The yard queue and quick release

Summary

Every yard move that needs a person —dock to spot, spot to spot or spot to dock— goes into a single warehouse queue. From the yard board the supervisor decides who does it and in what order: assign it, move it to the top, mark it urgent or cancel it. And when a trailer already left without anyone recording it, Quick Release frees the spot in one click.

This article is about that queue. The move types and the window to create them are in From the yard to the dock and back.

Before you start

Yard module in the warehouse (and Docks to send trailers from the dock board).
Permissions: Read Yard and Write Yard to assign, reorder, mark urgent, cancel, start and finish from the yard board (Supervisor, Admin and Super Admin by default). Sending to the yard from the dock board is only for the Supervisor, Admin and Super Admin roles.
Yard staff: anyone with Read Own Jobs in the warehouse can receive moves; they do them from My Work.

Where yard work comes from

Source	What appears
The supervisor presses Send to Yard on the dock board and picks a spot.	A Dock to Spot move in the queue, with or without a person. The spot is held.
The supervisor presses Send to Yard without a spot.	The job goes to Pending Yard and shows as a card in Jobs to Assign, flagged as needing a spot.
A driver checks in to drop a trailer in the yard.	A delivery card in Jobs to Assign.
A driver checks in to pick up a trailer from the yard.	A pickup card with the Match Trailer button.
Someone creates a move without picking a person.	The move in the queue as Waiting and a card in Jobs to Assign flagged as needing a yard worker.

Working the Jobs to Assign list

Each card is resolved in one of these ways:

Needs a spot: drag it onto a free spot on the map. Create Yard Job opens with the proposed move. Check the type: a delivery coming from the dock (Pending Yard) is proposed as Entrance to Spot and should be Dock to Spot.
Needs a yard worker: pick the person in the card’s list and press Assign. You see Yard worker assigned successfully. and the move goes from Waiting to Assigned.
Yard pickup: use Match Trailer and pick the trailer the driver takes (see A driver picks up a trailer from the yard).

Cards are ordered urgent first, then by arrival time. The wait time turns red after 30 minutes.

How the queue is ordered

In the Active Jobs tab each move has its queue position (Queue #) and the queue is sorted like this:

Moves already In Progress.
By priority: Critical, then Urgent, then Normal.
By queue position (given at creation or when moved to the top).
By arrival time.

The tab separates Gate activity (entries / exits) from Yard movements. Each card shows origin and destination, who it is assigned to (or Unassigned), the status (Waiting, Assigned or In Progress), the wait and the start time.

Controlling the queue

Move to top

A card’s Move to top button asks Move this job to the front of the queue? and gives it position 1; those that were ahead shift down one place. It does not change its priority: an Urgent move still goes before a Normal one even if the Normal one is in position 1.

Mark urgent

Mark urgent raises the move to Urgent; on an urgent or critical move the same button reads Remove urgent and sets it back to Normal. Critical can only be chosen when the move is created.

Assigning who moves it

From the card in Jobs to Assign (list and Assign button). Only people who can receive jobs in the warehouse are offered; anyone with a live move who no longer qualifies is shown greyed out. A completed move cannot be reassigned.

Cancelling a move

Cancel job asks Cancel this yard job? The reserved spot will be released. It cancels only that move:

The destination spot is freed, as long as no other active job backs it.
The trailer stays where it was: the origin spot stays occupied.
The dock job does not change; if it was in Pending Yard, it shows up again in Jobs to Assign.

To cancel the whole dock job with all its moves, use Cancel job (and yard jobs) in the details window.

What the yard person sees

In My Work, an assigned yard move always comes before any dock or special job. The Current Yard Job screen shows the move type, origin, destination, the associated dock job (driver, trailer, carrier, type) and two buttons: START YARD JOB and FINISH YARD JOB. At least one photo is needed to finish. They can only start and finish their own moves. See The operator app.

From the yard board, anyone with Write Yard can press Start and Finish on the person’s behalf (for example, if their phone died). No photo is required that way.

Important: if one person has several moves assigned, their app shows one of them without following the queue order: Move to top and Mark urgent order the yard board, but they do not change which one comes up first in My Work. To have them do a specific one, assign moves one at a time, or tell them which is next.

Quick release

Quick Release is the exit button inside an occupied spot. It is for when the trailer already left the yard and nobody recorded it. It asks you to confirm that you want to release the spot (it warns that an exit record is created and the spot freed immediately) and, when you accept:

Creates a finished Spot to Exit move with nobody assigned (it stays in the Yard Management report history).
Frees the spot.
If that trailer’s dock job was in Work Finished or Pending Yard, closes it as Completed and checks the driver out.
With extended notifications, tells the driver the trailer was released.

You see Spot released successfully.

Important: in a spot where a driver dropped a trailer from the kiosk (Yard Drop Off), the job is still Assigned. Quick release frees the spot but does not close that job, which shows up again in Jobs to Assign as if it needed a spot. In that case, after releasing, open its details and use Cancel job (and yard jobs), which closes it and checks the driver out.

What happens in other modules

Dock board: starting a dock-to-spot move closes the dock job and frees the door; a spot-to-dock move sets the job as Assigned at its new dock.
Driver and Visitors: yard exits check the driver out and close the visit.
Messages: only in installations with extended driver notifications: trailer moved to the yard (with the spot if known), parked in the yard, back to a dock, and released.
Reports: every move, including cancelled ones and quick releases, stays in Yard Management; occupancy and dwell come out in Yard Inventory.

The end-to-end path is in Dock, yard and cross-dock.

Example

At 11:00 there are four moves in the queue: Queue #1 and #2 for Carlos Ruiz (Normal), Queue #3 unassigned and Queue #4 for Luis Pérez. Dock 2 is needed for a load for Northern Trading Co., so the supervisor presses Move to top on #3 and assigns it to Luis. The queue becomes: #3 is now #1 and the rest shift down. Since Luis already had another move, she tells him on the radio which to do first. At 11:40 she finds that the trailer in spot D-02 left in the morning unrecorded: she uses Quick Release and the spot turns green again.

Special cases and limits

Yard drop-offs: the driver who drops a trailer counts as on site and the job stays Assigned until the trailer leaves (by matching a pickup, by an exit move or by cancelling the job). If the warehouse uses Visitors with automatic checkout that includes drivers, the visit closes at the set time, but the job stays open.
Dragging a delivery in Pending Yard: change the proposed type to Dock to Spot (see above).
One move per trailer: creating a new one cancels the previous one and frees its spot.
Orphan spots: every night at 3:45 the system frees occupied spots with no active job.
What you cannot do: drag cards to reorder, or set Critical after creating the move.

Messages you may see

Message	What to do
This job is already completed.	The move finished on another screen. Reload.
Could not reorder the job.	The move is no longer in the queue (finished or cancelled). Reload.
Could not update priority.	Same as above, or the connection dropped.
The spot is not occupied.	You tried to release a spot that was already free.
Error releasing spot.	Connection or server failure. Retry; if it persists, open a ticket with the time.
Error assigning yard worker.	The person can no longer receive jobs or the move changed. Reload and pick someone else.

Best practices

Keep few moves assigned per person at a time: that way their app and the queue agree.
Use Urgent for what blocks a dock; Move to top to order within the normal ones.
Quick Release only for trailers that are gone; if someone has to move it, create the move.
At the end of the shift, check that no cards are left in Jobs to Assign.

Troubleshooting

A job came back to Jobs to Assign after releasing it.

It was a trailer dropped by the driver from the kiosk. Open it and use Cancel job (and yard jobs).

I moved a move to the top and the person did another one.

Their app does not follow the queue order when they have several assigned. Tell them which is next or assign one at a time.

I don’t see Move to top, Mark urgent or Cancel job.

You lack the Write Yard permission.

The spot stays yellow after cancelling the move.

Another active job backs it (for example, the trailer really is there). Check its details.

Frequently asked questions

How do I mark a move as Critical?

When you create it, in the Priority field of the Create Yard Job window. Afterwards you can only toggle between Normal and Urgent.

Can I drag cards to reorder the queue?

No. The yard queue is ordered with Move to top and the priority. Dragging is for creating moves on the map.