It's early morning. The queue is already full. For a telecom or fiber locate operation, that's every day. What makes it painful is that most of those tickets are low-risk work: jobs where the answer was always going to be "clear, no conflict." And every single one of them still must go through a screener before it moves.
That's the bottleneck most telecom operations live with. Not the field work. Not the locating itself. The manual screening process that sits between ticket receipt and ticket resolution, treating every request the same regardless of risk.
This is what that looks like, hour by hour. And then what changes when Auto-Screening takes the low-risk tickets off the table.
7:00 AM - The Screening Queue Opens
Your screening team logs in and starts pulling tickets. The 811-center pushed overnight volume, and the queue is already stacked. Each screener opens a ticket, reads the work description, checks the dig site location, cross-references the member code requirements, and makes a call: does this need a locator, or can it be cleared?
For a telecom operation, a large portion of those tickets don't require a locator in the field. But your screeners still review every one of them manually, regardless of whether a locate is actually needed. They open the ticket, verify the details, format the response correctly for that member code, and close it out. The same process, repeated on tickets with a predictable outcome, all morning long.
9:30 AM - A Screener Flags a Problem
One of your screeners catches a ticket near a recent fiber build. The dig site overlaps with buried conduit that went in six months ago. This is exactly the kind of ticket that needs a careful look, maybe a locator dispatched with extra context about the new infrastructure.
But the screener almost missed it. They were deep into a run of routine clears when this one came through. Every ticket gets the same level of attention when every ticket requires manual review, and the high-risk work competes for screener focus with the no-risk work. The no-risk work wins by volume.
11:00 AM - Dispatchers Start Pushing
Dispatchers are pulling from the screening queue, but the queue is backed up because screeners are still working through the morning volume. Low-risk tickets that should have been cleared hours ago are sitting in the same line as complex jobs that need detailed evaluation.
When screeners can't separate the routine work from the buried-plant work fast enough, dispatchers are left waiting. Screener capacity stretched thin with no way to prioritize by actual risk.
1:00 PM - Afternoon Volume Hits
The screening queue refills, and your team is now triaging, not screening. They're making fast decisions on which tickets to review first, which ones can wait, and which ones are going to sit until tomorrow morning.
Low-risk tickets from this afternoon won't clear until the morning shift picks them up. Positive Response deadlines start tightening, and the screeners who should be focused on the complex afternoon work are still finishing the routine morning backlog.
4:30 PM - End of Shift Audit
Your screening team processed hundreds of tickets today. A significant portion of them were low risk. The screeners knew the answer on those tickets within seconds, but the process still required them to open, review, format, and close each one individually.
The tickets near buried fiber, in new construction zones, or with unclear dig site boundaries got the same slot in the queue as everything else. Some of them waited, and a few of them almost slipped.
Tomorrow, same thing.
6:45 AM - Tickets Start Landing
The overnight volume arrives the same way it always does. But now, KorTerra's Auto-Screening rules are running the moment each ticket hits the system.
Tag rules evaluate every incoming ticket against your configured criteria, checking 60+ ticket attributes to determine if the ticket qualifies for auto-completion. Low-risk requests that match your rules are tagged automatically. Out-of-area tickets that match your geographic exclusion rules get tagged. Within seconds of arrival, each qualifying ticket triggers Quick Complete. The ticket closes with the correct Positive Response format, the correct action code, and the correct remarks for that member code. No screener opens it. No locator sees it.
By the time your screening team logs in, a significant chunk of the queue is already cleared.
7:00 AM - Screeners Start With a Different Queue
Your screening team logs in to a queue that's already been filtered. The tickets waiting for them are the ones that didn't match any auto-clear rule: tickets near buried fiber, tickets in active construction zones, tickets where the dig site overlaps with your facilities and the proximity data says a locator needs to evaluate.
Instead of starting the day working through routine clears, your screeners start with the tickets that actually need their expertise. The first ticket they open requires a real decision.
9:30 AM - The Critical Ticket Gets Caught
That same ticket near the recent fiber build shows up. But this time, the screener isn't buried in a run of routine clears. They're focused. The queue is smaller, and every ticket in it is there because it didn't qualify for auto-completion. The screener reads the dig site details, checks the proximity data from Dig Site Scope, and flags it for dispatch with a note about the new conduit.
This is what screener capacity is supposed to be used for: complex tickets, judgment calls, and risk assessment on work near buried infrastructure.
11:00 AM - Dispatchers Pull From a Clean Queue
Field tickets are available on time. There's no backlog of routine work clogging the screening queue, and dispatchers are pulling tickets that have been screened, evaluated, and are ready for field assignment.
Manual review is reserved for tickets where your buried facilities are actually at risk. Locators deploy where they're needed.
1:00 PM - Afternoon Volume is Manageable
The second wave hits, and screeners have capacity. They're not still catching up on this morning's backlog. Emergency tickets get reviewed immediately. Complex jobs get the time they need. The queue moves at the pace of the work that actually requires human review.
Auto-Screening continues to clear qualifying tickets as they arrive. Afternoon volume clears the same way morning volume did: automatically, with the correct response format, logged with a full audit trail.
4:30 PM - End of Shift, Different Numbers
Your screening team still processed tickets all day, but the mix changed. Instead of spending most of their time on tickets where the answer was always "clear," they spent that time on the work that needed evaluation, context, and decision-making.
Positive Response deadlines weren't a scramble. Overnight tickets don't carry over. The audit trail on every auto-cleared ticket shows exactly which rule triggered, what data was evaluated, and when the completion was filed. If anyone asks why a ticket was cleared without a locator, the answer is documented.
The ticket volume doesn't shrink. Telecom and fiber operations are growing, and new market expansion means more tickets, not fewer. Auto-Screening doesn't reduce volume. It changes where your team's time goes.
Low-risk tickets clear without screener time. Routine requests that match your configured rules clear automatically at the point of receipt, before a screener ever touches them.
Screeners focus on buried infrastructure risk. When routine tickets are removed from the queue, what's left is the work that actually requires evaluation: proximity to buried fiber, new construction zones, and ambiguous dig site descriptions. That's where screener expertise matters.
Right-of-way and bore scope filtering catches more than you'd expect. Tag rules can reference bore type, ROW flags, and work descriptions to identify additional low-risk categories beyond the obvious ones. Operations that build rules across multiple ticket attributes see even more volume shift to auto-completion.
Dig Site Scope adds spatial precision. For markets where you have buried plant alongside aerial, proximity-based rules ensure that auto-clears are grounded in real facility data, using proximity measurements from 1 foot to 700+ feet. Dig site size adds another layer, so only the lowest-risk tickets clear without review.
Every auto-clear is auditable. The rule that triggered, the data that was evaluated, the timestamp. Compliance documentation isn't a separate step. It's built into the completion.
Your rules, your control. You configure the criteria. You update them when operations change. No IT ticket, no waiting on KorTerra to make adjustments.
A telecom locate operation adding ticket volume through new market expansion can't screen its way to efficiency by adding headcount. Manual review treats every ticket the same. Auto-Screening doesn't.
Auto-Screening doesn't necessarily replace your screening team. It gives them back the hours they're currently spending on tickets with a predictable outcome and puts those hours on the tickets that actually need a human decision.
If your operation is processing routine clears manually, your screeners are doing work the system could handle. Learn more about KorTerra's newest feature, Auto-Screening, by reaching out to our team!
KorTerra is the leading provider of damage prevention software, protecting billions of dollars in underground infrastructure. For over 30 years, the leading stakeholders in gas distribution, pipeline operation, telecommunications, electric distribution, contract locating, and city, county, and state governments have trusted KorTerra as their damage prevention solution. KorTerra helps mitigate risk and ensure the safety of field personnel by providing secure software platforms for processing 811 locate tickets, tracking and reporting asset damages, meeting regulatory compliance, and more. Explore additional solutions at korterra.com and follow KorTerra on LinkedIn.
Media Contact:
Paige Nygaard – KorTerra, Inc.
952.368.1911
marketing@korterra.com