The "on our way" message

Customers who have asked to hear from you before a visit get a short message when the technician is on the way.

Good to know

It is triggered by the stop before, not by a clock. A time-based warning would be wrong on any day the route runs early or late — which is most days.

The first customer of the day is a special case. Nobody comes before them, so their message goes out when the technician starts the route. They are also the ones most likely to be caught out, since they are visited earliest.

A stop that falls through still warns the next customer. If stop 3 cannot be done — gate locked, cancelled, route abandoned — no visit is created there. The warning used to hang on the completion of the pool before, so in exactly the cases where it matters most, it failed. It is now sent independently.

It skips whatever is already closed. If stop 3 falls through, stop 4 is next — not the next one in the list, but the next one that will actually be driven to.

What it does not do

It carries no arrival time. "On our way" is honest; "arriving at 10:15" would not be, on a route with a green pool in it.

A notification problem never stops the technician. The message failing is recorded and the route continues.