Dock Appointment Scheduling: A Door Plan That Survives Outages and Late Carriers

Twenty-six trucks, six doors and windows that will not all fit

An inbound dock day starts with a list of loads, each with a carrier window and an unload time, and a set of doors that are not interchangeable. Dry freight goes to the standard doors, refrigerated loads to the reefer doors, and hazmat to the one door set up for it. Each group is scheduled in load id order: a load takes the door that frees up first, starts when both the door and its window allow, and either makes its window or misses it.

The load list is a SharePoint list, the dock calendar is in Google Calendar, the scheduling policy and the yard coordinator's draft are in Google Drive, and maintenance and the yard talk in Slack. When a door fails at 6 AM, the usual fix is to slide the loads that were on it somewhere else, which leaves everything behind them scheduled around a gap that no longer exists.

Who works in the room

The plan has one owner in this room: Ryan, the default agent, so a door status relayed from maintenance reaches Ryan without a mention. Ada checks Ryan's work and the yard coordinator's draft, and is mentioned when a check is needed. At the end of the day the dock lead opens a close-out thread for Ada whose first message is the brief, and Ada reads the final records rather than taking Ryan's last message as the answer.

The dock day, from first plan to close

The policy's walk is the same every time, and the room guidelines tell both agents to use it. Each step stops for the dock lead.

Why the whole group is walked again

Start times chain. A load's start depends on when its door frees up, which depends on every load before it on that door. So when D-02 goes out, Ryan walks all 14 standard loads again from the first load id over the two remaining doors and proposes every field that changes. A new calendar event goes out only for a load whose door or start time moved, and Ada confirms that the other groups were left alone.

Some changes are smaller than they look. A carrier's email moving every refrigerated and hazmat window 90 minutes later changes those two groups and leaves the standard group as it was. A priority load was already on the list as pending, so it is activated, not created a second time, and walked first. When D-02 comes back after lunch, the standard group is walked again over all three doors, priority load first.

What the checks catch

• A refrigerated or hazmat load placed on a door outside its own group
• A re-walk that starts from the load that moved instead of the first load in the group
• A priority load added as a new item when it already exists as a pending one
• Out-of-scope loads at the end of the list left exactly as they were
• Close-out figures read from the final SharePoint records, not added up from earlier walks

What stays with people

• Approving each plan and re-walk before SharePoint or the calendar changes
• Calling carriers whose loads now miss their window
• Activating a priority load, which only the dock lead does
• Signing the day's utilization summary

Integrations in this workflow

Kylon is not a yard or dock management system and is not meant to replace one. It works on top of the SharePoint list and the calendar the dock already runs, and the room holds the coordination between them. The dock lead approved a lasting grant on both connections for this room, so Ryan can write once a change is approved.

• Google Calendar
• Google Drive
• SharePoint
• Slack

• SharePoint holds the load list: windows, unload minutes, door, start time, missed window and slack
• Google Calendar carries one event per load on its door's calendar, and a summary per door at close
• Google Drive keeps the scheduling policy, the yard coordinator's draft and carrier notices
• Slack is where maintenance and the yard post door status and trailer arrivals

Where to start

Shadow one day's inbound schedule in the room next to the current process. Connect the SharePoint load list and the dock calendar, set an automation to open the day's plan at 5 AM, and put one rule in the room guidelines: any change re-walks the affected group from its first load, and the dock lead approves the result before a door or time changes.

“The plan is rebuilt in the same order every time, so the dock lead can see exactly what moved and why.”

Set it up with your agent

Open a new Room, add your agent and paste this prompt. It connects the tools, builds the App with you and asks for your rules one step at a time, and nothing goes out until a person approves it.