Prevent Scheduling Overlaps When Dispatch Workflow Runs Concurrently
It was brought to my attention that when the dispatch workflow runs on multiple tickets at the same time, scheduling overlaps can occur. This happens because each ticket independently detects the same free slot and schedules itself there without awareness of other tickets being processed in parallel.
Running the workflow sequentially one ticket at a time avoids overlaps, but this is not ideal as it reduces efficiency and slows down dispatching. Ideally, the workflow should support concurrent execution while coordinating between tickets.
Slot availability should be reserved or revalidated in real time so that once a slot is taken by a more urgent ticket, it is no longer offered to others. The point is that tickets should be prioritised based on urgency, with the most critical ones scheduled first.
A solution that allows safe concurrent scheduling with proper slot locking or communication between events would significantly improve dispatch accuracy and performance.
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Comments4
Christopher Griffen
Aug 25
Add a native Dispatch setting that atomically reserves a technician during triggered ticket dispatch. Today, tickets created seconds apart run in parallel and can each select the same technician before the other assignments are visible.
The setting should prevent consecutive assignments to the same technician whenever more than one technician is scheduled. “Scheduled” means on their configured shift; it must not mean merely calendar-available.
Required behavior:
Process concurrent dispatches in a deterministic order and reserve the selected technician before the next dispatch evaluates candidates.
When multiple technicians are scheduled, do not assign two consecutive tickets to the same technician.
For P1/P2, allow a repeat only when that technician is the sole currently available scheduled technician.
For P3/P4/P5, select another scheduled technician even if that person is temporarily in a meeting, service call, lunch, or partial-day absence.
Never override off-shift status, full-day PTO/OOO, or a hard routing exclusion.
Apply this reservation/consecutive-assignment logic before fairness, workload, assignment history, expertise, or continuity ranking.
Include the dispatch order, reserved technician, scheduled count, available count, and any allowed repeat in the decision audit.
Example: Three P2/P3 tickets arrive within seconds while several technicians are on shift. The workflow must not independently select the same best-fit technician for all three; each selection must see and honor the prior reservation.
Ryan
Jul 7
This is complete with recent updates to Dispatch. More dispatch updates to come.
Christopher Griffen
Aug 25
It is not.
Katie Foster
Jun 23
would be great if this would prevent dispatch overlap too when avoiding double assignments using previous decision timestamps. Dispatch is too time critical for sequential ticket processing.