01What an operation is
An operation, in Poudra, is the departure of all your ready routes — those with an operator and stops. The Dispatch screen first tells you where you stand: “No operation in progress”, “Operation … in progress” or “An operation is waiting for your confirmation”. Then, under “What would go out”, it counts your ready routes, those without an operator and those without stops, with a link to Routes to fill in what is missing.
02Trigger
Give the operation a name (and, if you like, the expected accumulation). “Trigger and call out” asks for confirmation, then sends the routes out right away: each ready route goes out and operators are called out on their phones (notification, text or email). Customers are not notified at that moment: they are when the truck approaches (see below). If no route is ready, the button is greyed out and the screen says why. “Only propose, confirm later” creates the operation without sending anything. The dispatcher can only propose: the owner confirms, dismisses and closes.
03When the customer is warned
The customer is notified when the truck approaches their place: at each stop checked in, the customers of the next stops get “shortly”, in their language, with the link to their tracking page — one notice per customer per operation. The number of stops ahead (1 to 5, two by default) is set in Settings › Customer notices. When the operator closes the visit, a second “done” notice goes out with the link to the photos; that one never goes by text, only by notification and email. In a building, occupants who agreed to it get “move your vehicle”. Nothing promises a time: the notice says “shortly”. The phone’s GPS acts as a safety net: when the truck comes within 300 m of one of the next stops to do, its customer is notified even if the operator forgot to check in at the previous stop or to tap “I’m leaving” — never twice, and never for a stop whose turn comes later. Without signal, the net waits for it; the check-in always notifies.
04Your customers already on file
Customers added before Poudra sent notices by default have no box ticked: nothing goes out to them. In Settings › Customer notices, the owner first sees how many contacts would receive texts and emails — nothing is written —, then “Apply to my existing customers”, after confirming. Poudra never touches someone who unsubscribed or replied STOP, a channel with no contact detail, or a box already ticked, and keeps who did it and when.
05Quiet hours and the “on confirmation” mode
In Settings › Customer notices, “No texts at night” opens a window (for example 22:00 → 06:00, midnight included) during which the approach notice does not go out by text: notification and email only, and the message log says “quiet hours: text skipped”. The same screen keeps the previous mode, “As soon as the operation is confirmed”: a single notice, early, sent to every customer the moment you confirm. The screen shows the exact text the customer will receive, in French and in English.
06Proposed operations
A proposed operation — by hand, or by the weather if you follow a station — waits under “Proposed”. “Confirm: send the routes out” does exactly what the button says, and asks first — how many routes would leave and the operation’s name, like “Trigger”; “Dismiss” removes it without sending anything. One operation at a time: the next one can only be confirmed once the first is closed.
07The proof file, and how far it goes
From a visit or from a request, “Proof file” offers TWO documents. The complete one shows the vehicle's route around the stop — five minutes before arrival, five after departure: that is the one for an insurance claim or a dispute. The “visit only” one shows the customer's property alone, and that is the one you send them. The document states which one it is, under the map: a file that hid its truncation would let the reader believe that is all there is. If the phone never entered the 60 m zone, or if the property has no position yet, the “visit only” file shows no map and says why.
08What your operators accepted
The app asks every operator to accept a tracking policy before their first route: what is recorded, when — only between “Start my shift” and “End my shift” —, who can see it, and the fact that this information may appear in a proof file handed to a customer or an insurer. The Team screen shows each person's answer. A refusal stops position tracking and nothing else: their check-ins, photos and reports continue. And as long as someone has not answered, nothing is blocked either — the question comes back at their next opening.
09Follow, reassign, close
During the operation, “What is happening” updates on its own: stops done out of stops to do, and the deadline if you promised a delay — routes past it move to the top. Under the operator’s name, “Clients notified at 4:12 a.m.” says they tapped “I’m leaving” when leaving. The “Device” column shows what their phone is giving: online, quiet (5 minutes without news), or “no news” in red (15 minutes) — with its battery and what is wrong (location “while in use”, battery saver). Poudra never claims to know WHY: a tunnel, a closed app and a dead phone look the same. Their check-ins are not lost: they wait in the phone and go out when the signal returns. When a truck turns red, the owner and the dispatcher get a bell and a notification — once, and another when it comes back. On the map, each truck carries the age of its last point: a twelve-minute pin is not its current position. A truck broke down? “Give this route to…” hands it to another operator, who is called out; visits already made keep the name of whoever made them. Below the table, a map shows each stop: grey to do, amber under way, green done. When everything is cleared, “Close the operation”.
10Past operations
Below the forms on the Dispatch page, “Past operations” lists the last twenty closed or dismissed operations: the name, the confirmation date, the closing date, the number of routes sent. “See the visits” opens the Visits page bounded to the operation’s days, where every visit keeps its proof file. A closed operation therefore no longer vanishes from the screen: it moves down into the list.
11The rest of the year: today’s programme routes
Outside a storm, the screen says “3 routes on a programme under way today” and shows, under “Today’s programme routes”, the outings confirmed from the calendar — mowing, maintenance — with the same table: operator, “On the way since”, phone, stops done, customers notified, “Message” to write to the operator, and the same map with the stops and each truck’s trace. A route planned the day before and not finished stays displayed, in amber, until it ends or you end it from the dashboard. There is no deadline and no “Give this route to…” in summer: the route ends on its own at its last stop. In the fall, when a snow operation and a leaf-pickup route run on the same day, the two sections appear one under the other.
12Knowing who was warned
In the routes table, the “Notices” column counts the customers notified on the route’s stops (“3 / 12 notified”). “Details” unfolds the list of stops in run order, each with: “notified at 4:20 AM” in green, “not notified yet” in grey, “refused: …” in amber with the reason (no consent, unsubscribed, quiet hours, text quota, no main contact), or “failed” in red for a technical failure. That is what to open when a customer calls to say they got nothing — the “Customer messages” screen also keeps every message, approach notices, visit done notices and reports sent to the customer included. On the same line, “2 reports” in amber says the operators flagged something on that route; once unfolded, each stop concerned carries one pill per report — vehicle not moved, obstacle, access blocked, damage, hazard, other — amber when the customer received it, grey and marked “internal” otherwise. A customer who disputes a visit writes from their tracking page: the request lands in Requests, with the proof alongside.
13The proof file
A visit’s proof file now carries the weather observed by the closest Environment Canada station at the time of the visit (the observation time and the gap are written; beyond 90 minutes, the file says “unavailable” rather than a far-off value), the truck’s path around the visit (in ice blue edged with white, so it is not mistaken for the roads; a single map: satellite imagery if Mapbox is configured, with the property’s outline, its 60 m arrival zone, A and B at both ends of the route, a T pin for the property and a P pin for the check-in — otherwise a drawing made by Poudra, showing the same elements; the map is centred on the property, 300 m around — anything beyond is out of frame, and the legend says so; if no point of the route comes within those 300 m, the map widens to show the whole route and the property, and the legend says that too; on the drawing, the property is a blue dot and the phone’s position at check-in a black diamond; below it, an “In the yard” close-up, 80 m around the property, shows the vehicle’s route from entering the zone to leaving it — a phone’s GPS is accurate to a few metres, so the close-up shows where the vehicle went, not every pass to the metre; the list of points with their accuracy; “no trace” if the shift was not open) and the reports with their photos. The visit page, in the office, shows the same weather and the same reports, each with its photos and “sent to the customer” or “internal”. The document opens with a one-line summary — “Visit confirmed · November 5, 2026, 11:36 PM · 1 min on site · 2 photos · Salt 25 kg · Weather observed 16 min from the visit” — that names only what exists. Under the map, the legend tells the truth about the 60 m zone: the entry and exit times when several points were recorded there, “a single point recorded in the zone” when there is only one, nothing if the phone never entered it; when the check-in precedes the first point in the zone by a few seconds, a sentence explains why. The weather station’s name prints as Environment Canada gives it — sometimes cut to 32 characters by their own system — followed by its identifier. The list of GPS points, with their accuracy, is in an appendix at the end of the document; under the map remains a summary: number of points, median, best and worst accuracy. The file also states what the phone declared about itself: “Positions not mocked (phone indicator)” when an Android phone said so; a red warning at the top, with the times, if the phone reported a mock location — the point is kept, never erased; “indicator not available” on an iPhone or with an earlier app version, because the file asserts nothing it does not know. It prints the gap between the phone’s clock and the server’s, measured at the moment of each send (a send made hours later, offline, is not a drifted clock); beyond two minutes, a warning. And the weather carries everything the station gave: precipitation over 3, 6 and 24 hours, wind direction and gusts, visibility, dew point, pressure — a value the station did not give has no line. The visit page, in the office, shows the same warnings and the same lines. Finally, every produced record carries a QR code and a verification address at the bottom: anyone — a customer, an insurer, a lawyer — opens it and reads “Authentic record, produced by Poudra on …”, your company name, the date of the visit and the city, the file’s fingerprint and the photos’, and can upload the PDF they hold to confirm it is identical, byte for byte, to the one Poudra produced. The page shows neither the customer, nor the address, nor positions, nor photos; an unknown link always gets the same answer; a purged visit answers “this record is no longer kept”. Every photo in the PDF carries a strip at the bottom — “Before · Nov 5, 2026, 11:37 PM · 70 rue Limerick, Moncton” (the report type for a report photo) — added only when the document is rendered: the file received from the phone is never modified, and the fingerprint printed under the photo remains that of the received file.
14The automatic trigger, optional
At the bottom of the screen, you can follow an Environment Canada station: Poudra reads the forecast every hour and proposes an operation as soon as the forecast snow reaches your threshold, and emails you. Nothing goes out until you confirm: no call-out, no customer notice.
15Talking to the operator on the road
A customer cancels at 4 a.m.? On the dispatch screen, every route under way carries a “Message” button, and every stop its own — “Message about this stop”. You write 250 characters, the operator gets them on their phone, and they answer in one tap: “Got it”, “Done” or “I can’t”. The instruction stays on their phone: in a tunnel they can reread it, and their answer waits in the queue until the network is back — even if the app is closed in between. They never type: you do not put a keyboard in the hands of someone driving. If they have anything else to say, they call you. On the phone, an amber banner announces your messages — on the home screen AND on their route, the two screens where they spend their shift — and it appears on its own, without them having to pull the screen down: within about thirty seconds of you sending it, and right away if they tap the notification. When they answer, their action shows at once, even with no signal: the answer goes into their outbox and leaves as soon as the signal is back. You see where each one stands: sent, received on the phone, read, answered — in your company’s time. Messages that come up again save as templates, in one click. You can only write to someone ON SHIFT: to call in an operator who has not left, confirm the operation and they will be summoned. It goes to the phone, never by text or email, and it does not count against your text-message quota.
16Both ends of a shift
When the operator taps “Start the shift”, the app offers four tick boxes — beacon light, plow blade, spreader, de-icer level — and tells them whether anything is still waiting to send. It is the only moment of the shift when they are still at the yard, with a signal. Nothing is required: an unticked box does not stop them leaving, it is simply absent from the record. What IS ticked is dated and kept: the day an incident happens, “beacon light checked at 3:42 a.m.” is worth what a proof photo is worth. At “End the shift”, a summary: stops done, de-icer spread, findings recorded, kilometres travelled — and above all the state of the queue. “3 items waiting to send, stay connected for a minute”: that is the last moment they can still help, before going home and switching off a phone with three proof photos inside. Nothing blocks there either: items waiting to send keep nobody at work. At the end, the summary lists the stops done, the photos taken, the de-icer, the reports, and NAMES what has not left yet (“Photo — Chez alexandra”); what the server refused is in red, to show the office. On the home screen, a single indicator says “Everything is sent” or “n items waiting” with “Send now”: the operator no longer needs to open the Sync tab.
17Drawing a property without hunting for it
A quote’s price comes from the surface, and the surface comes from the outline. If you prepare a quote for a property that has none, Poudra says so — and offers to take you there: “Draw it on the map” opens the map with the tool already armed and the view set on the property’s address. All you do is click the corners. If it is already located, the map frames its pin; otherwise it flies to its address.
18Sectors
A sector is an area of your territory, drawn on the map. A property only joins it if you file it there: “Properties inside this outline” suggests those the outline contains, and you decide. A sector you no longer use is deactivated from the list: it leaves the map and the choices, its properties keep their place, and “Reactivate” brings it back. Nothing is deleted.
19Finding a visit, and notifying a customer afterwards
The Visits page filters: by customer, by operator, and between two dates — yours, in your company’s time. That page is what you open when someone disputes, and you should not have to page through it. On each finished visit, “Notify the customer” resends the “done” notice to their main contact, with the link to their visits. It helps when the automatic notice did not go out: a visit logged with no operation under way — it carries the “No operation” label, in the list and on its page —, a text-message quota used up, a consent ticked after the fact. Nothing goes out without the contact’s consent, and never by text — Poudra tells you why if it does not. If a notice was already received for that visit, the row says so (“Notified on …”) and the confirmation reminds you before sending again.
20Truck traces
When an operator taps “Start the shift” on their phone, the app records their position for as long as the shift lasts, even with the phone in a pocket. On the Dispatch map, each truck on shift draws its path in a colour that stays its own, and a circle marks its last point: that is where it is. The phone sends its positions in small batches, about every 10 seconds while it is moving, and the map draws them as soon as they arrive; when it is stopped, nothing is sent. Between two batches, the truck glides along the streets it followed, never past its last known position; after an area without signal, it jumps straight to its new position rather than inventing a path. Hover a truck: its name and the age of its last received point appear. Below the map, the legend gives the operator’s name and the time of that last point, in your company’s time zone. Off shift, nothing is recorded: an operator who tapped “End the shift” is not tracked at home. A trace is never corrected or erased: it is evidence, and stays exactly as the phone sent it.
21A customer wants no more notices
Every email ends with an unsubscribe link, every text with “STOP”. A customer who uses it gets no more notices or reminders; their contracts and invoices do not change. If a customer tells you they no longer get anything, open “Customer messages”: every message is listed, with “not sent — the customer unsubscribed” where that applies. It is not a failure.