Mar 01 2010
We just added a couple nice new capabilities to make it trivial to create a map on the GPS Insight dashboard by dragging and dropping either a single vehicle or the name of the group up at the top of the dashboard.
Just be careful to move dashlets by dragging on the RIGHT side of the title bar now (or you’ll create a map accidentally).
Here’s a quick video which shows how to do it:
Thanks,
Rob
Feb 18 2010
Recently a prospective customer asked us to add a “half-height” map. We did that within a few days (as well as a 2x, 3x height map).
When using it though, I thought it took too long to use the menus to choose the right vehicle, etc.
I decided it would be really convenient to allow the user to “tear off” a vehicle from a location, alert, etc. dashlet.
Now you can just drag & drop ANY VEHICLE from any dashlet onto the dashboard to create an instant half-height “follow this vehicle” map:
Drag a vehicle to instantly create a half-height "follow this vehicle" map
As soon as you drop the “map” icon which is displayed, that vehicle is now displaying in a map which follows it, and shows all of the vehicles from the group associated with the dashlet you dragged it from (this was a complaint from the prospective customer about their current vendor — this type of map only showed the single vehicle):
Instantly create 5 maps just by dragging 5 vehicles to the dashboard
We let you show up to 8 maps per dashboard window. This took me 2 seconds per moving vehicle to create these maps using this new capability. We will start allowing other drag & drop capabilities on the dashboard now that we’ve started to use this type of functionality.
Really convenient! Remember, if you want to keep this particular layout, you need to save it or save as in the hierarchy save tools:
Save your Hierarchy Changes!
As usual, if you have any tips or requests for new capabilities or ideas, please let us know!
Thanks,
Rob.
Feb 18 2010
We now have support for saving a custom hierarchical view — as well as using that in a scheduled report.
We still have not given access to the hierarchy to all customers, but are happy to allow you access as a beta customer if you just ask.
Here’s how it works:
When running a report, select “Custom Hierarchy Selection”:
Saving a Custom Hierarchy Selection
Then after running the report, an intermediate screen is shown where you can choose/exclude any groups from the hierarchies you have defined:
Drag and Drop hierarchy nodes to include them in the custom group
Choose another hierarchy and drag/drop nodes to “intersect” (restrict to the vehicles in the SouthWest which are Delivery, Parts, or Service), and “exclude” (in this case get rid of all Nevada and “big rig’s.”
Restricting to just the 55 vehicles you need
Then save this highly custom group as “MySavedHierarchy” by typing the group name and pressing “save.”
Saving a custom hierarchy group
Then click on “Run Report” to run the report you started & you’ll see that the Vehicle Group is a Custom Hierarchy with those 55 vehicles:
Report based on a custom hierarchy
(tip: make sure to refresh the main site to pick up the newly created hierarchy group in the main menu) Now you can use it to run any report moving forward:
Recalling a saved hierarchy group for running your GPS Tracking reports
Additionally, they now show up under scheduled report choices:
Use a Custom Hierarchy Group in your scheduled reports
Any time you make a change to your hierarchy structure or members moving forward, they will automatically be reflected in the ad-hoc or scheduled reports you run using that custom group.
This is a big deal for large organizations since they can “intersect” multiple functional/organizational/geographic groups of vehicles very easily without having to manually (tediously) create groups for every combination of interest.
Rob.
Feb 03 2010
We recently made some new enhancements to our Dashboard Maps.
Now you can size them in any of 4 heights (and the width is determined by the dashboard style you choose).
Additionally, we allow you to display 8 maps per window now, vs. 4. You can still open as many windows as your PC is OK with.
In addition, we now allow you to “follow” a single vehicle, and display ALL the vehicles around it (determined by which vehicle group you choose).
Here is a screen shot of 3 “half-height” maps which are all “following” a different vehicle (noted in the title area of each map):
3 "Follow me" half-height maps in GPS Insight's Dashboard
These are only the right-most column of the full dashboard, which has a “twice-height map in the middle:
New multi-height maps within GPS Insight
You can choose which vehicle or vehicle group to SHOW, which landmark group to DISPLAY, which vehicle or vehicle group to FOLLOW, and which zoom level to use. Additionally, the same Map Group choices apply so you can “tie” these maps to the other various dashlets (e.g. location, alerts, landmarks, etc.).
As always, click on the “pencil” icon at the top right of the map dashlet to open the edit settings screen which looks like this:
GPS Insight Map Dashlet Settings
Make sure to save your dashboard here:
Save your changes to the GPS Insight dashboard!
An upcoming enhancement will allow you to simply “tear off” a vehicle from a dashlet to automatically show that vehicle in a “follow me” map, which will make it quicker to create these ad-hoc maps for vehicles you may have a short term interest in following closely.
Rob.
Feb 02 2010
This new report shows the speeding and “slow-poke” tendencies of your individual drivers.
It can be run for a month at a time, and is available here (we are running the report for just the OKL group for the month of January):
Launching the GPS Insight Speed Summary report
Here is the part which allows you to rank by any of the major columns (click on the column heading) and you can see that OKL-69633-Service-Jasoncb is the top speeder on average. This is relative to the speed limit ONLY when he is exceeding the speed limit.
Ranking your speeders using GPS Insight's new Speed Summary Report
Conversely, you can click on “Laggard Avg” which will give you the top “slow-poke” (tie between the Manager and Chadc). This is ONLY when the driver is going LESS than the posted speed limit.
This is useful because both activities are undesirable. Padding hours by going slow is just as bad as being reckless and wasting fuel by speeding.
Clicking on any of the “at a glance” graphs to the right brings up a graph which compares a single driver’s speeding profile to the the entire group:
Graphically showing differences between a driver and the group average
This is the 4th in a series of enhancements to our speeding reports and graphs.
Since occasional discrepancies between GPS Insight’s data and actual posted speed limits occur, we have found it much more useful to run on a month-by-month “Macro” level to indicate undeniable trends in speeding.
Future enhancements will include posted speed limit alerts, group-by-group comparisons of speeding/lagging trends, and historical comparisons to prove that progress has been made in improving efficiency and curbing speeding using GPS Insight reports and alerts. Additionally, certain fields within these reports will launch supporting reports (e.g. a speeding report for just that single vehicle, to include violations on a map, etc.). Rapid acceleration and deceleration will be detected and reported upon for certain GPS Insight devices (notably the GO-3000 and GPSI-4000).
This report is available for all customers immediately, and currently has data going back to December 2009. We will add support for earlier months as we add functionality.
Thanks,
Rob.
Jan 23 2010
We have been busy this month and released several new features to the dashboard (as well as posted speed limit reports/graphs which I will talk about separately).
First, there are new dashboard layouts, and they are more intuitively labeled:
Intuitive dashboard styles
Choosing “2 wide L” will give you a wider column on the left and a thinner column on the right. Choosing “4 wide” will give you 4 columns. These various layouts are useful depending on what type of style you like for your dashboard setup.
As always, after making changes, make sure to save your dashboard settings!
Next, we have added the ability to send routes to Garmins from the Route Dashlet.
After optimizing a route with the route dashlet (and optional feature), just choose a Garmin-integrated vehicle and click on send — the optimized route is sent instantly to that Garmin:
Send a full optimized route to a Garmin
Send a full optimized route to a Garmin
Last, we made our “closest to” dashlet more useful by adding both drive distance and drive time, in addition to the “crow flies” distance which is all we previously supported. You can sort by any of the columns, choose your vehicle, and click on the “dispatch” button if you are using Garmin integration:
Closest To Dashlet includes drive distance/time now
And for users of the dashboard map book tool which turns an address into a map book page/grid coordinate, you can now “sanity check” the location by clicking on “Map Address” — it will pull up a convenient map for you to make sure you typed it correctly & have a reasonable address:
Sanity check your mapbook addresses now in the dashlet
And another recent dashlet worth mentioning again — the legend. Now you can have a convenient reference to what the various colors and vehicle icon shapes mean:
GPS Insight map legend
Thanks for using these new capabilities and we appreciate your feedback which has led to their creation.
Rob.
Jan 23 2010
After months of work, we are pleased to announce a brand new www.gpsinsight.com!
The new one will allow us to keep our rapidly enhanced product better documented for our customers and prospective customers.
Brand New GPS Insight website
Additionally, we have begun work on a comprehensive training site at training.gpsinsight.com. This site will allow us to keep all of the documentation for GPS Insight up to date and available for both customers and prospective customers.
Brand New GPS Insight Training website
Please check them both out and expect many new features and much more content for both coming soon!
Thanks,
Rob.
Jan 14 2010
Next week we will release this new capability which will be part of the Activity Detail Report. Next month you will be able to run it for all the vehicles in your fleet and sort in a way that you can identify your Lead-Foots, your Slow-Pokes, and your efficient, safe drivers:
Identify which drivers are going too fast or too slow relative to the speed limit
This is a really useful report, and is just the beginning of many new graph-oriented capabilities we plan to release in 2010.
Here is a close-up of just the graph area which shows the driver efficiency — within 10 MPH of the limit 44% of the time:
Efficient Driving Graph in GPS Insight
Rob.
Jan 09 2010
We have recently added the ability to view a single group (or all) of your landmarks within GPS Insight’s dashboard maps.
Here is how you do it:
Click on Edit (the pencil icon) then choose your group of landmarks, and click “Apply”:
Including landmarks within GPS Insight Dashboard Maps
They show up in both Map as well as Satellite/Hybrid views:
Including landmarks within GPS Insight Dashboard Maps
Large landmark groups are not allowed due to typical browser limitations. If you need to include more than 500 landmarks, GPS Insight’s 3D Mapping is the way to go and can handle thousands, probably even tens of thousands depending on your PC.
All users have access to this convenient capability. Please be sure to use it!
Thanks,
Rob.
Jan 09 2010
This feature really helps to make sure you are saving miles/hours/dollars by streamlining your drivers’ daily route!
Before I talk about this, please realize that the routing dashlet is not a standard feature, and is included with our routing package, which is an enhancement to the base GPS Insight product. You may not have access to it currently. Call your salesperson for information.
Here is a new ability we added to the Route dashlet:
You can enter multiple addresses as always, as well as a start/stop landmark.
GPS Insight routing dashlet
Click on Optimize to get the proper order (which you can cut and paste into an email to the driver, etc.):
Click on GPS Insight's "Map This" button for optimized directions
Here is the result:
Map and directions for optimized set of destinations
You can click on print, send (email), or link (to cut/paste a direct link) at the top right for your convenience.
We will add more functionality to this dashlet over time (e.g. more landmark/landmark group inclusion, optimization options, Garmin integration, etc.).
If you would like to try it out and you are not an existing routing customer, please call us for a 14 day trial.
Thanks,
Rob.
Rob.
