WhatsApp Contact, Custom Menu Items & Offline Safeguards

Onro’s September 2026 release adds one-tap WhatsApp contact for pickup and dropoff contacts, gives admins their own custom shortcuts inside the driver app’s menu, and stops drivers from going offline in the middle of a route by accident.

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Key Takeaways

  • Takeaway IconDrivers can now message or call customers, pickup and dropoff contacts on WhatsApp with one tap, directly from order details.
  • Takeaway IconAdmins can add their own custom menu items (icon, title, and link) to the driver app’s menu from the admin panel.
  • Takeaway IconThe app now blocks drivers from switching to offline status while a route is active.
  • Takeaway IconScheduling time ranges are no longer fixed, so customers and dispatchers can book within a window that fits your operation.
  • Takeaway IconAdmins can now hide completed routes from the Driver app’s route list using the Working Type settings.
  • Takeaway IconBulk loading now shows two separate lists, so drivers can see what’s still left to scan and confirm the load faster.
  • Takeaway IconYou can now create orders back-to-back in the Web App: a New Order button on the success toast opens a fresh form right away.
  • Takeaway IconAlso in this release: the Edit button is back as its own button, and order rows now highlight on hover and open with a click anywhere on the row.

What’s New in the September 21st, 2026 Release?

This update brings three Web App improvements that make creating and managing orders faster and easier to navigate.

Create Orders Back-to-Back

Creating several orders in a row is now easier. After the customer creates an order, a toast notification appears and they go straight to the order details. To create another one, the customer can click New Order on the toast and a fresh form opens, ready for the next order. This cuts the delay between orders while keeping the details of the one just created in front of them.

Edit Access Restored

The Edit button is back as a separate button, with its own dropdown apart from the More menu. To keep the layout clean, the price and payment method sections now use the same compact style as the order creation form.

Onro Web App order details screen showing the Successfully created toast with a New Order button, and the separate Edit button with its Addresses and Order Info dropdown

Easier Access to Order Details from the Table

Table rows now have a hover effect that makes it clearer how to open order details. Order codes appear in a darker text color, and when you hover over a row, the code is highlighted so it stands out (colored, bold and underlined). The whole row is also clickable, which gives you more than one way to open an order.

What’s New in the September 16th, 2026 Release?

This update adds three improvements: more flexible scheduling, cleaner route views for drivers, and a faster way to load orders in the Driver app.

Custom Schedule Range Settings

Scheduling time ranges are no longer fixed. Customers and dispatchers can now select their own time range instead of a static window, so scheduling fits your operation.

Schedule Pickup screen showing a custom Start time and End time selector for choosing a flexible scheduling window

Done Routes Hide/Show Settings

You can now choose whether completed routes stay visible in the Driver app. This option is in the Working Type settings in the admin panel, so drivers see only the routes still relevant to them.

Bulk Load Orders List

Bulk loading in the Driver app now shows two separate lists: orders still waiting to be scanned, and orders already scanned. This makes it faster to find the remaining parcels and confirm everything is loaded before starting the route.

Driver app Out For Delivery screen showing Not Scanned and Scanned lists side by side during bulk loading

What’s New in the September 1st, 2026 Release?

Picture a driver standing outside a customer’s building, phone in hand, dialing a number that just rings and rings. The customer is three floors up, headphones in, not expecting a call. A text might reach them. A WhatsApp message almost certainly would. On the other hand, the contact’s phone number might be from abroad and cost the driver a fortune to call them directly, and they need to call the customer on WhatsApp to make sure he reaches them and doesn’t pay so much for a call. But until now, the driver’s only option inside the app was a phone call, so that’s what they tried, and that’s where the delivery stalled.

This release closes that gap, and two others like it. Drivers can now reach customers on WhatsApp with a single tap, admins can build their own shortcuts into the driver app’s menu, and a new safeguard keeps a driver from going offline in the middle of a route by accident. None of these are flashy on their own. Together, they take a little friction out of the parts of the job that happen dozens of times a day.

Reaching customers the way they actually respond

Why did the phone call fail in the story above? A phone call assumes the customer is free to talk right now, on a channel they may not even keep open. WhatsApp doesn’t ask for that. It sits in a thread the customer already checks throughout the day.

Drivers can now message pickup and dropoff contacts or the customer on WhatsApp directly from the order details screen, without leaving the app or hunting down a saved number. Admins decide whether the option is available at all, so it fits into however your business already handles contact windows and messaging policy.

Making the app feel like it belongs to your business

Ask an admin what they wish drivers saw first when they open the app, and “nothing beyond what shipped out of the box” is rarely the answer. Every business has resources drivers need that the app has never had a way to surface: a safety checklist, a support line, an internal wiki.

Admins can now configure their own menu items (icon, title, and link) from the admin panel and have them appear right inside the driver app’s menu alongside everything else. Point drivers to whatever resource matters most to your operation, without waiting on a feature request to get built.

Admin panel Driver App Custom Menu Items settings next to the driver app menu showing custom items like Report an Issue and Knowledge Base

Catching the moment nobody means to cause

Going offline mid-route is rarely intentional. A driver taps the wrong toggle, or a phone locks and unlocks at the wrong moment, and a route that should still be moving suddenly looks abandoned to everyone tracking it.

The app now checks route status before it lets a driver switch to offline. If a route has started, or the driver has an active route open, offline status simply isn’t available until that route wraps up.

None of this asks your drivers or your admins to do more. It asks the app to do a little more of the thinking on its own: reach the customer on the channel that actually works, put the right resource in front of the driver, catch the toggle that shouldn’t have been tapped. Small fixes, but the kind that add up across a full day of routes.

About the Author

Hiva Bahrami

Technical Support Manager at Onro, dedicated to ensuring courier businesses get the most out of their operations through reliable support and continuous improvement.

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