The driver app

The driver app is a native phone app, built with React Native. It is not a wrapper around the dashboard: it is a different product for a different job. The dashboard is where work is planned; the app is where work is done, on a phone, in a vehicle, often without a reliable signal.

Administrators can sign in to the app as well, but they get a much smaller build — home, messages and profile. Everything below describes what a driver sees.

Home is a status board rather than a menu. It opens with a greeting and a set of cards: the current shift with its clock-in controls, the assigned vehicle and whether it needs attention, a compliance standing card, and the active trip if there is one.

Below those is recent activity, built only from stops that have genuinely been completed and timestamped — picked up, delivered, transferred, skipped or failed. If nothing has happened yet, the section is empty rather than filled with placeholder rows.

Three proof types are captured in the app: a photo from the camera or the photo library, a signature drawn on the screen, and a PIN read out by the person receiving the goods. Which of them a task requires is configured centrally, not chosen by the driver.

Deliveries happen in basements, loading bays and rural gaps. Rather than block the driver, the app records the action locally and queues it. Queued actions are retried when connectivity returns, with a growing delay between attempts and a limit of three tries before an action is flagged rather than retried forever.

A sync indicator shows when there is anything outstanding, and a sync status sheet lists what is queued and anything that came back as a conflict — for example, a stop somebody else already completed. The queue survives the app being closed or killed, so a phone that dies mid-round still has the work when it comes back up.

The rest of the app is organised around what a driver needs during a shift.

• Tasks — a queue of their own tasks. This tab appears only when standalone tasks are enabled for the organisation.
• Available — unclaimed work a driver can take for themselves. Appears only when delivery pools and self-claim are both enabled.
• Messages — conversations with the office, with unread counts.
• My Vehicle — the vehicle they are assigned to and its current condition.
• Inspections — start an inspection, work through its items, and raise defects. A quick report is available from the home screen for anything urgent.
• Support — raise and follow up support tickets without leaving the app.
• Profile — edit their own details and change their password.

There are two distinct location signals, and it is worth keeping them apart. During a trip the app reports position so the trip can be followed on the live map. Separately, live presence reports a clocked-in driver’s position between trips.

Presence is gated by a feature the organisation has to turn on, and it stops at both ends: the app stops reporting when the driver is no longer on an active shift, and the server refuses fixes that arrive anyway. Location permission is asked for on the device as well, so a driver can decline it.