How does the Dispatching Workflow work?

The Dispatching workflow lets you decide which fleets are used for your orders, based on conditions you set yourself. To build and publish a workflow, please follow the steps below.

Build your workflow

1. Select 'Dispatching' in the left hand navigation bar of the Orkestro Portal
2. Add a condition and choose what it is based on from the 'Condition' dropdown. You can build conditions on basket value, distance, dropoff city or postcode, day of week, pickup time, schedule type and order contents such as hot food, fragile, liquid or restricted items
3. Set the values for that condition, for example orders above a certain basket value or within a certain distance
4. Attach a fleet strategy to the condition to decide which fleets are booked
5. Repeat for each condition you want to cover

Set up a fleet strategy

A fleet strategy tells us which fleets to book, and in what order.

1. Enter a name for the strategy in the 'Name' field so you can recognise it later
2. Under 'Try first', click 'Add a priority fleet' and add the fleets you want us to try before anything else. We work down this list in the order you set
3. Under 'Cheapest of', click 'Add to cheapest pool' and add the fleets you are happy to fall back on. We book whichever of these is cheapest at the time
4. To remove a strategy, click 'Delete fleet strategy'

You can use either section on its own. Add fleets only to 'Try first' if you always want a set order, or only to 'Cheapest of' if cost is what matters most.

If none of the fleets in your strategy can take an order, the order stays in 'Pending' status and needs to be assigned manually. Adding enough fleet services to your strategy will usually avoid this.

Test your workflow before publishing

1. Open the 'Test' tab at the top of the builder
2. Click 'Find an order' to load the details of a real order, or enter the details manually
3. Fill in the fields you want to test against: 'Basket value', 'Distance', 'Weight', 'Schedule type', 'Dropoff postcode', 'Dropoff city' and 'Pickup date and time'. Tick any of 'Contains hot food', 'Fragile', 'Contains liquid' or 'Contains restricted items' that apply
4. Click 'Run test' to see which fleet strategy your workflow picks for that order
5. Click 'Reset' to clear the fields and test another combination

Day and time conditions are read in Europe/London.

Save and publish

1. Click 'Save' to keep your changes as a draft. A draft is not live and does not affect your orders
2. Click 'Publish' when you are ready. Your workflow goes live at that point and is used for new orders

Copy a workflow to your other merchants

Each merchant has its own workflow, so if you run more than one merchant you can either build a separate workflow for each or copy one across.

1. Save your workflow first. 'Copy to other merchants' is unavailable while you have unsaved changes
2. Click the '...' menu at the top of the page
3. Select 'Copy to other merchants'
4. Choose the merchants you want to copy the workflow to

The target merchant needs the same connected fleets for the copy to work. If a fleet used in your workflow is not connected for that merchant, the copy will not be successful.

For more detail, see our guide on applying connected fleets settings to multiple stores or merchants.