Auto-reallocation of Bookings

What is auto-reallocation?

PoolCar has multiple situations where bookings can be automatically transferred from one vehicle to another. This can be configured to occur when a booking will be affected by an overdue booking, or when a driver reports there is damage / an issue with a vehicle.

Auto-reallocation can be limited to vehicles within specific pools using the Pools > Edit page.

By default, each Pool cannot be reallocated, and does not ignore the body type.

These features are available for customers using Pool Management

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Where will the booking be transferred to?

In both instances the system will only transfer bookings to similar vehicles that are available for the entire booking time (start to end). Vehicles are available if they are bookable, and not booked during the time of the reallocated booking. This can be affected by (not comprehensive list):

• Cannot be booked from date

• Cannot be booked after date

• Driver cannot see the vehicle (outside of Pools they can access)

A vehicle is similar if:

• It is bookable (as above) by the driver

  • Probationary licence

  • Driver is licenced to drive the Transmission type

  • Driver is licenced to drive the vehicle class

• Is not archived

• Has the same body type (except when Ignore body type: above is enabled)

  • This will stop a booking for a 2-door sedan been reallocated to a hefty SUV / Van when a different option would be better

• Has an e-Tag if the reallocated booking’s vehicle also has an e-Tag installed

• Is in the same Pool as the reallocated booking’s vehicle at the time of the booking

• Has equal to or more seats than the reallocated booking’s vehicle

  • This is to prevent a booking with passengers (recorded in the Passenger Manifest or not) been transferred to a vehicle with less available seats

If a similar suitable vehicle is unavailable for the affected booking, it will instead be cancelled and the driver alerted to find other arrangements. The driver of a cancelled booking will need to either book a vehicle of a different type, or a different time frame themselves.

Overdue Bookings

PoolCar’s 5-minute robots include an auto-reallocation feature for overdue bookings. This will automatically transfer a booking from one vehicle to another, if the previous booking is still overdue X minutes away from the start of the re-allocated booking. Every 5 minutes past the booking end time PoolCar will check to see if there is another booking that will start within X minutes. If there is such a booking it will transfer it to another suitable vehicle.

This is enabled via the Robots page:

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On the Application Settings page system administrators can determine how far into the future a booking is to be thought ‘at risk’. This is controlled by the Reallocation time threshold for overdue bookings: (minutes) setting found under Robots.

For example, David’s booking on VehicleX is due to start at 12pm, and Steve is out with VehicleX and has the vehicle booked from 10am to 11:30am. If Steve is running late and has not checked his booking in by 11:30am, it’s classified as an overdue booking. If the system has a 15 minute reallocation time threshold then at 11:45am the system will find Steve’s overdue booking at risk of affecting David’s booking at 12pm. It will then transfer David’s booking to another similar vehicle.

Damage / Issue

PoolCar can auto-reallocate bookings against a vehicle for X days when a driver checks in their booking and reports the vehicle as damaged / has an issue. This causes the following to happen:

1. All bookings from the end of the checked in booking, to X days in the future are re-allocated to different vehicles.

2. A new booking with the Maintenance booking type is created with a length of X days from the end of the checked in booking

3. This maintenance booking is checked out and will need to be checked in by an admin once the vehicle is safe to drive

This is turned on via the Application Settings page via the Robots group.

Automatic vehicle re-allocation

This setting determines whether or not subsequent bookings should be re-allocated if a driver reports a damage/issue.

• No, only send email to alert recipients will only send alerts to the recipients designated by Reallocation and damage/incident alert recipients that an driver has reported a damage / issue.

• Yes, auto reallocate bookings and send email to alert recipients will enable the reallocation feature.

Minimum reallocation period

This setting determines how many days in the future bookings should be automatically reallocated, and how long the maintenance booking is created for. The default is 3 days (72 hours).

Reallocation and damage/incident alert recipients

This setting determines who should receive an alert when a damage or issue is reported, and when a booking is automatically reallocated.

• All System Administrators

• Pool Managers for the Pool

• Contacts Listed for the Asset

  • This will send the alerts to all contacts against the vehicle in the Vehicle Register

Is this feature for me?

This feature is best suited to customers who have many cases of people arriving to use a vehicle and the previous booking holder is late in returning, or are mindful of drivers going out with vehicles with damage or issues.

It will relieve the burden of manually transferring bookings from the admins and drivers and give the responsibility to the automatic processes of PoolCar. This is not without it’s risks however as the system will only follow the parameters it’s given for determining what is a suitable vehicle.

You should consider the following before enabling this feature:

• Do I have a small number of vehicles with many seats, and many of a smaller seat capacity?

  • If you have a handful of vehicles with 6 seats, and the majority of vehicles with 4 seats you will encounter any issues with bookings made against those 6-seaters as they will not automatically reallocate to vehicles with 4 seats.

• Do I have many pools with vehicles stored in one geographical location?

  • This feature works best with a larger sample pool of available vehicles. We would recommend revisiting the use of a larger Pool, rather than many small Pools to make the most of this feature.

• The auto-reallocation features does not currently adhere to limitations on booking a vehicle such as Access Groups

  • If you have vehicles within a Pool limited by access groups they may be reallocated to even if the Driver is not permitted to drive the vehicle.

  • We recommend only using this feature within ‘General Pools’ where all vehicles are available to be booked by general staff.

• If you are unable to find an answer to your question in here please log a support request via the Smartrak Service Desk