Deploying a crew for the day
A deployment is one day’s plan for one boat — which equipment went, who is aboard, which lake and zones they are working and which services they are set up for — and it defines the pool of pending work that crew can pick up.
There is no route builder in LakeOps and no drag-and-drop schedule board, because neither survives a week of real weather. Dispatch here is one decision: which boat, with what, on which water.
The five choices
| Choice | What it decides |
|---|---|
| Equipment | What the crew can physically accomplish. Take the crane as well and they can do the items that need it. |
| Lake | Which water. One deployment works one lake — barges launch at an access and lake-to-lake moves are a day, not a detour. |
| Zones | Which stretches of shoreline. Leave blank to take the whole lake. |
| Services | Install, removal, repair. Leave blank to take any pending work. |
| Crew | Who is aboard, and therefore how many hands. Some items need more than one and the crew app will say so. |
What the crew gets: a pool, not a list
Nothing is assigned. The deployment defines a pool — open work on that lake, in those zones, for those services — and the crew takes what is there when they arrive. A list made days ago would be wrong by the time the boat got to it.
Because of that, the crew’s chart orders the day by where the boat actually is, computed on the device from its own position. Two boats on the same lake do not collide: each item is finished once, and per-item status keeps the record straight if they overlap at a property.
Adding something specific
Sometimes a job is not in the pool and you want that crew to do it anyway — a repair on the way past, a customer who rang this morning. Add it to the deployment by hand. Extras stay with the crew even if you later repoint them, because somebody asked for that one specifically.
Work the crew cannot take today
If an item needs the crane barge and the crane barge is not on this deployment, the app says so plainly — “needs the crane barge” — rather than hiding the stop or letting the crew motor over and find out. Same for headcount. See equipment types and what gates a piece of work.
A deployment with nobody recorded aboard is treated as unknown rather than zero, so a missed checkbox never blocks a whole day’s work.
Planned, out, closed
A deployment starts planned, becomes out while the crew is working, and is closed when the boat is back. Closing tidies up any stop the crew was still recorded as being at. It never changes the jobs — unfinished work stays pending for the next boat.
Who sets it up
Usually the office, first thing. It can equally be the operator standing at the landing with the phone, if their role allows it — the shape of the decision is the same either way, and the person at the landing knows which gear is actually on the trailer.
Why dispatch works this way rather than as a schedule: dispatch.
Still stuck? Ask us — or go back to the help center.