Dispatch board: assigning parcels, pickup requests and courier duty mode

Purpose#

The Parcel distribution board is where a delivery company hands parcels to its couriers and follows them, with pickup requests and an optional "courier must be online" rule.

Who can use it#

Company staff accounts (company admin, in-charge, hub) open the board from Parcel distribution in the company menu; no plan feature is required. A merchant who owns a private delivery company finds it under My delivery company, limited to its own couriers and parcels.

What you need#

• At least one active courier (added on Couriers and commissions) below their parcel limit and, with the online rule on, online. Suspended couriers are not offered.
• Parcels with status "Received Warehouse" or "Received by hub". Parcels awaiting pickup do not appear.
• Optional: Delivery areas linked to couriers, and parcels with recipient coordinates. Areas drive the area filter, the area-first courier order, the "No area" badge and automatic assignment.

The board at a glance#

• Four counters: Ready for distribution, With couriers, Delivered today, Active couriers.
• A chip per courier with their current parcels (assigned or rescheduled) against their limit; click it to open that courier's parcels. The figure is approximate: a parcel keeps counting for every courier it was ever assigned to, even after it was moved, or postponed and given to another courier, for as long as it is with a courier (assigned or rescheduled). The dot shows online status only if the online rule is on.
• Three tabs: Ready for distribution, With couriers and «انتهت» ("Expired" in the English interface) for delivered, partially delivered and returned parcels.
• Search by tracking number, recipient phone or name (or exact invoice number); an area filter (when active areas exist); a courier filter (not on the Ready tab).

Each courier has a parcel limit ("Parcel limit with it"). When you add a courier on Couriers and commissions, an empty limit is saved as 50; when you edit one, an empty limit leaves the current limit unchanged (the older Delivery Man form suggests 10). A courier at the limit gets no new parcels; the option is disabled and suffixed "— limit reached".

Assign parcels#

1. Assign one parcel

   On the Ready for distribution tab, pick a courier in the Courier column. Options read "name (current / limit)", with the parcel's area couriers first, then "Other couriers".

2. Assign several parcels

   Tick the parcels, choose the courier in the bar above the table, press Assign selected and confirm (200 parcels per request at most). On the With couriers tab the same bar (Move to courier) moves the ticked parcels to another courier.

3. Or let the system assign by area

   With an active area and ready parcels, press Auto distribution by areas and confirm. It takes up to 500 ready parcels, oldest first, ignoring filters, giving each to the recipient-area courier with the fewest parcels and skipping couriers at their limit (and offline ones if the online rule is on). The result message counts parcels left for lack of an area or location, of active area couriers, or because couriers are at their limit; any other failure is skipped silently. Left-over parcels stay ready.

4. Record the outcome

   On the With couriers tab each parcel has Deliver (after confirmation), Failed (optional reason; final, returns the parcel to the company) and Postpone (optional reason; back to ready, no courier, counts as an attempt). On the Expired tab, returned parcels the merchant has not yet received get Returned to merchant (Returned to me for a private-company merchant); parcels already marked as received have no button. Deliver and Failed post the parcel's finance entries. There is no partial delivery here.

Pickup requests from merchants#

A merchant of your company sends a request from the window «طلب مندوب يستلم الطرود» with pickup location, approximate count, preferred time and a note.

1. Open the pickup requests page

   It is «طلبات الاستلام» in the company menu, with a badge counting open requests (new and assigned), shown to accounts with the regular or express pickup-request permission.

2. Assign a courier and close the request

   Choose a courier in the row (every active courier is offered; the online rule does not apply) and press «عيّن» («تغيير» if already assigned). When collected, press «تم الاستلام», or Cancel after confirmation. «إعادة فتح» returns a closed request to new and removes the courier.

The "online" rule for couriers#

An optional per-company rule: a courier receives parcels for delivery only while "online".

1. Turn the rule on

   The couriers page (headed My company couriers; open it from Couriers and commissions) has a card «شرط «متصل» لاستلام الطرود» showing Enabled or Suspended. Press «فعّل الشرط» to turn it on and «وقّف الشرط» to turn it off.

2. The courier switches status in the app

   The courier switches status through POST /api/v10/deliveryman/duty with on_duty true or false; new couriers start online. While the rule is on, an offline courier is listed but disabled with «غير متصل» and cannot be assigned parcels for delivery; pickup-request assignment is not affected.

Common mistakes#

• Automatic assignment did nothing: usually no recipient location, outside every area, or no couriers in the area.

Limits and permissions#

• The dispatch board and couriers pages are for company staff and private-company merchants; the pickup requests page is for company staff only. Other accounts are refused.
• The online-rule card and the pickup requests page work only after the platform's database updates for them have been applied. Until then the card is hidden and the pickup requests page answers 503, so ask the platform operator to apply the updates.
• Most pickup-request and online-rule labels appear in Arabic in the English interface.