Introduction to Helix

Helix is the screen your controllers and planners work from. It shows your whole operation in real time — who is where, what work is waiting, and the schedule Spiral has built — and lets you watch, adjust and commit that schedule as the day unfolds. This guide explains the main parts of the screen and the ideas behind them.

(To install and configure Helix, see Getting started; for the architecture behind it, see the Helix technical overview.)

The dispatch screen

The screen is two columns beside a live map:

• Left column — your Desks, the Resources they cover, and Messages.
• Right column — the work lists (Projects and Response points) and the Plan window.
• Map — the same information laid out geographically.

Everything is live: as Spiral re-optimises, the lists, the map and the plan update together — there is no nightly batch and no re-keying.

Desks

A desk is a slice of the operation — a region, a skill, a contract — that groups the work and the resources you care about. You engage a desk at three levels:

• Hide (none) — not engaged; its work isn’t shown.
• Watch (green) — you’re watching it: its work and resources stream in and appear on the map and in the lists. Watching a desk filters the view to what that desk manages.
• Own (red) — you’re actively managing it. Owned desks sort to the top of the lists so the work you own stays together.

Click a desk row to reveal its Own · Watch · Hide toggle and set the level; a coloured bar down the left of the row shows its state (red owned, green watched). Double-click opens the desk’s full settings. When you select a job, the desk currently managing it is highlighted too, so you can see at a glance who owns a piece of work.

Resources

A resource is a person or vehicle that does the work — a patrol, an engineer, a recovery truck. Each resource has a home base, skills, a roster (when it is on shift, at base or resting) and a live position. Its row shows its current status (see Stop states), and it appears on the map at its location.

Projects and stops

The work itself. A project is one job — a breakdown, a booked appointment, an inspection — made up of one or more stops (the places a resource has to be). The first stop is the master stop; a job may add further stops (for example recover then unload). Projects appear in the work list.

Response points are a second list of stops for fixed or recurring service points, handled the same way but kept separate from one-off project work.

The plan window

Select a stop or a resource and the plan window shows that resource’s schedule — the ordered chain of stops it will work, with times. The map draws the same chain as a line. This is “the plan” for that resource: read it to see what Spiral intends, then adjust from here if you need to.

Messages

Operational notes and warnings Spiral raises about the current schedule — for example why a particular job cannot currently be allocated — appear in the Messages panel.

Stop states

Every stop moves through a lifecycle as the day progresses. The common states, in order:

• PLAN — planned by Spiral, not yet acted on.
• DPLY — deployed: offered or sent to the resource.
• HEAD — heading: the resource is travelling to the stop.
• CMTD — committed: locked in — the resource is on its way and won’t be diverted.
• ARVD — arrived: the resource is on site.
• DONE — finished.

(Other states — INIT, CALL, OSRC — cover initialisation and sourcing/offer steps.)

The label you see is often translated by your domain into your own language — for example an UNLOAD stop may show “RECY” rather than HEAD. The colour of a stop reflects its state and how far ahead of or behind schedule it is.

The map

The map shows the geography of the operation. It deliberately does not show every stop at once — it shows what is relevant right now:

• the plan of the selected resource or stop (the line and its stops);
• the project stops of any watched/active desk — including unallocated work that has no resource yet;
• the children of a stop that is in the plan; and
• anything that shares the current selection.

Each marker carries a letter (its line letter) and a colour (its state and delay); the line drawn into a stop takes that stop’s own colour. Stops with no fixed location (“anywhere”) aren’t drawn.

A typical workflow

1. Watch the desks you are responsible for — their work and resources appear.
2. Scan the work list and the map for waiting or late jobs.
3. Select a job or resource to open its plan and see what Spiral intends.
4. Adjust if needed — reassign, lock or rebook — and let Spiral re-optimise.
5. As resources deploy and arrive, watch the states and colours update live.