Today I am happy to announce the release of my newest open source plugin, Delivery Drivers for WooCommerce.
As you can probably guess by the name, it’s a plugin for WooCommerce that adds functionality for businesses who offer delivery and would like greater control over the entire process.
Part of the reason that I built this plugin is because of a client need via WP Dispensary, but I did not want to pigeonhole it as another dispensary plugin.
Since there’s many businesses that offer delivery beyond just the cannabis industry, I knew this plugin would be better built as it’s own separate entity.
And that’s what this blog post is about – the release of the Delivery Drivers for WooCommerce plugin, and what you can expect when using it.
Delivery Businesses & WooCommerce
We’ve all seen the rise of grocery delivery services – the tides are changing, and where we used to enjoy trips across town, consumers are now looking for ways to have things brought to us.
And that’s where delivery businesses in the food industry (hello, Pizza) come into play.
Studies indicate that 10% of consumers use food delivery services at least once a week, and that’s just one service business that offers delivery.
Restaurant and grocery stores not only offer delivery for their customers, but place orders and have items delivered to them on a weekly basis, too.
So this same plugin can power the restaurant’s online delivery management, and also power the restaurant’s food vendors who deliver truck loads of fresh produce every week.
And while upwards of $4B dollars was spent ordering food delivery in 2015, we cannot overlook the multi-billion dollar cannabis industry that offer delivery services and need an easy way to manage drivers and track orders.
With industries this large, there’s no reason for WooCommerce to not have a delivery driver system for businesses who need them.
Since I couldn’t find anything remotely useful available, I decided to build it myself.
How the plugin works
Now that we’ve covered some of the reasons behind building the plugin and the markets that it serves, let’s jump into how it actually works!
Delivery Drivers WooCommerce Settings
First things first, once you’ve installed & activated the plugin, you’re going to want to head over to the Settings page.
You can find the Delivery Drivers settings by going to WooCommerce -> Settings -> Delivery Drivers.
The settings page allows you to add your Google Maps API key which is required in order for the map to display on your driver’s dashboard.
You can also add your dispatch phone number, which then adds a contact button on the order page in your drivers dashboard.
Adding this contact info lets your drivers easily connect to your dispatch center with any questions they have about the order.
Assigning a driver to each order
Once you’ve taken care of the settings page, it’s time to start assigning a driver to your order.
In your dashboard, go to WooCommerce -> Orders and then edit any of your orders, which will bring up a screen like the image below.
In the Delivery Driver box on the right side of the screen, you’ll see a list of every user in your website with the Driver role that you can choose from.
Then, on the left side of the screen where the Status: is currently Processing, you can change the status to Driver Assigned.
Drivers Capabilities
Now that we’ve covered how the administrator of the website can work with the Delivery Drivers for WooCommerce plugin, let’s see what capabilities are given to your drivers.
Views from the Driver dashboard
On the front end of your website, the plugin adds a new “Delivery Drivers” tab to the WooCommerce My Account page, as seen below.
When the driver clicks to view the Delivery Drivers page, they are given a table view of each order that’s been assigned to them.
These details include the order ID number, the date of the order, it’s current status and the total cost for the order.
The order ID links to a separate page for your driver to further manage the order.
Order status management by your drivers
Once your driver clicks the ID number they’d like to view order details for, they are displayed with another page, like in the screenshot below.
This page shows basic order details, along with a list of items in the order, the delivery address and Google map of the location, plus order status management.
Order Status management
Under the map is where your driver can change the order status. The default option is to change the order status from Driver Assigned to Out for Delivery.
Once they’ve clicked the button to mark the order as Out for Delivery, the status option changes to allow the driver to mark the order as Complete after they’ve made the delivery.
The goal is to give your driver the ability to manage the order status themselves and free up your time to spend it elsewhere on the business – or hell, maybe even take some time off ?
Delivery Drivers for WooCommerce PRO
I’m happy to announce that you can get the Pro version of the Delivery Drivers for WooCommerce plugin from Devio Digital.
The Pro features include:
- Auto-assign drivers when an order is submitted
- Accept driver applications from the Driver Dashboard
- Email driver when they’ve been assigned a new order
- Email customer when the driver marks an order as “Out for Delivery”
- Email administrator when the driver marks an order as “Completed”
Download the Delivery Drivers for WooCommerce Plugin
You can download the Delivery Drivers for WooCommerce plugin from the official WordPress plugin directory, or by searching for “Delivery Drivers” in the WordPress dashboard under Plugins -> Add New.
Good day,
I love your plugin and the concept of the plugin.
Please i want to know if my customers or clients can track their order in a timeline or detailed format on the shipment or delivery of their order more like an iframe or anything that could show them the process from their woocommerce dashboard..
please i will appreciate your response or reply.
Great plugin!.
I would like to know if i can have this functionality to send and validate OTP to the customer before delivering the order? Thank you
Hey Rathan, thanks for the compliment about the plugin. I appreciate it. That’s not currently an option but it could be custom developed using the hooks/filters within the plugin (both the free and pro versions).
Hello, great plugin. Is there any way to get the driver info in the api endpoints?
Thanks, I’m glad you like the plugin! API endpoints will be added into a future update – hopefully within the next few days if I can get the extra time.
Hi Robert. How can Delivery driver reassign order to a new customer.
There’s not a way for the driver to reassign the customer of the order. Would you want them to be able to do this from the Order Details page when they’re reviewing the customer’s order?
Hello,
This is great plugin as per real life requirement, but my driver-dashboard page is showing empty. i don’t which shortcode i need to assigned on driver-dashboard page so that driver can see all his assigned orders.
Please help
Thanks
Thanks, I’m glad you like the plugin!
There’s an endpoint added to the My Account page in WooCommerce that displays the driver dashboard. If you’re using a different setup for your pages and would like to add the driver dashboard to another page, you can add the [ddwc_dashboard] shortcode.
Hi, great plugin, and it seems to be one of a kind!
My question is, do you have any plans to integrate it with dokan multivendor woo-commerce plugin?
I’m building a multi vendor market place and i’m using dokan to manage all the different vendors. the addition i need the most in this plugin is to display the vendor name and address and contact info in the driver’s end to be able to know where to pick up the package from.
Thanks in advance
Thanks for the comment, and I’m glad you like the DDWC plugin.
Yes, I’ve been working on Dokan integration and will have that included in a new Pro version, release date tbd. It’ll update the Google Maps to use waypoints so the driver can get directions to the vendor and customer.
Is the dokan integration available yet?
Just about. It took a little longer than expected to put together, but there’s actually more integration happening than I originally thought so it’ll be worth the wait 🙂
Hello,
Thanks for the plugin. I’m also trying to use it with dokan multivendor. is it still not ready?
It’s been a longer process than expected to get the plugin ready for multivendor support but it’s being actively worked on and I hope to have a stable release ready within the next month or two.
This is going to be great. I’ve been refreshing this page almost every day for months for updates. Glad to know progress is coming along. I can’t wait to get it integrated.
I just got the pro version. i am not able to see delivery options under Woocommcerce -> settings page.
Have you installed and activated both the free and the Pro version? They both have to be activated in order to work, since the Pro version extends the free version.
You know what ? this is what i looked for , thank you man and goodjob sir 🙂
Hii,
It’s superb job. I have an issue that I don’t able to see the delivery driver tab on my wordpress dashboard. What to do ?? How to add driver now ??
Thank you, I’m glad you like the plugin.
So, you are having trouble adding new drivers? If so, you can add drivers by going to
Users -> Add User, and selecting “Driver” as theUser Role.If it’s an issue with the “Driver Dashboard” link not displaying in the menu items on your front-end
My Accountpage, you can contact me and I’m happy to help.Yes, I have issue with “”Driver Dashboard” link not displaying in the menu. What to do ??
Is there any method to reach directly to Driver dashboard.
Hello @deviorobert and thank you for this great service.
As someone has already asked, is it possible for the customer to track their product in real-time?
Hey Andrew, thanks for the comment, I’m glad you like the plugin!
This is going to be possible in the next release, I’m just wrapping up the final edits/tests to the code.
Hi
I’ve been looking for such a plugin for a while and this seems great. Thank you.
Two things which would come in handy for drivers:
– delivery address or at least town/city to show on order list assigned to the drivers
– signature from customer when actually delivering… This could also automatically change status to completed our better still give admin option to choose custom status.
Will the driver see completed our cancelled orders? If so, this would clutter his dashboard when orders build up.
Will be definitely be testing it out this week.
Hi @deviorobert,
This is a great plugin. Can you please let me know if there is any option to add a photo of the delivery done and uploaded or something like a live photo of delivery as proof (with Location time and date stamp).
I am actually looking for a plug in that not only stores the pic, but also send the pic (via email or text message) to the client.
Hello. Great Plugin! Thank you.
I would like to ask for your help, can I show the order’s address in text instead of map on the Driver Dashboard?
Yes, just leave the Google Maps API key blank in the settings, and by default the text will show.
Is is possible to add multiple locations?
Kind regards,
Patrick
This could be done with the Dokan multivendor plugin so each store gets it’s own address.
Good day! I’ve tried the free version and looking forward to upgrading to Pro. Any estimate date for release of Dokan support? Thanks in advance, great work! 🙂
Dokan support has been built into the DDWC Pro version already 🙂
This seems like I was looking for. I just need the option for the drivers be able to set online/offline and if possible to get them into groups.
Is this possible with your plugin?
Drivers are able to turn their availability on/off in the driver dashboard.
I’m not sure what type of groups you’d like them to be put into, but in a future release there will be the ability to assign a driver to a specific shipping zone in WooCommerce.