TrackIt Ideas
Idea and discussion portal for the TrackIt product line. Users may submit, view and vote on ideas submitted by all users.
Idea and discussion portal for the TrackIt product line. Users may submit, view and vote on ideas submitted by all users.
When a vehicle is headed to a different plant (other than home plant), provide a way for the driver to get on to the destination plant's talk channel. Either automatically, or just make it available in the list of channels available to the driver.
This will allow the driver to talk to the destination plant's dispatch and prepare for the job they're about to be assigned to.
A generic solution to this problem seems simple -- configure Zello to assign multiple Zello channels to drivers, and allow them to select a single transmit/receive channel from the list, much like one would select a channel on a CB radio.
Currently, when a truck is assigned to multiple channels, the driver can hear the radio chatter on all channels. The “transmitting” channel is automatically selected by TrackIt, or the driver can click on the desired channel on the tablet’s list. But “receiving” is still enabled for all channels, which is distracting. We want to be able to manually select a single channel for transmit and receive.
The automatic “last plant” channel feature in TrackIt partially solves this problem, but when a truck is assigned from Plant A to Plant B, the driver does not have access to the Plant B channel until they arrive at Plant B. And if the Plant A truck is ticketed for a job coming mainly from Plant B, the driver has no way of ever communicating with the Plant B trucks.
We have experimented with multi-plant Zello channels, but metropolitan areas have the potential for many overlapping channels, so that doesn’t solve the problem. And “job channels” don’t really solve the problem either because truck-job assignments are very dynamic during the day.
The Dispatch tablets have a way to mute a channel, but this approach, even if available on the truck tablets, would be too cumbersome. What we would like to see is an option that would allow a driver to see several channels on the tablet, but mute all of them except for the selected channel.
I realize that there may be some “corollary damage” if this feature is simply added without thinking through the impact on automatic channels, etc. The feature would need to be enabled on a channel-by channel basis with a "CB Mode" or "Solo Channel Mode" config flag.