How Messages Reach Drivers (Chat, Acks, Pins, Nudges)

What this page is for

Every way you can reach a driver's phone, what the driver sees, what comes back, and what the system can and cannot prove.

The things a dispatcher can send

What	How you send it	How it travels	What the driver sees and can do	What comes back to you	If the phone is offline
Direct message	Chat panel, Drivers tab, pick the driver, Send	Saved on the server, then pushed live to the open app AND sent as a phone notification, every time	Chime and a small card (Open Chat / Got it) in the foreground, else a notification with your name. They can reply (text, photo, voice) or react (six emoji)	Sent, then Seen on app HH:MM once it has rendered	The notification waits at the phone; on next open the app lists what was missed
Team message	Team tab, pick a web user	Saved, wakes their browser	Nothing on a phone unless that user is linked to a driver account (see Identity)	Sent / Seen on web	Not applicable
Several drivers or a saved group	Drivers tab, Message several drivers..., tick drivers or tap a Groups chip (WPH, SH, NWH - presets your org saves), Write message, Send	One ordinary DM row per ticked driver, each pushed exactly like a direct message. There is no group row and no group thread	A DM from you - the driver never sees the group name or the other recipients	Per driver, as for a DM; the panel names anyone it could not reach and retries only them	As a DM
Fleet broadcast	Team tab, Org Broadcast, Send	One row, pushed to every driver who has the app	As a DM, in their Dispatch thread	Seen by N (or the first three names), hover for who and on which device	As a DM
Urgent (needs ack)	Tick ⚠ next to Send (tooltip "Require driver acknowledgement") on a DM or broadcast	As above, flagged	Full-screen card: Acknowledge or I can't comply (reason required). A typed or spoken reply in the thread counts as the acknowledgement too	Acknowledged by Name on app HH:MM or Declined plus reason; the Command Center Acks tab; Zippy `check_message_acks`	The card is re-shown on every app foreground until answered, for 7 days. No timed re-push
Nudge	Bell Nudge on a driver's map radial, or the nudge pill on a Dispatch Board or Ops Manifest row	A message carrying your reason (or "Dispatch is asking about this order" if you gave none) plus the order number and lane, pushed like an urgent message	Quick-reply card: On my way, I'm on site, Running late (minutes), There's a problem (text), Dismiss	A reply card under your nudge ("↳ Name: On my way", with reason); the amber count on the Drivers tab; the Acks tab	Re-sent after 3, 8 and 15 minutes of silence, then marked escalated; card returns on every foreground
Map pin	Right-click the map, pick drivers, optional note and Require acknowledgment	A DM carrying coordinates	A pin bubble with Navigate (opens Google Maps directions); tapping it is the answer, recorded as Navigating	Your map marker clears when they answer; Navigating under your bubble	Ack-required pins ride the 3/8/15 ladder; from the first reminder on, and on every foreground, the pin takes over the screen
Stop prompt (order or waypoint)	Order Detail, Driver Prompt box with Pop up on pickup or delivery; or a building's access point, edit / rename, Driver prompt with require the driver to acknowledge it	Not a message. It rides the order itself and reaches the phone with the manifest	A Stop instructions card on the order screen with Got it ✓, and, when gated, a blocking Before you pick up / Before you deliver dialog at the swipe: Got it proceeds, Not yet backs out	Order Detail shows Acknowledged: Yes / No, declined / not yet for the order prompt; both kinds appear in the Command Center Acks tab as Task prompt and Waypoint prompt	Fires from the phone's cached manifest; the record uploads when it reconnects
Zippy-sent message	Ask Zippy ("tell every driver to check ice packs", or name a list of drivers; a picture posted in the Slack thread or attached on the Zippy page can ride along); it previews, you confirm	Same delivery as a DM or broadcast	From Zippy (or from you, if you told it to send as you)	`check_message_acks`: who answered, who is pending, counts	As a DM

Every phone notification in that table is also recorded, one row per driver, on the admin Notifications page: sent, or skipped because the phone has no push token, or failed with the provider's reason (a dead token shows as DeviceNotRegistered). That is where to look when a driver says the alert never arrived; the live in-app delivery to an already-open app is separate and not recorded there.
The Org Broadcast thread in the chat panel: one message reaches every driver with the app

How do I make sure a message is seen?

A direct message drafted to a driver in the Drivers tab, before Send
A draft with the ⚠ "Require driver acknowledgement" toggle ticked

A plain DM proves rendering, not reading. When the message draws on the driver's screen the app sends a silent "witness" receipt and your bubble flips from Sent to Seen on app HH:MM. Times follow your clock setting: 24-hour or 12-hour, set on your Account page. The hover text says "Rendered to surface. Not proof of human reading."
Tick ⚠ when you need a human answer. The app blocks until they tap Acknowledge or I can't comply, and the card is put back in front of them on every app open for seven days. Nothing re-pushes a plain urgent message; only nudges and ack-required pins get timed reminders.
Nudge when the answer is a status. Five forced choices and the server chases on its own (3, 8, 15 minutes).
Pin when the answer is "go here". Navigate is the ack.
If nothing comes back, check the phone, not the message. The presence dot is green if the app has checked in with chat in the last half minute or sent a GPS fix in the last 5 minutes. The Device health card on the driver's page shows battery, battery-optimisation exemption and app version. A phone the operating system has put to sleep receives nothing. Call them.

How do I track an ack?

Command Center, Acks tab, Responses mode: waypoint prompts, nudges, Slack and chat broadcasts, each with its state (Acknowledged, On my way, Declined) and source

Send with ⚠ ticked. Bubble reads Sent.
On render it becomes Seen on app HH:MM. Still not an answer.
On answer it becomes Acknowledged by Name on app HH:MM (green) or Declined (amber, reason in the hover). A reply typed or spoken in that thread shows the same way.
Broadcasts show Seen by N with a per-person, per-device hover list. For who is missing, ask Zippy "who hasn't acknowledged the 2pm broadcast?".
Command Center, Acks tab, Responses mode: one line per answer with time, channel (Chat, Slack, DO NEXT, Nudge, Task prompt, Waypoint prompt, Time off), driver, subject, message, disposition, reason and device. Passive "seen" receipts are excluded; it records answers only. All traffic mode lists every message and voice transcript instead.
A never-answered urgent message stays Seen or Sent forever; nothing escalates it. A never-answered nudge becomes escalated and stays in the Drivers-tab popover until a driver answers or you Resolve it.

Acks, exactly

Delivered: the server has the row. Label Sent. Nothing about the phone is known.
Seen (witness): rendered on a surface. A receipt with no disposition. Never satisfies an urgent message.
Read state: what each person has scrolled past. Drives unread badges only; never shown to the sender.
Acknowledged, Declined, Navigating, the nudge choices: an explicit disposition, one per person per device, first explicit answer wins. This is what the Acks tab and Zippy count.
Answered (nudges): a disposition landed; the reminder ladder stops.
Resolved (nudges): you clicked Resolve in the "Awaiting driver response" popover. It stops reminders and the count and records your name. It creates no answer and never touches the ack ledger.

Nudges, exactly

You can nudge only a driver, never yourself, and only one open nudge per driver and order at a time. Dismiss is recorded as "saw it, chose not to answer" and shows amber. Hover the amber count on the Drivers tab to open the popover with Resolve; escalated nudges sort to the top. Answers chime in your chat, louder for Problem, Declined or Dismissed.

Pins, exactly

A pin can go to several drivers at once and can be attached to an order (it then appears on that order's timeline). The first delivery is a normal bubble with Navigate; it never takes over the screen on arrival. With Require acknowledgment ticked, silence starts the 3/8/15 ladder and from the first reminder the pin takes over, as it does on every foreground while unanswered. Your map marker clears on answer or after 4 hours; the driver's obligation is tracked for 7 days.
A dispatcher signed into the driver app (an admin or dispatcher account on a phone) has the same switch since 14 Sep 2026: a REQUIRE ACK pill in the composer of a DM and of the dispatch channel. Tapping it arms the next message only - text or a held voice transmission - and it clears itself after that one sends, exactly like the web tick box. Drivers never see the pill. In a DM the driver app also uses the walkie layout everywhere now: a full-width HOLD TO TALK bar, with the keyboard one tap away behind it.

Stop prompts, exactly

A stop prompt is a short instruction the driver must see at the stop: "sign the log book before opening the lockbox", "call the lab from the dock". It is not chat. It lives on the order or on the building's access point and travels with the driver's manifest, so it works with no message thread at all. Use it sparingly: it interrupts the driver at the moment of custody, and one that fires on every order stops being read.
Order Detail, Driver Prompt: the text and the Pop up on choice
There are two kinds:

Order prompt. Open the order in Order Detail, type into Driver Prompt, choose Pop up on, and save. banner only shows a Stop instructions card on the order screen with a Got it ✓ button and nothing else. pickup or delivery also makes it a blocking dialog at that swipe. It is local to StatVault and is never pushed to CXT.
Waypoint prompt. Open the building on Site Intelligence, open the access point's edit / rename form, fill Driver prompt, and tick require the driver to acknowledge it. It then fires on every order that resolves to that access point: the origin access point gates the pickup, the destination access point gates the delivery. Without the tick it is a card on the order screen only, which most drivers never open. Zippy can set the same field through its site-knowledge tool when you name the access point.

A building's access point form: Driver prompt and the acknowledge checkbox
What the driver sees when a prompt gates an action, from any starting point (order screen slide, mission-board swipe, or NFC scan): a dialog titled Before you pick up or Before you deliver with your text and two buttons. Got it records the acknowledgement and lets the action go through. Not yet cancels the swipe so they can go comply and try again. The order prompt is asked first, then the waypoint prompt, so a stop can show two dialogs. The dialog cannot be dismissed by tapping outside it.
What comes back:

Order prompt: a first-class event on the order's timeline, Acknowledged or Declined, stamped with where the driver was. Order Detail shows it under the prompt as Acknowledged: Yes with the time, No, declined ("went to comply"), or not yet. A Declined here is a Not yet tap, not a refusal.
Waypoint prompt: a row per Got it with the prompt text as it read at the time, so later edits do not rewrite history. Not yet on a waypoint prompt is not recorded at all.
Both appear in the Command Center Acks tab, Responses mode, as Task prompt and Waypoint prompt. The order screen's passive Got it ✓ counts as an acknowledgement too, and skips the later dialog for that session.

Identity and attribution

Messages carry your display name. Zippy sends as Zippy unless asked to send as you. A Playbook play with a Send a message action to the assigned driver also arrives as a normal chat message from Zippy (no acknowledgement required) - see Playbook. A play that sends to dispatchers or to a Slack channel instead never reaches the driver app. A web login and a driver account are different identities, joined only when the web user is linked to the driver record. When linked, a DM to that web user is rewritten to their driver identity so it reaches the phone, and they cannot pin or nudge themselves. If a user is linked to two drivers the server refuses to guess and keeps the web identity.

What the driver sends back

Text, photos and voice notes land in the thread you sent from; a photo on an acknowledgement card (or a message card) shows large and taps open full screen to pinch-zoom, just like in the thread; voice notes are transcribed into your thread and All traffic search. Reactions use six emoji. Acks and nudge answers queue on the phone while offline and send on reconnect; only Dismiss needs a live connection, so a dismiss you see was really delivered.

Things that confuse people

A stop prompt is not a message. Nothing appears in any chat thread, and the driver cannot reply to it. Its answer is the Got it at the stop.
A waypoint prompt only gates when the box is ticked. Untick it and the text is a card on the order screen that goes unread.
A notification gone from the driver’s phone is not an answer. The app clears its own notifications once they stop helping: a message’s once the driver opens that thread, an order’s once the order is confirmed, picked up, delivered or cancelled, and the oldest ones when the list gets long. A phone left full of old notifications stops showing new ones. An unanswered nudge reminder stays until it is answered.
Sent is not delivered. The server has it; no label changes until the phone renders it.
The green dot is a recent check-in, not a person looking at the phone. Chat contact in the last half minute or a GPS fix in the last 5 minutes. Phones Android has killed for battery show no dot and receive nothing.
Resolved is not answered. Resolve is your bookkeeping; the driver said nothing.
Org Broadcast goes to every driver with the app, not just your team; it lives in the Team tab because dispatchers see it too.
Zippy's on-page “Show me” actions are not driver messages. They only navigate, point to a help-authored control, demonstrate in an opted-in search box, or start a guided tour; nothing is sent to a phone or written to operational data.

The Chat panel's Zippy tab is an AI conversation, not a driver/team delivery lane; it now resumes the same persisted thread as the full Ask Zippy page.

Order Detail (the Driver Prompt box)
Site Intelligence (access-point prompts)
Chat
The Driver App
Command Center
Drivers
Zippy tools