Mission Planner Guide

The planner turns a drawn area into a real DJI flight plan — lawnmower path, camera settings, the works — and gets it onto your aircraft through Pilot 2 Cloud. Every mission belongs to a Project, so the flight, the processing, and the delivery stay on one record. Your missions are listed under Field › Missions › Missions · /field/missions.

Starting a mission

Office › Work › Field › DSP · /office/work/field/dsp

1. In the left menu, click Office › Work › Field › DSP, then the folder, then the project.
2. Click “Add mission”. The planner opens with the “Set up this mission” box. (The arrow next to “Add mission” has more ways in, such as “Pull from FlyGuys” and “Attach an existing mission…”.)
3. Fill in “Mission title”, pick a “Mission type”, and type the “Site address”.
4. Click “→ Continue to map” (or “Skip — just open the map”).

Mission types:

• Mapping — ortho, 3D and measurements (solar, roofing, survey, construction).
• Pin Drop Mapping — mapping plus client pins for towers and poles.
• Basic Media Capture — photos and video only, no processing.
• Powerline / Pole Corridor — fly a line of poles along a corridor.
• Pole Inspection — track per-pole and per-span field status, no route generation.
• Roof Inspection (Thermal) — shown when your account has it.

On Field › Missions › Missions, “+ New from a project” takes you to the DSP page to do the same. Inside an open mission, the left panel’s “Manage” tab has “＋ New mission”, which opens “New Flight Plan” (/plan/missions/new) with three choices: “Manual Flight Plan” (recommended), “Bulk Upload KMLs” (each KML in a folder or ZIP becomes its own draft mission), and “Pull from FlyGuys”.

When you finish a boundary, the planner shows “✓ Mission saved” with “＋ Add another mission” and “Back to the project”.

Finding the site

The map controls sit in one row: the basemap button (it shows the current map, e.g. “🗺 Satellite ▾”, with Satellite, Street and Dark inside), “✏ Boundary ▾”, “◱ Layers”, and the search box “Search address or place…”.

1. Type at least three characters of the address. Suggestions appear.
2. Pick one (or click “Go”). The map flies to the property, drops a marker, and remembers the location for this mission.

Drawing the area

1. Click “✏ Boundary ▾”, then “✏ Draw Polygon”. (On a corridor mission it is “✏ Draw Corridor Line”.)
2. Tap each corner of the area on the map, then tap the first point to finish. Esc cancels.

The moment the boundary saves, the planner draws your actual flight path as a dashed yellow lawnmower pattern, and the readout bar shows Area (acres), GSD (cm/px), Distance, Duration, and Photos — computed from the real route, so they update as you change settings.

Have the boundary as a file already? “✏ Boundary ▾” › “📁 Upload KML” imports a KML/KMZ polygon as the flight area (a multi-polygon file can be split into separate missions).

Flight settings

The right-hand panel has two tabs — “Ortho Collection” and “Oblique Collection” — headed by two numbers: Ortho GSD (cm/px) and Altitude (ft). Click either number to jump to its row in Settings. There, “Ortho GSD” and “Route Altitude” are linked: change one and the other follows, so you can plan by the resolution you owe the client or by the ceiling you’re allowed.

Settings also covers Altitude Mode (relative to takeoff or MSL), Speed, “Course Angle” (the grid direction), “Start Corner”, and “Upon Completion”. Advanced Settings holds the photogrammetry knobs: “Frontal Overlap Ratio” (default 85%), “Side Overlap Ratio” (default 70%), “Photo Mode”, “Safe Takeoff Altitude”, “Margin (%)”, and “Elevation Optimization” (keeps GSD consistent over changing ground).

Everything saves automatically — watch the “Saved” pill at the top of the left mission panel.

Picking the drone and camera

1. Click the drone pill at the top left (“SELECT DRONE”, “tap to choose”).
2. Pick your drone. The list is your own equipment (add gear under Office › Equipment › Equipment · /office/equipment), matched to flight profiles by name — a drone saved as “DJI matrice4e” still resolves to the Matrice 4E profile.
3. Under the drone, pick the camera: wide, tele, or thermal payloads where the model has them.

Owned drones we don’t yet have a flight profile for appear under “Owned — planner profile pending”, and consumer drones under “Owned — no automated route export”; they can’t generate a route yet.

Camera angle

By default the camera flies nadir (−90°, straight down). Turn on Custom Camera Angle in Advanced Settings to set your own gimbal pitch — the Exported gimbal pitch readout always shows exactly what the exported plan will fly.

Reference overlays (KML/KMZ)

Click “◱ Layers”, then “＋ Add KML / KMZ overlay”, to add reference overlays — DOD airspace, your COA-approved area, parcels. These are visual only: they are never flown and never change the flight boundary. Mark one as your authorization area and the planner checks whether your boundary’s corners sit inside it and warns if the boundary extends outside. (To import a boundary you’ll actually fly, use “✏ Boundary ▾” › “📁 Upload KML” instead.)

Getting the plan to the aircraft

In the left mission panel, open the “Plan” tab:

• “☁ Push to Cloud” — generates the DJI flight plan (WPML) and uploads it to SkySuite’s Pilot 2 Cloud, where it appears in DJI Pilot 2’s Cloud tab on your controller. The status pill reads “Pushed to Cloud ✓”, “Cloud outdated” (you changed settings since pushing; push again to refresh), or “Not pushed”.
• “📱 Send to controller” — opens “📱 Controller link”: a no-login URL to bookmark in your controller’s browser. Missions with generated flight-plan files (bulk imports, corridor legs) list their KMZ downloads there for import into DJI Pilot 2’s Mission Library.

To push several missions at once: on Field › Missions › Missions, switch to “All plans”, select the cards, and click “⬆ Push to Cloud” (or “↻ Sync stale”).

Pole and powerline work

On a Powerline / Pole Corridor or Pole Inspection mission, the ⚡ Poles panel replaces the mapping tools: add poles by clicking the map (or import them from a KML/KMZ of points), connect midspan lines between poles, and track each structure’s field status — To do / Done / Issue / Refly — with a field report export (“⇩ CSV”). Corridor missions can additionally generate per-pole orbit passes (radius, photos per ring, altitude, gimbal, capture mode) as downloadable KMZ legs.

Common questions

Why doesn’t my drone show up in the picker? The picker lists your fleet — add the aircraft under Office › Equipment › Equipment first. If it’s listed under “planner profile pending,” we don’t have its flight profile yet, so route export isn’t available for that model.

Where are the overlap settings? Under Advanced Settings in the right panel: “Frontal Overlap Ratio” and “Side Overlap Ratio”. Defaults (85/70) suit most mapping jobs.

I changed the plan after pushing — do I need to do anything? Yes. The pill changes to “Cloud outdated” — click “☁ Push to Cloud” again in the left panel’s “Plan” tab, and if the plan was already downloaded on the controller, remove it and download it again from Pilot 2’s Cloud tab.

Does adding a KML overlay change my flight path? No. Layers added with “◱ Layers” are reference-only. Only “📁 Upload KML” under “✏ Boundary ▾” (boundary import) changes what you fly.