Weather heads-up for outdoor jobs

Overview#

Every day at 5 pm (your company's time), the dispatcher agent checks tomorrow's outdoor jobs against the US National Weather Service forecast. Jobs with a high chance of rain, strong wind, extreme heat or cold, or storms, snow or ice in their arrival window show in a Weather heads-up banner on the Dispatch Board, and as one note on the dispatcher agent's AI Team page. It's an alert only: nothing is rescheduled and no customer is contacted.

Before you start#

• Pick your outdoor job types in Settings › AI › AI assists › Weather heads-up: outdoor job types. Jobs tagged "outdoor" count too.

• Locations need to be on the map (geocoded). Locations without coordinates are counted and shown as "—", never as all clear.

• Forecasts cover the United States only. No AI key is needed.

Steps#

1. Go to Dispatch › Dispatch Board and move to tomorrow (→).

2. The Weather heads-up banner lists each job at risk: job number, arrival window, and the reasons (for example "80% chance of rain, wind to 30 mph").

3. Decide what to do: reschedule by dragging, or call the customer. TradesWork doesn't do either for you.

4. Click Dismiss on a job once you've handled it.

5. To check again now, click Check now (dispatchers).

Settings that change this#

• Settings › AI › AI assists › Weather heads-up: on or off.

• Settings › AI › Weather heads-up: outdoor job types.

Tips#

• Thresholds: 50% chance of rain or more, wind 25 mph or more, 100°F or more, 20°F or less, or storms, snow, sleet or ice in the forecast.

• Forecasts are cached for an hour, so Check now twice in a row gives the same answer.

Troubleshooting#

• "Not checked for this day yet" → the check runs at 5 pm for tomorrow → click Check now.

• "No outdoor jobs that day" → no job types are marked outdoor → pick them in Settings › AI.

• "… no map location" → the address isn't geocoded → fix the address on the customer's location.

• "No forecast was available" → the weather service had no forecast for that point (outside the US, or the service was down).

FAQ#

Will it move my appointments? No. It never moves anything and never contacts customers.

What's sent to the weather service? Only map coordinates, rounded to about a kilometer.

Coming from ServiceTitan#

The Dispatch Board is unchanged. The banner is extra.