Working together

Several people can use Bottle at once. Nobody is locked out of anything. Instead, you can see who else is here and what they are doing, and follow along.

Who else is here

When somebody else in your business has the same page open, their initials show at the top right, next to the bell, in their own colour. Hover over them to see who, and how they are:

• A gentle pulse: they are there and doing things.
• Still: the page is in front of them, but they have not touched it for a couple of minutes.
• Faded, with a grey dot: the page is open in a tab they are not looking at.

Nobody else here, and nothing shows. Somebody who closes the page drops off within a minute.

The same person in two tabs counts once. To see this working, it takes two different people in the same business.

Who is looking at an order, invoice or customer

When somebody else has an order, an invoice or a customer open, you can see it, wherever they opened it from:

• On the record itself. Open the same order, invoice or customer and their face shows beside its name, with the same pulse, stillness or fading.
• In the lists. On Orders, Invoices and Customers, a small face sits on the row of anything somebody else has open.

So before you change an order, you can see whether somebody is already looking at it, perhaps on the phone to the customer.

Planning rounds together

On Rounds, more than one person can plan at once, and each can see the others doing it:

• Who else is planning. A bar along the bottom of the map says who else is planning the day you are looking at.
• Their changes. A drop moved or a round planned appears on your screen as they do it.
• Their pointer. It moves with their name on it, over the map and over the panels and lists, landing on the same stop, row or order they are pointing at, whatever the size of your screen.
• What they have open. Their initials show beside the round they have open.
• What they are moving. While they drag a drop, their pointer says what it is (“moving The Boathouse”) and the drop lights up wherever it shows.

Following somebody

Press Follow on the bar at the bottom of the map, or press somebody’s initials at the top right. While you follow them:

• your screen goes to the day they are on;
• whatever they open, a round or the orders waiting, opens for you too;
• the map keeps their pointer in view.

A bar says who you are following. Press Stop following, or do anything yourself, and you stop. Following never changes the other person’s screen, and nobody’s screen follows yours unless they choose to.

What only appears on their screen, like the menu they get by right-clicking a drop, or an order they open from a stop, does not open for you. Their pointer shows where they are.

When two people change the same round

Most changes are small and safe together: two people moving different drops at the same time is fine. A few change a whole round at once: rearranging its stops, Work out the best order again, and scrapping it. If somebody else changed that round a moment before, yours is not made. Bottle says so and shows the round as it is now, so you can have another go, rather than quietly undoing what they did.

Assistants wait for people

An assistant or another system connected to Bottle (with an API key, or connected to your account) cannot change a day’s rounds while a person is planning that day. It can carry on once nobody has changed that day for two minutes. People are never held up by an assistant.

Drivers are never stopped by any of this. Loading the van, delivering and taking cash always go through, and so does taking an order.