Skip to content
Kinetic Melbourne OCC User manual

Manual / Ways in

If you are a controller

For
a controller working the live network
Status
current
Covers
the Map Explorer, the Timetable tab, the overlays and the banner column
Last checked against the app
ebc6de9 (2026-08-20)

A route through this manual for the person watching the network while it runs. It is a reading order, not a summary: every page it sends you to is written once, in the section it belongs to, and this page only says why it is on your path and when to read it.

What your day looks like

You have the Map Explorer open, and you are answering questions about now. Where is that bus. Why is the 246 running eleven minutes down. What is on Sydney Road. Which of our routes does that closure hit. When is the next one due at this stop. Somebody rings and you have to say something true within about fifteen seconds.

What you own: the live picture, and what is said about it. Every colour on the map, every chip on a departure board and every figure in an overlay is something you may be asked to read out.

What you can leave alone: the seven sections of Operations Analysis and the punctuality view, which describe the roster and yesterday rather than now; drawing and approving diversions, which belongs to the planner's route; and accounts and data versions, which belong to the administrator's route. None of them is closed to you. They are simply not what your shift is made of.

Your first hour

Four pages, in this order. After them the app stops surprising you.

Read Why it is here
The screen Every page after this one names a control and expects you to know where it lives. This is the page that puts each one somewhere
Finding a route Selecting a route is the move you will make more often than any other, and it changes four things at once
Live buses and what the colours mean The dots are the screen you will stare at all shift. Read the bands before you read anything else off them
No prediction is not the same as on time The one misreading on that map that changes a decision. Two minutes, and it is the highest-value two minutes here

Your first shift

The rest of the live picture, in the order the questions tend to arrive.

Read Why it is here
Stops and the departure board "When is the next one" is the question you will be asked most, and the board answers it two different ways
Following one bus For when the question is about one vehicle rather than a route
Reading a timetable Where you go when the map cannot answer it — six views of one route, including the two that make bunching visible
The +1 clock Read it before your first late shift, not during it
Turning overlays on and off Which of the four your deployment actually has, and how to make the map open with the ones you want
Road incidents The overlay that answers "which of our routes does that closure hit"
Live congestion The road's own speed, which is a different question from how late a bus is
Bus frequency and headway Bunching and gapping, found for you rather than spotted by eye. Set the two lines to what your control room actually acts on
The banners, one by one Four notices, and only one of them is ever urgent. Knowing which saves you reacting to the other three

When you need it

Not reading, so much as knowing these exist.

Read When
The map looks wrong No stops, no buses, everything grey, everything the same blue, an overlay gone. Six symptoms, six causes
When a number is missing A dash, a grey, a dashed road, a (stale). Which kind of missing you have
Who to tell When it is the app that is wrong, and what to send so it can be fixed
Saved views Once you notice you set the same picture up every morning
Your operators and your depot Once "my routes" stops meaning the whole state
Finding your way back Once you have lost a screen you wanted back
Traffic radio If your deployment has a station, and you want the roads described rather than drawn
Colour and accessibility If the shipped colours are not ones you can separate
Glossary Any time a word on screen is not one you use

Where this route ends

There is no exam at the end of it. When the pages above are familiar, the sections this route skipped are open to you in the full tutorial in whatever order you meet them — and the quick start is the page to hand somebody who is covering your shift tomorrow and has never opened this app.