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.
Key Takeaways
Drivers can now message or call customers, pickup and dropoff contacts on WhatsApp with one tap, directly from order details.- Admins can add their own custom menu items (icon, title, and link) to the driver app’s menu from the admin panel.
- The app now blocks drivers from switching to offline status while a route is active.
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.
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.
