Utility Crew Dispatch: Storm Tickets Matched to Crews and Re-Checked as Feeders Clear

Hundreds of calls, a few dozen crews and a grid that changes by the hour

In a storm, outage tickets arrive faster than crews can clear them. Each ticket needs a crew with the right skills on a shift that still has hours left, and the order matters: hospitals and other critical facilities first, then the feeders that restore the most customers, then laterals and single services. Many tickets cannot be worked at all until something upstream happens, such as a feeder being cleared or a tree crew going in first.

Tickets live in ClickUp. The crew roster, with crew type and hours, is an Airtable base, shifts are on Google Calendar, and the restoration policy is in Google Drive. Crews report from the field in Slack, mutual aid contractors write by Gmail, and the dispatchers keep a printed board on the wall. By the second night the board and ClickUp disagree on a dozen tickets, and nobody is sure which one is right.

Who works in the room

Unaddressed messages, such as a new ticket number, go to Ryan, who leads the dispatch plan as the room's default agent. Fin reads Slack and the mutual aid inbox, because those connections are granted to Fin alone in this room, and posts each field change in the thread with a mention for Ryan. Myco works when the board is photographed or a close-out is due: the restoration lead mentions Myco with the scope, and Myco stays inside it.

A storm shift, ticket by ticket

The priority order is written in the restoration policy and repeated in the room guidelines. Every dispatch waits for the restoration lead.

When the field reports back

Field reports change the plan constantly. A crew finds a tree on the line and cannot work until a tree crew clears it. A second ticket for the same address turns out to be a duplicate. Fin posts each one in the thread, and Ryan re-runs the tickets it touches. When a duplicate is canceled, every ticket that was waiting behind it is checked again, because its blocking reason may have gone with it.

Feeder clearance is the largest single change. Once the control room confirms a feeder is safe to work, every ticket on it goes back through the policy, not only the ones somebody asked about. Crew hours matter too: a crew coming off a long shift is taken out of the plan, its open tickets are reassigned or held, and the next shift's calendar shows the change once the lead approves. Damage assessment results feed in the same way, one ticket at a time.

What the checks catch

• A board review that strays outside the tickets the board lists
• Tickets still marked blocked after the duplicate they were waiting on is canceled
• Every ticket on a cleared feeder re-run, including the ones that were not blocked
• A critical facility ticket that is not at the front of the queue
• Close-out counts per feeder taken from ClickUp as it stands, not from the dispatch log

What stays with people

• Approving each dispatch and crew move before ClickUp or the calendar changes
• Declaring a feeder cleared, which only the control room does
• Sending updates to the county emergency office and mutual aid crews, which Fin drafts in Gmail
• Signing the per-feeder close-out

Integrations in this workflow

Kylon is not an outage management system and does not replace the one the control room runs. It sits across the storm desk's working tools and keeps the coordination between them in one room per storm. Ryan writes to ClickUp and Google Calendar under a lasting grant the restoration lead approved for this room, one approved change at a time.

• Airtable
• ClickUp
• Gmail
• Google Calendar
• Google Drive
• Slack

• ClickUp holds the outage tickets, with status, priority and blocking reason
• Airtable holds the crew roster: crew type, skills, shift and hours worked
• Google Calendar carries crew shifts and each crew's dispatch window
• Gmail is where mutual aid contractors and the county emergency office write, and where Fin's updates wait as drafts
• Google Drive keeps the restoration policy and the photos of the printed board
• Slack is the field channel where crews report conditions from site

Where to start

Try it in a storm drill before a live event. Connect the ClickUp list that holds outage tickets and the Airtable crew roster, and write one rule into the room guidelines: agents propose dispatches and re-checks, and the restoration lead approves each one before a crew is sent.

“When a feeder clears, every ticket on it gets another look, not just the ones someone remembered.”

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.