Dispatch & Work
Thorbis Fleet Location & Customer Tracking
Live dispatcher fleet maps and Uber-style customer “technician on the way” tracking, fully Thorbis-branded, with honest ETAs, privacy controls, and reliable sync when signal is weak.
Overview
Dispatchers need to see where every active technician is, whether they are driving, on site, idle, or offline, and who is best positioned for the next emergency job, without refreshing the whole board. Customers expect a branded tracking link when a technician heads their way: live ETA, road-following route, arrival states, and clear messaging when location is temporarily updating, never another vendor’s logo or another customer’s address. Thorbis Fleet Location uses Radar behind the scenes for native mobile background location and trip detection, while Google Maps remains the visible map and route layer you already use on the dispatch board and customer tracking page. Thorbis owns the data, permissions, notifications, and audit trail. Job workflows (On My Way, Arrive, Complete, clock-in/out) keep working even if the location provider is degraded. Company settings control who can see live location, when customer sharing starts and stops, retention, and notification templates. Technicians get a staged permission experience, background tracking only when policy and consent allow.
What we're building
Dispatchers can't see where every active technician is, driving, on site, idle, or offline, without refreshing the whole board, and they're guessing who's best positioned for the next emergency job. Customers, meanwhile, are left wondering when a tech will actually show up.
Thorbis Fleet Location gives dispatchers a live fleet map with honest technician states and gives customers a branded "technician on the way" link with a real ETA, a road-following route, and clear arrival states. It uses Radar for native background location behind the scenes while Google Maps stays the visible map layer, and Thorbis owns the data, permissions, notifications, and audit trail. Core job actions, On My Way, Arrive, Complete, clock-in and out, keep working even if the location provider is degraded.
Company settings control who can see live location, when customer sharing starts and stops, data retention, and notifications, with a staged permission experience for technicians.
What you'll be able to do
- Phase 0: Repository audit, canonical technician identity, realtime approach, overlapping code inventory
- Phase 1: Provider-neutral fleet domain, types, state machine, settings, DB migrations, RLS, usage metering
- Phase 2: Mobile fleet APIs, location batch ingestion, Radar webhook with signature verification and reconciliation
- Phase 3: Broadcast realtime publisher replacing high-frequency postgres_changes GPS fanout
- Phase 4: Mobile Radar integration, Expo plugin, permissions UX, shift tracking, On My Way trips, offline buffer, Expo fallback
- Phase 5: Dispatch map, smooth markers, health states, ETA/routes, filters, technician drawer, performance at scale
- Phase 6: Customer tracking, secure token stream, Uber-style branded UI, privacy guard, idempotent notifications
- Phase 7: Hardening, load tests, failure injection, RLS/security/privacy review, observability, owner runbook
- Dispatcher fleet view: driving, on-site, idle, offline, stale, permission-warning states with last-updated and battery
- Customer link: on the way, arriving soon, arrived, delayed, location updating, never Radar branding or other jobs
- Strict tenant isolation and customer token scoping with explicit RLS tests
- Location retention governance and encrypted per-company mobile buffer
- ETA selection policy with Radar + Google Routes and route refresh coalescing
- Reconciliation service for manual vs automatic arrival and out-of-order webhooks
- Fleet Tracking settings workbench and Thorbis-admin provider health dashboard
Rollout plan
- 01
Fleet domain and dispatch map
In progressStand up provider-neutral location data, settings, and a dispatcher map showing driving, on-site, idle, and offline states.
- 02
Customer and mobile tracking
In progressAdd Radar-backed mobile background tracking, On My Way trips, and a branded customer link with honest ETAs and privacy controls.
- 03
Scale and hardening
In progressMove GPS fanout to a broadcast publisher, reconcile out-of-order arrivals, and harden with load tests, security, and observability.
Milestones
- Not started:
Provider-neutral fleet foundation
Build location types, state machine, settings, migrations, and RLS.
- Not started:
Mobile Radar integration
Ship the Expo plugin, permissions UX, and shift and On My Way tracking with an offline buffer.
- Not started:
Dispatch and customer surfaces
Deliver the dispatcher map and the secure, branded customer tracking link.
- Not started:
Reliability hardening
Load test, inject failures, and complete the RLS and privacy review with an owner runbook.
More in Dispatch & Work
How to send useful feedback
Name the blocked role
Product feedback is more useful when it names the owner, dispatcher, technician, office user, or customer affected.
Explain the workaround
Describe what your team does today and where the process fails under real work.
Define success
Share what would change after launch: time saved, fewer manual steps, cleaner records, or better customer follow-up.