For agencies📋 Scheduling & Dispatch

Require a tag on a job, and filter the board by tags

Turn a tag from a ranking nudge into a real requirement, and narrow the dispatch board to the people and jobs that carry a tag.

This is the answer to the question we get asked most: why is best fit still recommending someone who does not have the tag the job needs? Because a tag on its own only moves someone up the list. The switch that stops an assignment is on the job itself.

Watch the walkthrough

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Turn a tag from a ranking nudge into a real requirement, and narrow the dispatch board to the people and jobs that carry a tag. · Open in a new tab

Step by step

  1. 1Open the job. Under "Assignment Tags", add the tags this piece of work needs.
  2. 2Tick "Require these tags". That is the switch. With it on, anyone missing a tag is gated out of best fit, and dropping them onto the job asks you to override first.
  3. 3Leave it off and the tags are a soft preference: they lift matching interpreters in the ranking and nothing more.
  4. 4To have it start ticked on every new job, open Settings, Operations & Alerts, Dispatch Tools and turn on "Require tags by default" under Eligibility Hard Gates. Coordinators can still change it per job.
  5. 5Tags you set on a customer are added to the job automatically when you pick that customer, and they stay: they show without a remove button, because the invoice and the eligibility gate both apply them whatever the job says. To stop requiring one, take it off the customer record.
  6. 6On the dispatch board, use the "Tags" button above the board to filter. The Interpreters section narrows the people rows; the Assignments section narrows the jobs.
  7. 7Each section has an "Any" and an "All" toggle. Any shows anyone carrying at least one of the ticked tags; All shows only those carrying every one of them.
  8. 8The button shows a count while a filter is on, and "Clear all" inside the popover resets both sections.

Tips

  • Best fit is a score, not a filter. Availability, staff status, preferred and do-not-send flags, and tag matches all feed one ranking, so an available staff interpreter can outrank a contractor who actually holds the tag. If the qualification is genuinely mandatory, requiring it is the only thing that enforces it.
  • Requiring tags is a gate you can override. Nobody is hidden from the board, and a coordinator who knows better can still drop the person on and confirm.
  • An expired credential does not satisfy a requirement. The interpreter still shows the tag on their profile, but it stops counting the day after it expires.
  • One of your own tags only counts once you have confirmed it. If an interpreter has requested it and you have not confirmed yet, the job form says so rather than just reporting the tag as missing.
  • When someone is gated out, the reason names the tag they lack, for example "missing required tag: State Licensed". A tag you have since turned off in Settings is marked "(switched off in Settings)". It still gates jobs that were booked with it, so take it off those jobs, or turn it back on.
  • Changing a customer's tags does not change jobs already booked for them. Those keep the tags they were booked with, so check the job's own Assignment Tags when someone who looks qualified is gated out.
  • A communication need can never become a requirement. Those describe the person being served, not a skill an interpreter holds, so they are kept out of the requirement picker entirely.
  • Tags you have turned off in Settings drop out of the board's tag filter. A job that already carries one still shows it, so turn the tag back on if you want to filter by it again.
  • Requiring a tag changes who is eligible. It does not change what anything costs. Pricing comes from rate differentials and flat charges, which fire on the tags a job carries whether or not you required them.
  • If a required tag was deleted after the job was booked, it stops gating. Nobody can hold a tag that no longer exists, so requiring it would lock everyone out of the job for no reason.
  • How much a tag match is worth in the ranking, and which tag categories matter most, is set in Settings, Operations & Alerts, Dispatch Tools under Best Fit Priority. Drag "Tag match" up to weight it more heavily, and reorder the tag categories underneath it.

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