Building on Fulcrum: Dispatching

In the past few weeks my colleagues have showcased examples of building applications on top of Fulcrum, utilizing our open source libraries and the Fulcrum API:

• Fulcrum API Wrappers
• What’s Happening at GeCo in the Rockies 2014
• Rogen

Today I would like to add an entry into the growing “Powered by Fulcrum” application library. We have received many requests from customers to incorporate dispatching functionality into Fulcrum. While we recognize the usefulness of such a feature, we also realize that “dispatching” can have multiple meanings depending on an organization’s workflow. Fulcrum has a wide variety of use cases, and our customers are able to utilize Fulcrum in ways we could never have imagined. With that thought in mind I decided to build an application utilizing the Fulcrum-node library and Fulcrum API. The application does just one thing; it makes dispatching records, or more specifically assigning records, fast and easy.

Goals

The goals for my dispatching application were:

• Create an application that makes assigning records easy
• Provide another example of building something on top of Fulcrum that can serve as a starting point for customers to build upon
• Limit the functionality to keep the code easy to follow and provide documentation within the code to help explain how it works

Setup

The scenario I envisioned while creating my application involves a company with a dispatcher and multiple technicians. The dispatcher uses my application to view appointments and assign them to available technicians. All appointments are stored in a Fulcrum app, where both the dispatcher and technicians have access. The dispatcher manually enters appointments into Fulcrum or populates them through a form on the company’s website.

When opening my application, the dispatcher immediately sees unassigned appointments that need technician assignment. The dispatcher can also check each technician’s current job queue before making assignments. The color of each map marker reflects the appointment status, providing a quick visual reference. Dragging an appointment from the “Dispatcher” queue to a technician’s queue assigns the record to that technician. Once technicians sync the “Appointments” app on their mobile device, they see all currently assigned appointments.

Technology

The dispatching app takes advantage of several open source tools in addition to Fulcrum. The technology I used includes:

• Fulcrum – for managing members, roles, and apps
• fulcrum-node – for the dispatching application
• Fulcrum API – for handling the communication between the fulcrum-node application and the Fulcrum database
• Leaflet – for the map

Takeaway

I realize that the application I created is not an out-of-the-box fit for all organizations and their unique dispatching workflow. My intent was to demonstrate the power and flexibility that can be achieved when the tools we have provided are combined to suit your organization’s specific needs. The source code for the dispatching app can be downloaded and easily modified. I added a lot of comments in the code, explaining what portions of the code should do. In future blog posts, I will be building additional features into the dispatching application as well as continuing to build new applications on top of the Fulcrum platform.