A Tour is the operational plan for getting work done: an ordered list of
stops, driven by one carrier with a driver and vehicle, carrying one or more
shipments from pickup to dropoff.
A Tour is the execution side of a job in Orbit. It is an ordered list of Stops, assigned to one Carrier — usually with a specific driver and vehicle — and it carries one or more Shipments that have been planned onto it. Where the Order holds the commercial and billing side of a booking, the Tour holds who drives it, in what vehicle, and in what order the stops are visited.
A Tour is also the only thing a carrier attaches to. To give work to a carrier, you assign it to a tour — never to a shipment or an order. As the tour is driven, the shipments it carries progress on their own.
Key highlights
The plan that gets driven — an ordered list of stops with one carrier, driver and vehicle.
Carries shipments — one or more Shipments planned onto it.
Where the carrier attaches — a carrier is assigned to a Tour, not to a shipment or order.
You review to complete — a finished tour is reviewed and closed in Orbit MissionControl.
Nothing is deleted — cancelling a tour keeps it and frees its shipments to be re-planned.
Most shipments are carried straight through, and the whole shipment sits on one tour. Where a shipment is carried in stages, it is the individual stage that sits on the tour rather than the whole shipment. One tour can therefore carry a stage of a journey that continues on a different tour, with a different carrier, on a different day.
From the tour's point of view nothing changes: it is still an ordered list of stops with cargo to collect and drop. See the Legs article for how a journey is divided into stages.
A new Tour starts without a carrier. You can assign a carrier to it directly, or offer the work through a Callout on the marketplace and assign the carrier whose bid or acceptance wins. Once a carrier is attached — usually together with a driver and vehicle — the tour is ready to run. Assigning through the marketplace is a dispatch task; see the dispatch and marketplace articles for how offers work.
When the assignment names a driver, that driver receives a New Tour Assigned notification. A driver who loses the tour together with their carrier receives Tour Unassigned. An assignment to the carrier alone, without a driver, notifies the carrier's users who can see offers. The email names the tour price only to users whose role may see prices.
A Tour is scoped to a Region, so operator lists and dispatch can be filtered by region.
A Tour moves through its own set of statuses as it is dispatched, driven and closed. You move it along by taking actions — assigning a carrier, the driver running the tour, and reviewing it — rather than by editing a status field.
Status
What it means
Not Assigned
No carrier yet — the tour still needs dispatching.
Assigned
A carrier (and usually a driver and vehicle) is attached, but the tour has not started. Some views label this Upcoming.
Running
The driver has started; the tour is progressing stop by stop. While running, Orbit also shows the driver's position along the route — arrived at or departed from a given stop.
Review Required
The driver has finished the last stop and the tour is awaiting the operator's review.
Completed
The tour has been reviewed and closed.
Cancelled
The tour was called off. It remains readable.
The same stage can read differently in different views — for example an Assigned tour appears as Upcoming in some places. The underlying stage is the same wherever you see it.
In the Orbit MissionControl tour list, running tours with timing data show whether they are on time or late. Hover over or focus the badge to see the first late stop and its planned time window.
Once assigned, the driver starts the tour and it becomes Running, working through each stop in order. After the last stop, the tour finishes and waits for you to review it. Reviewing a finished tour in Orbit MissionControl is how a tour reaches Completed — it is the step that closes the tour. Review becomes available once the tour has finished its stops. The review shows what to check, lets you correct stop times and add missing proofs, and closes the tour with Complete Review; see Reviewing a Tour.
Driving a Tour is also what advances the shipments it carries. As stops are completed and the tour is reviewed, each shipment moves through its own execution statuses to Delivered. You never mark shipments delivered by hand — you drive the tour, and the shipments follow. A shipment carried in stages reaches Delivered only once every stage has been delivered, so finishing one tour may leave it still in progress. See the Order, Shipment, Tour & Leg Statuses article for how statuses update as you work.
Each action in the tour's timeline shows when the driver recorded it on the device and sits at that time in the timeline. An action that reached Orbit more than five minutes after it was recorded, for example after a stretch without network, is marked reported late. Hover over the marker to see when it was recorded and when it arrived.
A Tour is driven by one driver, and only that driver's phone tracks it. When another driver of the same carrier starts the tour, records an arrival or a departure at one of its stops, or completes or skips one of its tasks in Orbit Cockpit, Orbit Cockpit first asks Take Over This Tour? and sends nothing yet. The question names the driver the tour is assigned to and the driver who is signed in.
Take Over and Continue: the signed-in driver becomes the tour's driver, and then the action goes ahead. From then on their phone tracks the tour, and Orbit Cockpit does not ask again on it.
Cancel: nothing is sent. The tour, the stop and the task stay as they were.
Acting on another driver's tour always means taking it over first. A tour without a driver asks nothing: the first driver who works on it becomes its driver.
The former driver receives a Tour Unassigned notification, and their phone stops tracking the tour the next time it loads it. A driver whom an operator or a carrier dispatcher replaces on a tour receives the same notification. In Orbit MissionControl, the takeover appears in the tour's log as an assignment to the new driver, together with who made it.
Taking over needs a connection. Without one, Orbit Cockpit shows Tour Could Not Be Taken Over and sends nothing, so the driver can try again once the phone is back online.
Cancelling a Tour never deletes it. The tour is marked Cancelled and stays readable, and the work it was carrying detaches and becomes plannable again — ready to be put onto another tour, with its history intact.
Where a shipment was carried in stages, only the stage that was on this tour detaches. The rest of the journey is untouched, so you re-plan that one stage rather than the whole shipment.
A tour leaves a depot in Warsaw with three drops across the city. It starts Not Assigned; an operator offers the work through a Callout, and the carrier that wins is assigned, moving the tour to Assigned. The next morning the driver starts the tour (Running) and works through the stops. After the final drop the tour reaches Review Required; the operator reviews it in Orbit MissionControl and it becomes Completed. In the same step, each Shipment the tour carried reads Delivered.
Review it once the driver has finished. Reviewing a finished tour is the
step that closes it and moves it to Completed.
Can I complete a tour that is still running?
Review becomes available once the tour has finished its stops, so a running
tour is closed by letting it finish and then reviewing it.
How do I put a carrier on a tour?
Assign a carrier directly, or offer the work as a Callout and assign the
carrier that wins. The carrier attaches to the Tour, not to a shipment or
order.
What happens if a driver starts a tour that is assigned to someone else?
Orbit Cockpit asks the driver to take the tour over first. With Take
Over and Continue they become its driver and their phone tracks it; the
former driver is notified. With Cancel nothing is sent.
What does reported late mean in the tour timeline?
The driver recorded the action in Orbit Cockpit while the device had no
network, and it reached Orbit more than five minutes later. The time shown
is when the driver recorded it.
Does cancelling a tour delete it?
No. A cancelled tour stays readable, and the work it carried becomes
plannable again so you can put it onto another tour.
I completed the tour, but the shipment is not delivered. Why?
Because that shipment is carried in stages and your tour carried only one of
them. It reaches Delivered once every stage has been delivered. See the
Legs article.
Why does the same tour show a different status word in different places?
Some views phrase a stage differently — for example Assigned shown as
Upcoming. The stage itself is the same.
