What Your Drivers See On the Road

The driver app is how dispatch reaches a driver, how a driver reaches you, and how vehicle photos get taken before the van leaves the lot. Here's that side of it, so you can answer questions without borrowing someone's phone. (The at-home side — scorecards, schedule, marketplace — has its own article, as does troubleshooting.)

Drivers sign in with a phone number, not an email and password. The first screen reads "Sign in with your Phone Number" and asks them to "Enter your personal phone number to receive a One-Time Code." Next comes a "One-Time Code" screen with six boxes, the line "Enter the security code we sent to ***1234," a Resend code link, and a one-minute countdown ending in "Code expired, request a new one." Companies on a fixed code see "Company Code" instead — "your company's unchanging security code," with no expiry and no resend.

Two snags recur. A number that doesn't match the driver's profile returns "This phone number is not linked to any company. Please contact your administrator" — fix the profile, not the phone. And a number tied to more than one account brings up a "Choose your account" screen offering "Continue as Driver" or "Continue as Admin." First launch also demands microphone access on an "App Permissions" screen; a driver who declines can't get past it.

Shared work phones skip codes entirely: Settings holds a "Device phone number" that "lets shared work phones log in automatically," and a rostered driver still not signed in gets a text with a one-tap sign-in link.

The home screen is titled "Conversations." A card at the top reads "Talk to Viki" — "Tap to start a voice call." Below it runs everything voice-related, newest first: voice messages sent and received, calls with dispatch, calls with Viki. Unread messages carry a dot; call rows show "Call completed,""No answer," or "Line busy." A "New conversation" button sits at the bottom, and a dot beside the avatar shows whether the driver is reachable — green for Available, gray for Inactive.

Most drivers see no tab bar at all; Conversations is the whole app. With chat or vehicle inspections turned on, tabs appear: Zap for this screen, Chat, and Inspections.

ZAP is the app's push-to-talk voice layer — the walkie-talkie-style messages and calls that make up the Conversations screen. "New conversation" opens the contact list. Viki is pinned at the top (call only — there's no leaving her a voice message), and below it everyone the driver is allowed to reach, each row carrying a microphone and a phone button. Whether drivers can reach each other, or only managers, is a company-level setting.

The microphone opens a "Voice message" screen — record button, live waveform and timer, redo, send — followed by a "Message sent" confirmation. For several people at once they tap Select, check names, and press "Send to multiple people." The phone button starts a call inside the app: "Connecting…," then "Connected" with a timer, plus speaker, hang up, and mute. Outgoing calls also offer "Ask to call back."

The part managers most often get wrong: drivers never have to answer. On the road the app is hands-free — an incoming call answers itself on speaker with the microphone already live, and a voice message plays aloud the moment it lands. That's fixed for drivers; the quieter modes exist for managers.

With inspections on, drivers get an Inspections tab badged with what's still outstanding today. Under "Today's Inspections," each card names the vehicle and the type — "Pre-Trip,""Post-Trip," or "Standard" — with a chip reading Pending, In Progress, or Completed. They can also start one unprompted: "Scan VIN to start / No assignment needed" opens the camera with "Point your camera at the VIN matrix printed on the vehicle." A "Vehicle Matched" banner confirms the van, and if one is already assigned to it, the app asks "Are you completing an assigned inspection?" so the photos land on the right record.

The photos are guided one angle at a time, each named on screen — eight by default, Front around to Front Left, though the set is configurable. Every shot gets a Retake / Next review, and the last one offers "Add Damage Report" and "Finish." A damage report is a photo plus a free-text "Describe the damage..." note.

The final screen shows "Photos (8/8)," any damage reports, and "Odometer Reading" — the only required typed field, shown next to the last reading on file. A backwards or unusually large jump raises "This mileage is not expected," offering "Submit anyway" or "Go back and edit"; it warns rather than blocks. "Submit Inspection" stays greyed out until every photo and the odometer are in, then confirms "Inspection uploaded." Work saves on the phone as it's taken, so a dead battery doesn't send the driver back around the van.

ZAP voice messages arrive as "New voice message from [name]" — and then play themselves. ZAP calls from dispatch or Viki connect on their own too: the call answers itself on speaker with the microphone live, so a driver never has to tap to pick up. Missed calls show as "Missed call" with the caller underneath. Inspection reminders read "Inspection Reminder for [vehicle]" and carry a "View Inspection" button that opens the right form. Chat messages, where chat is on, arrive titled with the sender's name and a preview, and stay silent.

Android phones also carry two permanent notifications while the app runs: "Monitoring for calls and messages," and, with location sharing on, "Sharing your location with dispatch." Both are meant to stay — they keep the app awake in the background, and drivers swiping them away is a common cause of "I never got the message."