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Finding & Routing Technicians

How to get a marketplace site visit in front of the right tech — by invite or direct assignment

When you post a site visit to the Service Envoy marketplace, you decide which technicians get a shot at it. You have two assignment modes in the same place — the Routing tab on a site visit (and the Offer or Route Technicians panel):

Find techs near this visit. On a site visit's Routing tab, click Find techs near this visit. The technician map opens beside the visit, already searched to the site's ZIP code (or city and state). Set the distance and filters you want, then message techs straight from the map; messages sent from here are linked to the visit. The map shows the same technicians as Find Technicians. The button shows until a technician is assigned.

Keeping a contact log. Click Log contact on any technician in Find Technicians (or in the visit's map) to record how a contact went: Interested, Not available, Not interested, and so on. Phone and email outcomes (Called, Texted, Left voicemail, No answer, Emailed, Wrong number) are only offered for your Private Network technicians, because marketplace technicians' contact details stay private; message them through Service Envoy instead. Messages, routing, offers, and the technician's requests and counters are recorded on their own, so you only log what happened off the platform. Each technician then shows a line such as Contacted 5 · Responded 3 · last response 2 days ago, so you can learn who answers. Contacts logged from a visit, plus that visit's routing, requests and messages, are listed under Contact attempts on its Routing tab and in its Activity. Only your company sees your contact log and these numbers; technicians never see them, and they are not on anyone's public profile.

At a glance: is this visit routed and funded?
The top of every marketplace site visit, under Site Visit Status, answers both questions with one control each. Each one is a button while there is something left to do, and turns into a plain badge once it is done:

Both controls step aside once a technician is assigned; the visit's status takes over from there.

If the scheduled time has already passed, the marketplace won't post or route the visit, and the Routing tab says so. Change the date and time on the Main tab first, then route it.

1. Fund the visit — now, or when you accept a tech
The money for a site visit is held in your marketplace balance until the work is approved. When you send work on an unfunded visit, Service Envoy prompts you right there with two choices:

Route mode always requires funding first — the first tech to accept is assigned instantly, so there is no later step to collect the funds. Two more things about unfunded postings: if you change the pay rate while one is posted, all outstanding requests are cleared and the techs are re-invited at the new rate; and if the schedule passes without an assignment, the posting expires on its own — for a visit with an arrival window, that means the end of the window, so a job that can be done any day through the 30th stays in front of techs until the 30th. When a posting expires, the visit's Activity log records it ("Marketplace posting expired"), so you can always see why it left the board. Re-posting an expired or already-posted visit never re-notifies techs. To ping them again on purpose, use Re-ping techs, on the dashboard's Offered Site Visits With No Tech Requests card or on the posted-to-all banner on the visit's Routing tab. It re-notifies Tech Marketplace technicians only; it never pushes a Private Network visit to the open marketplace.

2. Open the panel and find techs
On the site visit, open the Routing tab and click Route Site Visit to Technicians (it reads Route More Techs once someone has been offered the visit, and Select Techs for Routing in the pop-out view). A panel opens where you pick assignment mode and can narrow the list of available technicians by:

Technicians whose minimum hourly rate is higher than this visit's rate still appear. In Offer mode they're dimmed and marked Unavailable — minimum rate $X/hr is above this job's pay, and you can't select them unless you raise the pay rate. In Route mode you can select them anyway: Route is your intentional override, and the row notes they're below their minimum, so they can still accept the job at its pay. (Per Device visits have no hourly rate to compare, so that check doesn't apply to them — techs see the per-device price, the device count, and the full job total instead.)

Notification distance (the tech's preference): if a technician has set a Max Distance for Available Work Notifications on their profile and the job site is beyond that limit, they do not appear in the Offer list and cannot be sent a multi-tech Offer (or the usual "offered" notification) through that path. That keeps far jobs from reaching techs who don't want work that far away. Route mode can intentionally override that — use it when you've already agreed with a tech outside their usual radius.

Repair types (the tech's preference): technicians can list the repair types they do and don't do on their profile. In the panel, techs who do this visit's repair type are listed first with a green Does … tag; techs who don't are listed last with a red Doesn't do … tag and aren't notified about it. If you send to one technician who doesn't do it, you're asked first — choose Send anyway — notify them, Send without notifying, or Cancel. Sending to several at once shows how many won't be notified, with a Notify them anyway box. On Find Technicians, pick a repair type to rank techs the same way.

When the panel comes up empty
Sometimes no technician is active in that area yet, or everyone who matches has already been offered the visit. When that happens you'll see an Ask Service Envoy to find a technician button right there in the panel. Use it — sourcing techs in thin areas is our job, not yours.

The form takes the job details straight off this site visit: the site location, the scheduled date, the type of work, and the technician pay you're offering. There's nothing to retype, and nothing that can end up describing a different job than the one you're trying to fill. You'll see that same summary on the form before you send it, so you know exactly what we'll be looking at. Your name, email, and phone are filled in as well — change them if someone else should get the callback, add a note if there's anything else we should know, and send.

Our staff will try to source a technician in that area and follow up with you directly. If the pay on the visit is the reason nobody is biting, we'll tell you that too.

You can send the same request from the Find Technicians page when you're checking an area before creating any work. No site visit is attached in that case, so that version asks you for the ZIP, the date you need someone by, and the type of work.

How technician names appear
While you're shopping for a tech, marketplace technicians are shown by first name and last initial — "Dana R." — and their email address is not displayed. This is the same convention you already see on the Find Technicians map, and it applies everywhere you're evaluating candidates: the routing panel, the Routing tab, and technician profiles.

The moment a technician is assigned to your visit — they accept a Route, or you accept their Request — their full name and email address become visible to you on that visit, because at that point you're coordinating real work with a real person. Technicians in your own private Technician Network are never masked; you recruited them and you already have their details.

What the technician sees of your client
It runs both ways, on the same line. While a technician is browsing your posting, holding an invite or waiting on your decision, your client is shown to them as Service Envoy and the site is narrowed to city and state. Your client's own ticket or work-order number is shown to every technician from the start, so if your client's numbers carry their name (for example "TNI Assign. Id: 40763"), a technician browsing your posting can read it there.

3. Offer mode — techs request, you accept
In assignment mode choose Offer (techs request, you accept). Check the techs you want, then click Offer to … Technicians. Each selected tech is notified that the visit is Offered. They can Request at your terms or send a counter-offer. Nothing is assigned yet — you stay in control and pick the winner in step 5.

Post to All Marketplace Techs. In Offer mode the panel also has Post to All. It lists the visit on the marketplace for every eligible technician, not just the ones you pick, and notifies the technicians within range of the site (the panel shows the distance). Technicians missing one of your requirements can still see it and are prompted to update their profile; your requirements are enforced when they apply. While it's posted, the Routing tab shows a Posted to all available marketplace technicians banner with Re-ping techs and Make invite-only, which takes it back off the open listing without touching invites already sent.

4. Route mode — first to accept wins
Choose Route (first to accept wins) when you've already lined someone up — a favorite, a regular, or a phone agreement. Select one or more techs and click Route … Technicians. Each gets a Routed invite; they use Accept Assignment to take it immediately. A few things worth knowing:

5. Review requests and assign
The Routing tab lists everyone with clear labels:

When technicians are waiting on your answer, the Routing tab shows an amber count, and the top of the site visit shows a N technician responses waiting button that takes you there. This covers both marketplace and Private Network requests and counters. A counter you sent back is not counted, because it's the technician's move.

For any Request or counter, click Accept to assign that tech. If a counter is higher than what you funded, you'll be asked to fund the difference before the assignment goes through. (On a visit you posted without funding, you'll be asked for the full agreed amount instead — the posted rate or the counter, whichever you're accepting.) Accepting one tech automatically declines the rest. You can also turn a Routed invite into a regular Offer with Switch to Offer (request) on its row in the Routing tab — the tech then has to Request instead of one-tap accepting. One exception: Per Device visits don't accept counter-offers in either direction — the device count fixes the pay shape, so techs can only Request or Accept at your posted per-device terms, and you'll never see a Countered row on one. If the pay needs to change, edit the visit's tech pay rate instead.

Getting your customer to approve a counter — without showing it to anyone else
When a technician counters higher and you bill that work through, your customer's price moves too. The trick is getting their sign-off without telling every other technician what the counter was — because the moment a higher number is on the visit, nobody will accept it at the price you posted, and no one will counter lower.

So don't match the counter. On the technician's Countered row, click Add to Approval. The dialog shows their counter as your cost, and you set what you want to bill your customer to cover it. If the number you enter is at or below what the technician is asking, it says so — you can send it anyway, but you'll know you're taking a loss on that visit.

The button is there whenever your customer has a page to see the price on: a project share link, a ticket share link, or a link to this one site visit. If the visit isn't shared yet, use Send for Approval on the Client Rates card (site visit → Financials tab) first — that creates the link.

Nothing on the site visit changes when you send it. The technician's pay stays exactly as posted, other technicians keep seeing the original rate, and your customer sees the new price on the page they already have, under "N site visits need your approval". The row's button reads Waiting for Approval until they answer.

When they approve, the client rate on the visit becomes the price they agreed to — and that is all that happens. The technician's pay still hasn't moved. It moves when you Accept them, which is the same step that funds the difference from your balance, so the pay and the money change together. If they decline, the visit keeps its old client rate; nothing was written on the strength of a request.

While you wait. The Waiting for Approval button opens a small menu: Revise offer… sends a corrected price or date and replaces the one on your customer's page; Withdraw offer takes it off their page entirely, with nothing in its place.

One safeguard worth knowing about: a technician can revise a counter after you've sent it. If they do that after your customer has already approved, the row stops saying Client Approved and offers Update Approval Request instead — an approval is a yes to a specific price and date, and a different one needs its own. If your customer declines, the row offers Update Approval Request too, so you can try again with a different number or date.

Add to Approval is also there on a counter that proposes only a date. The dialog reads Send this date to your client for approval and shows the proposed date up top — but it still opens the same price form, started at what this visit bills your customer today. That's deliberate: a date ask lands on the same page where your customer sees the price, so you get to verify the number — and your margin — before anything reaches them. Leave the price exactly as it stands and, if your customer has already approved that price, they're asked about the date alone. Change the price, or send it on a visit they've never approved a price for, and they're asked about the date and the price together. Either way the same floor applies: if the price you're sending is at or below the technician's pay on this visit, the dialog says so before it goes out. If they approve, the visit's schedule moves to the new date and the price you sent becomes the visit's client rate; the technician's pay is untouched, and accepting the technician is still a separate step that stays your call.

What your customer sees before you send an approval
Until you send an approval for a site visit, your customer's shared project or ticket page shows only what they're entitled to know: the visit's scheduled date or arrival window, and a status of Awaiting Tech Requests. The visit's client rate, the technicians' requests, and the Requests to Review status all stay inside your company — even while counters are piling up on your Routing tab. That's what makes the margin step above meaningful: a number becomes your customer's business only when you send it. Sending an approval for that visit — price, date, or both — is what puts its rate and request activity on their page.

And if you do want to raise the posted pay — because the market is telling you the rate is wrong — Match Terms is still there. It just warns you first that every technician will see the new number.

Has anyone actually looked at it? — the Visit Engagement card
Silence on a posting is ambiguous, and the two explanations call for opposite fixes. If nobody has opened the visit, that's a reach problem — your radius may be too tight, your requirements may be screening everyone out, or alerts aren't landing. If everyone opened it and passed, that's a price or scope problem. The Visit Engagement card on the Routing tab tells you which one you have.

It shows:

Click any technician's name on the card to open their profile in a new tab, so you can check them out before you message or route to them.

Each technician's row on the Routing tab also carries a small Viewed 3× · 2 hr ago or Not viewed line, so "Offered but silent" and "Offered, read it twice, still thinking" stop looking identical. If nobody has opened it at all, the card says so plainly rather than showing you an empty list.

A few details worth knowing: only technicians outside your company are counted — your own staff opening the visit isn't engagement. Repeat opens within a few minutes count once, so a refresh or a back-button bounce doesn't inflate a quick glance into real interest. And this card is yours alone — technicians never see it, and never see who else is looking at the job.

6. After assignment
The moment a tech is assigned — whether they accepted a Route or you accepted their Request — the visit locks to that technician, everyone else is cleared, the visit appears on their calendar, and you'll get a confirmation (email and an in-app alert). From there the tech checks in, does the work, and submits it for your approval.

Recording a technician no-show
A no-show is a mark on the technician's marketplace profile, not on the site visit. Other clients see the count before routing work to that technician, so it is deliberately hard to record by mistake. The exception is a no-show on a Private Network visit: it stays with the company that networked with the technician, shown on the profile as Your Private Network — No-shows on your site visits and in their network routing, and is not added to the public count.

Service Envoy records one automatically when an assigned technician has not checked in by the no-show deadline:

You can also record one yourself from the site visit's Metrics tab with Mark No-Show. The button is only available when all of the following are true:

When the button is unavailable, the reason is shown under it. A note is required and the technician receives it. Clearing a no-show also notifies the technician.

The same deadline decides when Unassign Technician and Cancel Site Visit become free of the late fee, and when the visit shows a No Show badge. Inside the arrival window (from 15 minutes before the start until the deadline) both actions are blocked; after the deadline both are free.

Good practice: if the site visit still carries the missed schedule, unassigning the technician after the deadline records the no-show automatically. If you have since cleared or moved the schedule, record the no-show before you unassign — once the technician is unassigned, only Service Envoy support can add the mark.

What you see on a technician's profile
Clicking a technician — from the list, the map, or the routing panel — opens their profile. What's on it depends on your relationship with that tech:

Have we used them before? Next to a technician's lifetime N Service Calls Completed badge, an indigo N for you badge counts the site visits they've completed for your company. On a Private Network technician's profile the same number is the For your company tile, beside Visits completed. Both use the same rule for "completed", so the two numbers always agree. Only your team sees it, and it's hidden when the answer is zero. Click the number to open a table of those site visits right on the profile: date, ticket number, client, site, city and state, repair type, whether the technician was on time, and the visit's status. Click a row to open that site visit, or Close to put the table away.

Your own notes, files and checklist on a technician

Every technician's page carries a private record that belongs to your company alone. On a private network technician it is the Internal Rating & Notes card down the left side of their page; on any other technician it is the Rating & Notes button at the top. The technician is never told any of it exists, and no other company can see it.

Private notes. Type anything you want to remember about a technician: what was agreed on a phone call, who they report to on your side, why you would or would not send them back. You no longer have to rate a technician first. The notes box used to be locked until you picked a rating, which meant jotting "spoke to him Tuesday" first made you decide whether he was a favorite. Write the note, press Save Notes & Checklist, and leave the rating alone if you have not made up your mind.

Our onboarding. Two tick boxes under the notes, for your own paperwork on that technician: Direct deposit info on file and Training complete. These are your records, not theirs. Service Envoy does not check them, the technician cannot set them, and they say nothing about that technician to anyone else. On a private network technician, where you pay their company directly and off the platform, this is the place to record that you have what you need to pay them.

Private Files. Under the same card on a private network technician's page sits Private Files. Click Add a file to keep your own documents about them: a signed agreement, a training certificate, a scanned form, anything that would otherwise live in your email. These files are stored under your company, not theirs. The technician's own company cannot see them, and neither can any other client of theirs. Use the download arrow to open one, or the bin to remove it.

None of this feeds a technician's public profile. A rating still does, and only the Favorite rating at that, as the next section explains.

Reading the "Favorite of N clients" badge

A technician's profile shows how many client companies have saved them as a favorite — for example Favorite of 3 clients. It is the repeat-business signal the other badges do not give you: on-time and no-show counts tell you how a visit went, this tells you who wanted the technician back afterwards.

It counts companies, not favorites. If your company keeps several client records, all of them together still count as one. And only a true favorite counts — no other Internal Rating — vetted, application pending, not a match, poor performance, or blocked — adds to it or subtracts from it.

You will never see which companies, and no one sees yours. The rating you set on a technician stays private to your team, exactly as the Internal Rating card says; the badge only ever publishes a total.

Treat a low number as no information rather than a warning. A technician who is new, or who works mostly outside the marketplace, has nothing here through no fault of their own — which is why no badge is shown at all until at least one company has favorited them.

A note on privacy: sensitive details — full name, email, W-9, taxpayer ID, home address, and rates — only appear for technicians in your private network, or for a marketplace technician once they're assigned to your visit. When you're simply browsing and comparing candidates, you won't see another company's technician's contact or tax information. This protects technicians from being contacted around the platform, and it protects you the same way when your own techs are the ones being browsed. A technician's "public profile" setting only controls whether their page is visible on the open internet to people who aren't logged in; once you're signed in and offering or routing work, you always see their standard marketplace profile.

Changing your mind
Before anyone is assigned, you can Re-send or Cancel an Offered or Routed invite from the Routing tab, then send to different technicians. Once a tech is assigned, further offers and routes are closed for that visit. To replace the assigned technician, see Swapping the Technician on a Site Visit. A visit can be offered on the Tech Marketplace and to your Private Network at the same time, but once an outside technician accepts, it belongs to that lane alone and the others are withdrawn. After check-in the lanes are locked. Manage Routing lists both marketplace and Private Network visits.

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