Every call carries two kinds of number, and they arrive at different moments.
- A Trip ID is issued the moment the trip is entered, before anyone is assigned.
- An incident number is issued when the first unit takes the call.
On the dispatch board and the incidents page these sit in two columns, Trip ID and Incident #. The Incident # column is blank on calls nobody has picked up yet, including scheduled and recurring trips booked weeks ahead, so the Trip ID is how you refer to those calls. The calendar and the trip header show the Trip ID until an incident number exists.
Why they are separate
Recurring and scheduled transports are often created long before the day they run. If those bookings took incident numbers at creation, a month of future trips would use up the numbers before the calls actually happened, and the run of numbers would no longer follow the order calls were worked.
Holding the incident number back until a unit takes the call keeps the numbering in the order work really happened.
On a call with more than one unit
The call keeps one Trip ID. Each responding unit gets its own incident number, so two crews on the same call each have their own number and their own chart. The Incident # column lists all of them, one per line, and searching any one of them finds the trip.
Changing the format
An administrator can set how both are built under Settings, then Incident Numbering. Formats are made from building blocks: {yyyy} for a four-digit year, {yy} for two, {mm} for the month, and {seq:6} for the running number, which must come last.
Important: a Trip ID never changes once issued. Changing the format affects trips created from that point on, not the ones already in your system.