DroneBase Pilot App Feature Update: New Mission Available and Mission Accepted screens
New Mission Available Screen
The goal of the new Mission Available screen is to ensure that you are presented with all the information needed to determine whether or not you are able to accept & execute a Mission.
It is imperative that DroneBase pilots review all Mission details carefully. A properly executed Mission leads to a better customer experience, which leads to more DroneBase Missions. For this reason, the new DroneBase Mission Available screen is now divided into 4 different sections.
You must review and confirm that you have read each section before you're able to accept a Mission. In the animation below, you can preview what that looks like and then read more about each section:
Scope
The Scope section is where you will be able to find the approximate Mission Duration, Airspace information (regarding class and restrictions), as well as a shot list preview.
Preparation
Here you will find information on what Drones, Cameras, and Device types are accepted for the Mission. You will also be notified here of any special equipment you may be required to have.
The Preparation section is also where you will be notified of whether the Mission requires you to follow a script or contact a homeowner or customer. At this stage, you will only be told whether a script or contact is required, but will not receive the exact script or contact information until after the Mission is accepted.
Execution Details
In Execution Details, you will find information about recommended camera settings, full shot list and descriptions, and, if relevant, information regarding what 3rd party app to fly with or upload to.
Scheduling
Like before, there are now two types of Mission scheduling options. A Mission can be pre-scheduled, meaning you must agree to fly at a specific time. Alternatively, a Mission can be flexible, meaning you can fly anytime within a specified range of time. Here is a preview of the Scheduling section when the flight date is pre-scheduled:
The flexible Mission option now requires you to select an arrival time. We understand that this change is slightly less flexible than before; however, it is important for us to know exactly when our pilots are executing a Mission. Having this information provides us with greater insight into the availability of our Pilot Network, meaning more potential Missions for our customers and therefore our Pilots. This animation shows an example of options you'll see for flexible scheduling:
New Mission Accepted Screen
We have designed the new Mission Accepted screen to not only compliment the new Mission Available screen, but also to reduce the need for you to reference emails for Mission details. All the information that you were able to find on the Available screen will be presented to you on the new Mission Accepted screen in the form of a pre-flight checklist.
You will also be able to revisit the full shot list and access any required on-site information, such as Pilot script or on-site contact details. Previous features found on this page - such as pilot arrive/depart, rescheduling, fly button, and uploading - will remain the same.
Dispatch Changes
When Beta testing the new Mission screen, many pilots expressed that they found it to be informative and helpful. However, they were concerned about the amount of time that it now takes to accept a Mission due to competition with other pilots.
To be clear, most Missions are no longer dispatched using the “shotgun blast” method that pilots are familiar with. We are now dispatching to pilots based on several factors, such as distance to Mission, device requirements, and other relevant criteria.
With this new method of dispatch, we are only sending Mission invites to 1 pilot at a time with long intervals between sending the next invite. This does not mean that the possibility of another pilot accepting the Mission before you is eliminated. However, the chances of this happening are greatly reduced when compared to the previous method.
As mentioned before, it is imperative that pilots (you) carefully review the Mission details. With the new dispatch method in mind, we hope that you will feel more comfortable taking your time to review each Mission's details to ensure proper Mission execution.
