Drag-and-Drop Reordering
On the Queue tab of the staff PWA, each entry has a drag handle (the three-line icon on the left). Long-press it and you can drag the entry up or down.
Let go and the platform recalculates positions for everyone affected. If anyone whose position changed is watching the public status page, they'll see it update within ~5 seconds. Customers waiting on SMS notifications don't get a 'you've moved' message every time someone shifts — only when their position is now 1 or 2 (the reminder fires).
When Reordering Is Appropriate
Good reasons to reorder:
- VIP or High priority bumps — you flagged the entry as priority but they're at position 8; drag them up to align with their level.
- Resource availability — a 6-top opens up before a 2-top, and the next 6-top party is at position 4 while a 2-top is at position 1. Drag the 6-top up.
- Service recovery — a customer was disappointed with something earlier and you're prioritizing their re-visit.
- Order correction — the entries got logged in the wrong order due to a staff error.
Bad reasons to reorder:
- Friend of staff. Customers see this; it's the fastest way to lose trust in your queue.
- Convenience — moving entries because it's easier than improving your service speed.
- Frequent rebalancing. Reorder twice in a shift, fine. Reorder every 10 minutes and your customers will notice.
Transferring Between Queues
Sometimes a customer needs to move to a different queue. A walk-in clinic has separate queues for sick visits vs. routine; a restaurant has separate queues for indoor vs. patio (when zones aren't enough — see Priority & Zones).
From an entry's detail panel, tap Transfer. Pick the destination queue. The entry moves over with all its data intact (name, phone, party size, notes, notification preferences). They get an SMS letting them know they've been moved and what their new position is.
Transfers are recorded in the entry history, so you can see later that 'this entry started in Walk-Ins and was moved to Express'. Useful for analytics and customer-service investigations.
What Customers See
Customers watching the public status page see their position update live (within 5 seconds of any change). They don't see who's ahead of them, just their own number.
By SMS, customers only get messages on key events: joined, paged, almost-up reminder, no-show, requeued, transferred. A simple position bump from 8 to 6 doesn't send an SMS — the platform avoids the 'your phone keeps buzzing' problem.
The one thing customers cannot see, by design, is whether their position changed because someone else got bumped, or because someone left, or because you reordered. From their side it's just 'I'm closer than I was.'