The first thing that you will see is a map of the metro area with pins located at all of the locations for open pickups. The red pin is The FreeStore warehouse to give the user some perspective. Mike Smith had commented that it would be convenient if the pickup request were presented in geographic order. The map presentation should take care of that.
Click on a black pin and you will see who the donor is and what they are offering. This information comes from the donor herself. There is no data entry on the part of the scheduler.
If you want to see more detail about the potential donor, click on the name of the donor. That link will immediately take you down the page to this donor’s complete record. Everything that they submitted on the pickup request form is there, including pictures. You will notice that every record is headed with a pink bar to keep the information separate
You will notice that there is a “To Top” and “To Bottom” link just above the pink section divider. Click “To Top”. It will take you to the top of the form again.
Scroll down the form, below the map. The first record that you will see is the most recent pickup request. All open pickup requests are listed below the map. The most recent is at the top.
Just below the pink section header is a row containing the request date, address, and contact information. There are buttons with hyperlinks to call or text. See if they work on your computer. If they don’t you’ll need to Google a solution or talk to a friend.
Just below this contact information row will be a big green button that says “Show\Hide Images”. Click on this button and all of the submitted images will be displayed for you.
The next band is the communications log.
The first item in this band is the last communication or not regarding this donor. If there have been no communications, there will be a note highlighted indicating that the donor has not yet been contacted.
The next band gives you a chance to enter your comments after contacting the donor. Finally, if there has been more than one comment made regarding this donor, there is another long, green button that says “Show\Hide earlier communications”. When it is all said and done, there should be a complete record of communications with a potential donor. This should make the week to week transition a lot easier.
If I was a scheduler boss, I would probably require a note from the scheduler if the scheduler chooses to cancel a pickup. If someone decided to complain about service, there is a log to see what happened.
Finally, there is a place to decide what you want to do: nothing, cancel the request, or to batch up the request into a load. If you are not ready to schedule a pickup, leave it at nothing. If you just want to leave a note in the log, you don’t need to pick anything. If there is something about this pickup request that makes it undesirable, choose cancel. If you want to schedule a pickup, choose to add it to the pickup batch.
At this point, when someone makes a pickup request, their request will automatically be brought into the Pickup Management system. But for testing, the system makes no communication with the potential donor or the drivers.
For the first action on the system, enter a note for a donor. It can be anything. Let the action be “No Action”. Write down the name of the donor. Find a “To Bottom” hyperlink above or below the record that you are looking at. Click it.
You will see a place to enter pickup date, drivers and batch comments. Ignore those. They are only needed for a pickup. Click on the dark green Submit button. You should get a confirmation that nothing was canceled or scheduled for pickup.
Open the form again, go to the donor that you just wrote a note for. You should see the note, your name and a time stamp.
Find a donor out of the TFS pick up area. Click on the pin. Click on the person’s name to go to his pickup request record. On the action line, choose “Cancel Pickup”. Go to the bottom of the form and click submit. You will get a confirmation page that confirms that you canceled this pick up.
Open the form again and you will see that his record will be gone. It seems like good practice that the scheduler leaves a note when canceling a pickup. But, it is not required at this point. It is not my intention to send an automatic email to the donor upon cancellation. But, I could if you think that would be a good thing.
Now pick several pickup request records and choose “Add to Pickup Batch”. You will see that the post it note on the lower right corner will contain the names of the people that you are putting into the pickup batch. When you are done picking some items, go to the bottom.
You should see that the submit button is disabled. You must include a pickup date and drivers when you are making a batch. When you have picked the drivers and pickup date, the submit button will be enabled. Click it.
You will get a confirmation page that lists the people in your batch.
You should receive emails like what would get sent to the driver and the donor. For test purposes, the “to” email address that is used is the one in your TFS user account.
The driver email does not include any recommended routing. It is my understanding that the drivers prefer to set their own pickup order. The email to the drivers includes a map where each pin is labeled with a number. That number corresponds with a number by each item in the list of pickups. The list of pickups includes hyperlinks so that the driver just needs to tap the address of the next stop.
The donor email assumes a pickup between 9:00 and 11:00. It is my assumption that whole house cleanouts, hotels and university pickups are part of a different system.
