What is the difference from soft allocation, hard allocation, and a hidden allocation?

When managing booking assignments you will have three options to choose from, and within them whether to Offer or Force the job to the driver.

Soft Allocation
A soft allocation is assigned to the driver specified, however, if they do not start the run within 20 minutes of the due time, the job will enter the global queue again for any driver..

Hard Allocation
A hard allocation is assigned to the driver specified, and will remain with that driver whether or not they start the job in time or not.

Hidden Allocation
A hidden allocation is similar to a Hard Allocation, except that the driver will not see the job in their allocations list and will not be notified of the booking via push notification. The driver will, however, get sent the job if Automated dispatch is enabled when the job is due.

With soft and hard allocation, you have the option to either Offer or Force the job to the driver. To offer the job will send a notification to the drivers device via push and invite them to view the job and either accept the allocation request or reject it. If the job is rejected, the job will go back to unassigned and available to all drivers. If a soft or hard allocation is offered, and is not accepted by the driver within 20 minutes of the start of the pickup, then the allocation offer will expire and will revert back to an unallocated job. If the job is forced against a driver via soft or hard allocation, it means it will skip the step of asking the driver for permission and automatically assume the driver has accepted. This means instead of the options to Accept or Reject the allocation, they will only see the option to start the allocated job once ready.

With a hidden job, you can pre-allocate jobs to drivers and not worry as to whether they can see you toggling jobs between one another, you can either leave the job as hidden allocated or you can formalise the allocation at any time by following the hidden allocation with a hard or soft allocation which will display the job on the drivers device and show in their My Allocation list.

You can allocate a job at two stages, either at the booking stage in the Booking Form or after the booking has been placed in the Booking View.