Definition
Dispatch software
Dispatch software is the tool that assigns a named worker to a specific shift at a specific site and tells everyone who needs to know. In staffing it covers the assignment, the confirmation from the worker, the site details sent out, and the record of who was where.
Also called staffing dispatch system, shift dispatch tool, dispatch board. Last updated .
The word reaches staffing from trucking and field service, where dispatch means sending a resource to a job. The staffing version differs in one way that changes the software: the resource is a person who can decline, so an assignment is a request until it is confirmed.
That is why an assignment and a confirmation are separate events, and why software that collapses them lies to you. Assigning a worker records the office's intention. A confirmation records the worker's agreement. A board showing only assignments is showing you a plan and calling it a fact.
A working dispatch view answers four questions at a glance: which shifts start in the next 24 hours, which of those have nobody confirmed, who is eligible for those, and who has already been asked and said no. The fourth is the one most tools drop, and dropping it is why the same worker gets called three times in an hour.
Size changes what good looks like. A desk running twenty shifts a week can hold the state in one person's head. At two hundred a week the same approach produces double bookings, workers asked twice in an hour, and a client told a name that never confirmed. That is the point where the board stops being a convenience and becomes the record.
Overnight is where the tooling earns its cost in this market. Between midnight and six in the morning there is nobody at a desk, and the shifts that fail are the ones nobody chased at four.
Where Kordis fits, and where it does not
Kordis dispatches by staging: it picks the eligible workers, drafts the messages, and shows you the batch before anything goes out. Overnight work is staged the same way, so the morning starts with a record of what happened rather than a list of what still needs chasing.
See how Kordis worksCommon questions
What is the difference between scheduling and dispatch?
Scheduling decides what shifts exist and roughly who covers them. Dispatch commits a named person to a specific shift and confirms it with them. Scheduling is planning the week. Dispatch is what happens on the day, and at four in the morning.
Does assigning a worker mean the shift is covered?
No. An assignment is the office's decision; coverage needs the worker's agreement. Software that marks a shift filled the moment a name lands on it will show a full roster on a morning when nobody arrives. The two states have to stay separate on the screen.
Can dispatch run while the office is closed?
The contact and the confirmations can. The decisions should not. The arrangement that works is that overnight requests and answers are handled and recorded, and anything needing a judgement call is waiting in the morning with its context attached.
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