Most days I leave work around 5:30-6:30 and call my wife to let her know I’ll be home in 10 minutes or so (nice commute, huh?).
I typically call her on Scottsdale Rd., which is busy, and it’s obviously distracting to do so. I shouldn’t be calling people while driving (nor should your drivers be).
I am finally just going to automate an email/text message to her which tells her I’m leaving the office between 4-7 so she’ll have a heads up (e.g. I can pick up a kid from baseball, get home in time to eat with everyone else, etc.).
You can do this for any landmark arrival/departure in an effort to make fewer calls and be proactive about telling someone you’re on your way/arrived/etc.
This is SUPER-EASY to do in 1 minute and may save me from getting into an accident or getting a ticket for talking on the phone while driving.
Here’s how you do this in GPS Insight:
Choose Account: Schedule: Alerts:
Open GPS Insight Alerts Admin Area
Add a Landmark Alert:
Add a Landmark Alert
Then customize the particulars:
- Only my vehicle (Rob 4000)
- My wife’s email AND cell phone (note this is a true SMS, not an email to an @txt.att.net, so you don’t need to know the carrier)
- Only during weekdays between 4 PM and 10 PM
- All day during the weekends (so she knows when I’m heading home all day Saturday/Sunday)
- Only when I LEAVE (not enter) the landmark “GPS Insight Headquarters”
How to customize a Landmark Alert
Then it instantly starts checking, once per minute:
Alert is running now to notify my wife when I leave work automatically
Just to make sure the landmark definition includes where I would normally park, I’ll check that also:
Ensuring the landmark is accurate to where I park
Now when I leave, an automated text and email will go out to home, letting them know I’m on the way (e.g. save me some dinner…).
And I won’t need to be distracted on the road while heading home any longer.
Rob.
Here’s the first message, within a minute of me leaving the office:
"I'm Coming Home" Alert through GPS Insight
And the stop report to back it up:
Rob leaves the office at 5:35 and the alert is delivered at 5:36
Rob.
April 17th, 2011 5:17 pm
I once had a decent-size cleint who was after me for a very similar service, constantly. he had a fleet of vehiles which typical went about their buisnesson a large military installation. he specifically did not want to spend man hours monitoring them while they were “on campus” … but he was very interested in a way to notify key personnel when one of those vehicles went “off the reservation” … and somehow, putting a system monitor screen on a two-star general’s desk didn’t seem like the best solution
Also, is it safe to assume this can be set up to alert on entry into a zone, rather than departing? I could have sold a bunch of units to a client in Denver once, but his requirement was, he wanted his loading dock foreman and other key folks to be texted or paged _only_when particular vehicles were ‘witin range’ so they would clear dock space for high priority inbound cargo that need to be transfereed quickly.
I think there are even more applications for this … but, of course, your illustration of notifying “CINC House” when you ar ‘inbound’ is by far the most important one. LoL.
Happy Easter
April 17th, 2011 5:58 pm
Dave –
We definitely have the alerts for ENTERING (or both) a landmark. That’s the more typical use of the alert. There’s only so many “permutations” about how to achieve something for a customer using the typical alerts and reports — the challenge is actually supporting them all. Have a great Easter as well!
Rob