Self-drive mode allows AngelTrack to automatically assign calls to your units throughout the day according to optimal routing, as determined by the Vertex AI.
If you are satisfied with Vertex's dispatch board solutions, you can allow it to run your dispatch board, automatically assigning calls throughout the day according to the ever-changing optimal solution. Your dispatchers can intervene and override whenever they wish.
Vertex License Required
You must have an active Vertex license to use self-drive. You can activate Vertex's add-on license by visiting your Feature Buffet.
To learn more about licensing of AngelTrack add-ons, please visit the Feature Buffet Guide.
Prerequisites
- Vertex's full-day solutions are accurate only if it knows what shifts it will have throughout the day and into the evening. Therefore, all of the day's shifts must be on the books -- even if they are not active yet -- when you activate self-drive in the morning. You don't have to book future dates if you don't want to, but you must at least book all shifts occurring on the current day. To learn more about booking your shifts in advance, please visit the Scheduling Guide.
- Each shift must always have its full and correct capabilities recorded. This means your vehicles must have their capabilities properly recorded, and your crew members must have all of their certificates recorded, including their CPR cards if AngelTrack is configured to enforce this. You always have the option to manually set a shift's capabilities when you book it, but in the long run it's easier to keep all the records up-to-date so that AngelTrack can calculate everyone's capabilities automatically. To learn more, please read the Service Levels Guide and the Certificate Tracking Guide.
- You also must get your Vertex costing and adjustment settings tested and tweaked for your particular caseload. Vertex comes pre-configured with typical settings, but every provider is different, and so at least some of the defaults will probably turn out to be sub-optimal. To get Vertex dialed-in, you must use it frequently, then make small adjustments, then use it more, then more small adjustments, and so on, until its solutions are consistently practical for your crews and caseload. That means its solutions do not consistently overload or underload your shifts. There will always be exceptions, and crazy days where too many things run late or finish early, but the goal is that Vertex produces solutions which are consistently at least as good as human dispatchers. Do not attempt to use self-drive until you've accomplished this.
Onboarding
Self-drive is a big change to any dispatch office.
Furthermore it is potentially disruptive, if some dispatchers are not trained for it, or if some of the prerequisites are incomplete.
Self-drive is a division of responsibility, allowing the AI to perform ordinary schedule assignments while human dispatchers handle all the extraordinary things -- out-of-band events like last-minute cancellations, vehicle and crew swaps, lift assists, and all the rest of the managed chaos of our industry. Being a division of responsibility, all staff must be trained and on board, or else it will result in arm-wrestling between software and humans.
Agencies wishing to use self-drive must first use Vertex on a daily basis for three months, including its full-day solver, mid-day solver, work-in solver, and suggester, to get Vertex's costing and other adjustments dialed in, and establish or update dispatch bookkeeping protocols that ensure Vertex always has accurate data for trips and shifts. Please also provide any feedback to AngelTrack LLC about shortcomings you may discover for your unique situation.
When you are ready, contact AngelTrack Support to activate the self-drive feature.
Surge Units
Self-drive mode will not use your surge units, if any; it always leaves them idle. It is up to your dispatchers to assign them to last-minute calls as necessary.
To learn more about surge units, please visit the Vertex Guide.
How it Works
Self-drive mode monitors your dispatch board throughout the day, constantly re-solving the plan to take account of all the changes and delays that inevitably occur as the day progresses.
Each time Vertex re-solves your call schedule, it weighs its new solution against the previous one, and if there is a significant improvement to be had, it will reassign units as needed. As such, you will see Vertex frequently rearrange your upcoming call assignments as the day progresses.
It will not touch any call assignment that was made by a human; it will rearrange only its own call assignments, and of course unassigned units. This allows your dispatchers to assign specific calls and/or specific units, and Vertex will work around them.
Nor will Vertex touch any call assignment where a crew has already gone enroute; that privilege is reserved to human dispatchers.
Vertex will assign daisy-chains to a unit where necessary to preserve the benefits of double-loading, sometimes extending many hours into the future... but normally it only preassigns the next couple of hours, leaving the rest of the day undecided until more data has come in.
Critical Calls
Vertex knows how to assign critical calls, and will do so; however, Vertex does not ever touch your surge units, and in any case the call-taker will probably want to pull an active unit off its current call in order to run the critical call. Therefore we recommend that human dispatchers perform all assignment of critical calls, and then let Vertex rearrange the rest of the call schedule around them.
That said, if the call-taker does not assign the critical call, Vertex will see it during its next re-solve, and will assign it then.