets stay compact with a +N more expander, you can switch the whole board to a denser Compact layout, and a long unassigned queue shows the first batch with a Show all control

Navigate to the Dispatch Board

Open the Dispatch item under the PSA section of the left sidebar (/dispatch). The Dispatch Board is a manager-level tool: it appears only for users whose role grants Dispatch access (Owners, Admins, and the built-in Help Desk Manager role by default). Standard technicians don't see the Dispatch item and can't reassign other technicians' work from here — an administrator can grant the Dispatch permission to any custom role that needs it. Viewing the board and assigning work are separate permissions, so a role can be given view-only access.

The board layout

The screen has two parts:

• Technicians — a grid with one row per technician and one column per day in the current window.
• Unassigned — a side panel listing tickets that have no owner yet, with a count badge.

Use the controls in the top-right to choose what you see:

Control	What it does
Day / Week	Switch between a single-day view and a seven-day week view
Timeline	Switch to a single-day, hour-by-hour view to schedule and see work by time of day (see Schedule to a specific time)
< / >	Step backward or forward by one day or one week (one day in Timeline)
Today	Jump back to the current date

The label beside the controls shows the date range currently in view.

Reading a technician row

Each row starts with the technician's name and avatar, followed by a quick capacity summary:

• The number of open tickets they currently hold.
• Their booked hours / working hours for the visible window — for example 6h/8h. If their booked time exceeds their working time, the figure turns red to flag that they are overbooked.

Each day cell for that technician can show:

Marker	Meaning
Capacity tint + %	Each working day is shaded by how full it is — booked time (calendar events plus scheduled tickets) against the technician's working hours — and shows a small utilization percentage. The shading deepens from light to red as the day approaches and passes full capacity, so you can spot who has headroom at a glance. Non-working days are left unshaded
Time off badge	The technician has approved time off that day
On-call badge	The technician is on call during that day
Ticket chips	Tickets scheduled (or due) that day, shown as #number subject (most urgent first). A busy day shows the first few with a +N more link to reveal the rest
Events count	How many calendar events the technician has that day

Opening a ticket from the board

Both the scheduled-ticket chips inside a technician's day cell and the cards in the Unassigned queue are links to the ticket's full detail page. Click a ticket's number or subject to open it. The links behave like any other link in Ascent:

• A normal click opens the ticket in the same tab.
• Cmd/Ctrl-click (or a middle-click) opens it in a new browser tab, so you can keep the board open while you read.
• They are keyboard-accessible — tab to a ticket and press Enter to open it.

Dragging an unassigned card to assign it never opens the ticket — only a click does.

Filter and search the board

A busy board can show every technician and every waiting ticket at once. The filter bar above the grid lets you narrow it down to just the work you care about. The filters apply live to both the technician rows and the Unassigned queue.

Filter	What it does
Search	Free-text match on a ticket's number or subject (type #42 or printer)
All clients	Show only tickets for one client
All priorities	Show only tickets at one priority (Critical, High, Medium, Low)
All statuses	Show only tickets in one status
All technicians	Show only one technician's row

A few things to know:

• The client, priority, status, and search filters narrow the scheduled tickets shown in each technician's row and the Unassigned queue, so you see a consistent picture. The count badge on the queue reflects what's currently showing.
• The technician filter narrows which technician rows appear. It does not hide the Unassigned queue, so you can still drag waiting work onto the technician you're focused on — and the inline Assign to… picker always lists everyone.
• When a filter hides every row or every queued ticket, the board tells you nothing matches (rather than looking empty).
• A Clear button appears whenever a filter is active; click it to reset everything.

Share or bookmark a filtered board

Your active filters are saved in the page's web address. That means a filtered view is shareable and bookmarkable — copy the URL to send a colleague exactly the board you're looking at (for example, "all High-priority tickets for Acme"), and your filters are restored automatically when you reload or revisit the link.

Keeping a busy board readable

When a technician has a lot of work on a single day, or the queue gets long, the board stays compact instead of stretching down the page:

• Per-cell overflow. Each day cell shows the most urgent few tickets (highest priority first) and a +N more link when there are extra. Click it to expand that cell and see every ticket, then Show less to collapse it again.
• Compact vs. comfortable. Use the Comfortable / Compact toggle in the top-right to change how much each ticket chip shows. Comfortable shows the ticket number and subject; Compact shows just the number so you can fit far more on screen — hover any chip to see its full subject.
• Unassigned queue. The queue lists the first batch of waiting tickets with a Show all N button to reveal the rest (and Show fewer to collapse). The count badge beside Unassigned shows the total for the current view (after any active filters), whether or not the full list is expanded.

See what's most urgent (SLA)

The board highlights how each ticket is tracking against its SLA, so you can dispatch the most time-critical work first.

Each ticket shows one of three states, based on its SLA due date:

State	Meaning
Breaching (red)	The ticket is past its SLA due date — it's overdue
Due soon (amber)	The ticket is due within the next 4 hours
On track (green)	The ticket is due, but comfortably in the future

Where you'll see it:

• Unassigned queue. Each waiting card shows a coloured Breaching / Due soon / On track badge next to its priority.
• Scheduled tickets. A ticket chip in a technician's day cell gets a small coloured dot when it's breaching or due soon, so an overloaded technician's at-risk work stands out. Hover any chip to see its SLA state.
• Tickets without a due date, and closed tickets, show no SLA badge — there's no live SLA clock to track.

Order the queue by urgency. Use the Sort toggle above the Unassigned queue to choose how it's ordered:

• SLA (the default) puts the most urgent work first — breaching, then due soon, then on track, with the soonest due date first. Priority breaks any ties.
• Priority orders by ticket priority (Critical first), then by due date.

Sorting works together with your filters and the queue's Show all control.

Assigning a ticket

You can assign work straight from the Unassigned queue. Assigning a ticket also schedules it at the start of the window you are currently viewing.

You need permission to update tickets to assign work. Without it, the board is read-only — the drag handles and the Assign to… pickers do not appear.

Drag and drop

1. Pick up a ticket card from the Unassigned panel using its grip handle.
2. Drag it onto any day cell in the target technician's row. Cells highlight while you drag.
3. Drop it. The ticket is assigned to that technician and scheduled, and the board refreshes.

Inline assign

If you would rather not drag, each unassigned ticket card has an Assign to… dropdown. Choose a technician from the list and the ticket is assigned and scheduled immediately.

Time-off conflicts

If you schedule a ticket onto a technician who has approved time off during that window, the assignment still goes through, but a warning tells you there is a conflict so you can decide whether to reassign. Assignments without a conflict show a simple confirmation.

Overbooking and skill warnings

The board also gives you a heads-up before a questionable assignment sticks — these warnings are advisory only, so the assignment always completes and you stay in control:

• Overbooked — if the technician's day is already at or over its working-hours capacity, the confirmation reads "Assigned with a warning" and notes that they are at or over capacity for that day.
• Missing skill — if the ticket is tagged with a skill (a tag that matches a skill assigned to technicians in your org) and the technician you picked doesn't have that skill, the warning calls out which required skill they lack. A technician who has at least one of the required skills is treated as qualified and isn't flagged.

To make the skill warning work, tag your tickets with the relevant skill (for example firewall or network) and assign matching skills to your technicians under Settings → Ticket Routing. Tickets without a matching skill tag, and orgs that don't use skills, simply never see a skill warning.

Moving work between technicians

You don't have to start from the Unassigned queue to move work around. Any ticket that's already scheduled on a technician's row can be dragged to a new home:

• Reassign to another technician — drag a scheduled ticket chip onto a different technician's day cell. It's reassigned and scheduled for the day you dropped it on, exactly as if you'd assigned it fresh: the new technician is notified, and a time-off conflict warning appears if the new day overlaps their approved time off.
• Return it to the queue — drag a scheduled ticket onto the Unassigned panel. While you're dragging an assigned ticket, the panel shows a "Drop here to return to the queue" hint; dropping it clears both the assignee and the scheduled date, and the technician who had it is notified that it was taken off their plate.

As with the first assignment, you need permission to assign work for any of this — without it, scheduled tickets aren't draggable.

Schedule to a specific time (Timeline view)

The Day and Week views schedule a ticket onto a day. When you need to place work at a particular time — say, a 10:00 AM on-site — switch to the Timeline view.

The Timeline shows one day, with your technicians as columns and the hours running down the side. It opens on a default working band (roughly 7 AM–7 PM) and widens automatically to fit anyone whose hours start earlier or end later. Each technician's own working hours are shaded so you can see, at a glance, who is actually on shift at a given hour, and a column is tinted when that technician has approved time off that day.

Everything already on a technician's day shows up as a block on their column:

• Scheduled tickets appear at their scheduled time (click one to open the ticket).
• Calendar events and on-call windows appear at their real times.
• When two things overlap, they sit side by side in the same hour, so a double-booking is obvious.

To schedule a ticket to a precise time:

1. Drag a card from the Unassigned panel.
2. Drop it onto the time slot in the target technician's column (slots are 30 minutes).
3. The ticket is assigned and scheduled for that exact time, and the confirmation names the slot — for example, "Scheduled for Wed Jun 17, 10:00 AM."

Time-off conflict warnings work here just as they do in the Day and Week views. To move a ticket that is already scheduled, switch to the Day or Week view and drag it to another technician (see Moving work between technicians), or change its assignee or schedule from the ticket itself.

Timezones

The Timeline is drawn in your browser's local time. Ticket, event, and on-call times are exact, but a technician's shaded working hours are based on their configured work hours read in your local time — so if a technician works in a different timezone than you, treat the shading as a guide rather than an exact boundary.

Live updates

The board refreshes itself automatically. When any dispatcher assigns a ticket, every open Dispatch Board updates to reflect the change — so two people working the queue at once always see the same, current picture without having to reload.

Permissions

The Dispatch Board reuses your existing ticket permissions; there are no separate dispatch permissions to grant.

Capability	Permission
View the board (and see the Dispatch nav item)	Tickets — read
Assign work from the board (drag-and-drop and the inline picker)	Tickets — update

Tips

• Set work schedules and time off first. The board's capacity hints and time-off conflict warnings are only as accurate as each technician's My Schedule and approved time-off entries — see Schedule.
• Use Week view to balance load. Spotting an overbooked technician (the red booked/working figure) is easiest across a full week.
• Watch for the time-off warning. It does not block the assignment, so confirm it is what you intended before moving on.