Live operations

9The Live Ops feed

The status messages pilots send during a task, what each kind means, how acknowledging works across the whole staff, how to put a retrieve driver on a pilot, and what to do when an SOS arrives.

Needs internet

What the feed is#

Live Ops is the running list of everything pilots have reported today, newest first. A pilot taps a button in their app, and a few seconds later a card appears here for every staff member of that competition.

The feed refreshes about every ten seconds while you are on the Live Tracking or Live Ops tab, and it only ever asks for what is new, so it is cheap on data. Leaving both tabs stops the refresh, and coming back reloads the day from the beginning.

Caution

The feed needs internet, and it is per competition. Switching competition clears it and starts again on the new one.

The six kinds of message#

Chip	Color	What the pilot is saying
SOS	Red	Emergency. I need help now.
Need Help	Orange	Something is wrong, but it is not an emergency.
Landed Safe	Green	I am down and I am fine.
Need Retrieve	Blue	I am down and I need a car.
No Retrieve	Slate	I am down and I will get myself home.
Retrieve Canceled	Slate	Forget the car I asked for, something else came up.

The same colors are used for the state pill on the map and in the pilot list, so a pilot who reported an SOS is red everywhere in the app until the matter is closed.

What a card contains#

Each card carries, in order:

the pilot's photo, their name, the time the message was sent in your local time, and the kind chip,
their position at that moment as latitude, longitude and altitude, when their app sent one,
the free text note they typed, when they typed one,
on a retrieve request, who is driving to them and whether the pickup has been confirmed,
on an SOS, a red button that calls their emergency contact,
and the acknowledgement state or button.

Fig. 9.1The Live Ops feed, newest first. The retrieve request can be acknowledged and carries a button for it; the landed safe message below is information and has none.

Tip

The coordinates on the card are the pilot's own report and are exactly what you read out on the radio or type into a navigation app. They do not move afterwards, unlike the map marker.

Acknowledging#

Three kinds can be acknowledged: SOS, Need Help and Need Retrieve. They are the ones that need a human to do something. Landed Safe, No Retrieve and Retrieve Canceled are information, and have no button.

Tapping Acknowledge tells the server, and through it the rest of the staff and the website, that this message has been taken over by a person. The card then shows Acknowledged by ... with your name and the time.

The first acknowledgement wins

If a colleague acknowledged it a second before you, their name is the one that sticks. Nobody gets acknowledged twice.

It works in both directions

A message acknowledged on the website or by another supporter appears as acknowledged in your app on the next refresh, without you doing anything.

It is not a resolution

Acknowledging means "I have seen this and I am on it", not "this is finished". The competition's actual resolution happens on the website.

Caution

Do not acknowledge a message to clear it off your screen. In a busy ops room the acknowledgement is how the team divides the work, and an acknowledged SOS that nobody is actually working is worse than an unacknowledged one.

The red alert banner#

An SOS or a Need Help that arrives unacknowledged is not left to be noticed. The phone vibrates and plays an alert sound, a dot appears on the Live Ops tab, and a red Pilot emergency alert banner drops over whatever tab you are on, saying how many alerts are waiting.

Tapping the banner

Jumps straight to the Live Ops feed, where the messages are.

Acknowledge on the banner

Acknowledges every waiting alert at once, and tells the rest of the staff. Use it when you have actually read them.

A message that was already acknowledged by somebody else before it reached you never raises a banner, so a team of five does not get five alarms for one already handled call.

Important

On an SOS, use Call ... on the card to reach the pilot's emergency contact, and follow your event's emergency procedure. The app raises the alarm and records who took it. It does not call anybody for you, and it is not a rescue service.

Retrieve requests, and giving them a driver#

A Need Retrieve card is also the place where that pickup gets solved. Every one of them carries a driver row, and the row tells you which of three states the retrieve is in.

No driver assigned

Nobody is going yet. The pilot is waiting. Next to it sits the Assign driver button.

Driver: ...

A car is on the way. Change next to it hands the pilot to somebody else.

Picked up by ...

The driver has confirmed the pilot is in the car, with the time. Nothing more to do, and the row loses its button.

The row keeps updating on its own while the feed is open, so the ops room can see at a glance which requests still have nobody on them, without asking anybody over the radio.

Tip

No driver assigned on an old message is the thing to hunt for at the end of a task. Acknowledging a retrieve says a human read it; only a driver actually gets the pilot home.

Assigning a driver#

Tap Assign driver, or Change if there is already one.
The Assign a retrieve driver sheet lists the competition's retrieve drivers. The one currently assigned carries a green check and cannot be picked again.
Tap a name. The card updates in place, and the pickup appears on that driver's phone within seconds.

The list of drivers is refreshed every time you open the sheet, so somebody the organizer adds to the staff halfway through a task can be assigned without restarting anything. If it comes up empty you get No drivers on staff yet. Add staff with the Driver role to assign retrieves., which is a job for the organizer on the website.

You can do all of this from the map as well: a pilot's Details sheet lists their own status messages on the same cards, with the same driver row.

Caution

Reassigning hands the pilot over rather than adding a second car. The retrieve leaves the first driver's list, joins the second one's, and any pickup already confirmed on it is cleared. Tell the driver you are taking a job off them, because their list will simply change under their hands.

Note

Who has which pilot, from the driver's side, is Retrieve driver. Whether a driver can be assigned at all depends on the retrieve driver capability, see Roles and access.

Working the feed#

Keep the tab open during the task. The refresh only runs while a live tab is on screen.
Deal with red and orange first. They are sorted to the top of the pilot list as well.
Acknowledge what you take on, so the rest of the team can see what is left.
Give every retrieve request a driver, and check back for the ones still reading No driver assigned.
Cross check a worrying message against the map: open the pilot's Details sheet, and their messages are listed there together with their track.
At the end of the day, everything airborne should have turned into a landed, retrieve or no retrieve message. A pilot with no message and no recent fix is the one to chase.