GPS Insight | GPS Fleet Tracking Blog

Feb 21 2012

View Garmin Message/Stop status within the Garmin Dashlet

Category: Garmin Integration,Garmin Messaging,GPS Navigation,New Features,New Features,New Garmin Features — rdonat @ 11:04 pm

I send myself test and actual messages/stops all the time in my car. I have a Garmin in my cars (even the one with the in-dash Garmin) so I can easily use and test our Garmin capabilities, which are really useful.

I looked at the Garmin Dashlet on our account today and noticed I had a number of unread/inactive messages/stops which I KNOW I read. But in order for them to show up as read or allow the driver to reply to them, you need to actually click on them, which I hadn’t done.

Garmin Dashlet shows several unread/inactive messages and stops

I went out to my car, turned it on, and did a couple things. I read the “Good Evening” message from 11 days ago and responded “Yes It Is!” I also deleted the Desert Ridge (a mall) stop, as I already went there, but deactivated it before arriving, since I got tired of listening to the Garmin tell me how to go once I was close. I also responded “Ok” to the “We have a meeting…” message which I also hadn’t clicked on.

When I came back into my office, the screen had changed (as it’s supposed to…) to this, reflecting the changes I had made by interacting with the Garmin in my car. Note that the messages have changed from “Unread” to “Read”

Updated Garmin Dashlet

The red lines are to indicated new messages (they turn white once you acknowledge them by clicking the message). If you like, you can have a pop-up message appear by turning on this option within the edit properties screen, and you can see that once I clicked on the top line, it turned back to white:

Click on a new message to clear the "new message" color

When clicking on each of the various statuses, the history and timestamps show up for each line, such as the time I just now read the “good evening” message:

Timestamp for when a message was read

Here we can see what time the stop was received, read, selected (Active), de-selected (Read Inactive again) then deleted (just now):

Full history of a stop sent to my Garmin

And if more information is required, there is a dedicated Garmin interface under the “Custom-> Garmin” menu option. It gives more details and may be more suitable than a dashboard dashlet for a full-scale dispatch operation, depending on your requirements:

Full information in the main Garmin screen

It is highly configurable, and better suited to historical queries about past messages/stops and their history.

Rob.

Feel free to contact us if you are interested in seeing a more in-depth demonstration of our GPS fleet tracking solution.

Tags: Fleet Tracking, Garmin, Garmin Messages, Garmin Stops, gps fleet tracking, GPS Tracking, Message History, vehicle tracking system

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Feb 20 2012

New User Preferences coming to GPS Insight soon

Category: CUSTOM APPLICATIONS OF GPS INSIGHT,Ease of use,New Features,New Features,User Preferences — rdonat @ 5:55 pm

For a LONG time, in GPS Insight, speeding meant > 67 MPH, idling meant speed=0, and red meant stopped for > 60 minutes.

A customer recently asked for us to change this to 72 MPH, idling for > 5 minutes, and stopped for > 120 minutes.

We made an exception for them and it now shows up as such on the map, as well as on the legend:

Custom Legend within GPS Insight

You’ll note that the vehicle below has been stopped for 1 hour, 50 minutes, and is yellow still (by default it would be red at the 60 minute mark) based on this change.

Custom color threshold for stopped vehicles

We also have lots of other semi-custom requests from customers, such as when they want a different list of speed thresholds to drop down as choices in a report, etc.

And we make those changes here & there as customers request them.

However, we thought we would put this capability into our customers hands, on an account-by-account basis where applicable, and down to the user-by-user basis as an account-level override.

Here is where you’ll find the interface we’re developing to make it easy for our customers to make these changes themselves (should be another week or so until it’s available to all customers):

GPS Insight custom preferences button

And here’s what that interface will look like, for starters:

GPS Insight custom preferences interface

There are many more highly custom attributes you can expect to see within GPS Insight such as:

How granular the time options are in report pull-downs (e.g. 1, 5, 10 minute intervals)
The language for the interface (currently just English and Spanish)
Default values for time choices in reports and historical maps, etc.
Color schemes with customer logos/colors (this will take a while but in the meantime you can always ask if we can accommodate your request)
You name it — anything customers ask us to change regularly will be an option here

We’re always listening to customer needs, and here is a great example of us modifying the product to meet those expectations.

Thanks,
Rob.

Tags: custom capabilities, customer preferences, Fleet Tracking, gps fleet tracking, GPS Tracking, gps vehicle tracking system

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Dec 12 2011

Android App coming soon

Category: cell phone capabilities,New Features,New Features — rdonat @ 10:22 pm

We finally have an Android App under development.

Here’s a very simple preview:

GPS Insight Android Application

We’ll let you know when it’s available in Beta.

Thanks,

Rob.

Tags: Android, Android App, Fleet Tracking, GPS Tracking, gps tracking app, Vehicle Tracking

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Oct 02 2011

Send driver alerts in THEIR time zone now

Category: Alerts,Driver Assignment to Vehicles,Driver to Vehicle Mapping,Ease of use,New Features,New Features — rdonat @ 7:54 am

Since alerts are sent in the USER’s time zone, and can be “copied” to the driver him or herself, there is sometimes a time zone conflict with the alert.

We have enhanced GPS Insight to ensure that alerts are sent to the driver in the time zone they are associated with in the system.

Here is a typical alert which has been set to send straight to the driver when they idle for more than 15 minutes:

Copy a driver with a generated alert

Here is the driver admin screen, where you can set the time zone:

Set a driver's time zone

And when the alerts come in, they will adjust depending on which time zone the driver or user (depending on who is receiving it) prefers:

Time zone adjusted alerts

Bear in mind that our choices ALSO compensate for daylight savings time (DST) which is why Arizona and Indiana are choices, as they do not celebrate DST.

This will help to ensure that when drivers receive data, it isn’t an hour or two “off” from the time they actually were idling/speeding/entering landmarks/etc.

Learn more about our fleet tracking alerts.

Rob.

Tags: Fleet Tracking, gps fleet tracking, GPS Tracking, gps tracking devices, gps tracking software, gps vehicle tracking, idle alerts, time zone adjustments, Vehicle Tracking

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Oct 02 2011

Determine how much fuel and C02 idling is actually costing you and the environment

Category: Ad Hoc Reports,Fuel Savings,New Features,New Features,reduced idling,Reports — rdonat @ 7:23 am

We have a customer that really needed to precisely measure how much fuel and CO2 emissions their idling was costing them.

Not all vehicles are created equal, so at the individual vehicle level, we made the fuel type and estimated number of gallons consumed per hour idling something our customers can set.

Here’s how you get there:

Open Vehicle Administration

There is a new option in vehicle admin called “Update fuel and emissions info”:

Update fuel and emissions info

We have a “liters engine size to gallons idled per hour” converter which allows you to plug in your engine size and determine a fairly accurate number of gallons idled away per hour:

compute and override the # of gallons per hour spent idling

Here I am editing a SALES vehicle driven by KEVINJS:

update fuel type and gallons per hour idling

Once you have overridden any defaults necessary (we default to unleaded and .4 gallons per hour spent idling), then you can run your report:

Run an idle report with fuel usage/CO2 emissions

I ran it for the September for the Albuquerque group (ALB) which contains the newly changed 5.0 liter F-150 which burns .55 gallons per hour of diesel:

How much fuel / emissions is idling costing me?

In this case, KEVINJS had roughly 7 hours and 3.863 gallons of idling, which we compute (based on the properties of the different types of fuels) to equate to .034 tons of emissions.

Together, the ALB group idled 512 hours, costing 209.6 gallons of fuel and 1.846 tons of CO2.

Now by using GPS Alerts, you can notify your drivers that they’re idling and ask them to shut down the vehicle with a text message or email (and since they’re idling and not actually driving, there are no distracted driving issues).

Then later on, you can easily determine your fuel and CO2 savings by running this or other idling reports available within GPS Insight.

Enjoy!

Rob

Feel free to contact us if you are interested in seeing a more in-depth demonstration of our GPS fleet tracking solution.

Tags: CO2 emissions, Fleet Tracking, fuel spent idling, gps fleet tracking, GPS Tracking, gps tracking devices, gps tracking software, gps vehicle tracking, idling, Vehicle Tracking

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Aug 10 2011

Traffic added to GPS Insight browser maps

Category: Dashboard Maps,Ease of use,Mapping,New Features,New Features — rdonat @ 7:58 am

GPS Insight has supported traffic for years via Google Earth.

Finally we’re bringing real-time traffic data to the dashboard and 2D mapping.

Here’s a screenshot:

GPS Insight releases traffic data in maps

Just a single click and you’ll get real-time, color-based traffic overlays in your maps.

Enjoy!

Rob.

Tags: Fleet Tracking, fleet tracking devices, fleet tracking software, gps fleet tracking, GPS Tracking, gps tracking system, maps, track company trucks, tracking vehicle traffic google maps, traffic, Vehicle Tracking

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Jul 29 2011

New Timestamps in Garmin Dispatch/Messaging Module

Category: Driver Accountability,Ease of use,Garmin Integration,Google Earth,GPS Insight Employees,GPS Navigation,GPSI-4000,Landmarks,New Features,New Features,New Garmin Features — rdonat @ 11:44 am

With our new timestamp functionality you can now check the time a Garmin Message or Dispatch Item (stop) was:

Sent by Dispatch or GPS Insight automatically or via text
Delivered to the Garmin
Viewed by the Driver
Accepted by the Driver
Marked as complete by the driver

Here’s how:

The other day I Dispatched myself by texting “gps rob dis robhouse” which is short for “gps [rob 4000] [dispatch] [landmark named robhouse].”

Here are the timestamps of each of the status changes (available under the “Custom->Garmin” menu):

View Garmin Dispatch Status Change Timestamps in GPS Insight

Note all I need to do is “hover over” the “Done” status at the end of the Message field, and the date-stamped statuses are visible.

After dispatching myself at 4:09, it instantly appeared as a stop on my Garmin.

I saw it, but then drove a bit so it would have a different timestamp when it became “active”, at 4:10, as I was about to turn North onto Scottsdale Road. Note the change to “Active” at 4:10. Here is where everything happened, after running a 3D history like this:

Run a 3D Map History for a day for my vehicle

Leaving Work, accepting a stop to go home

It took me until 16:18, and 5.8 miles to get home, where I was prompted by the Garmin to mark that stop as “complete” (we shorten it to “Done”):

Getting home and marking the stop as "complete"

Even if I didn’t mark the stop as complete, we still have the timestamp of when I reach that landmark available in the landmark report, and will eventually incorporate all of this information into a single “dispatch report” which allows our customers to get a single-stop summary of all their Garmin dispatch activity.

Here’s how to run that landmark report:

Running a GPS Insight Landmark Report

Note that our “1 day” landmark report extends backward and forward automatically to show you how long the vehicle was there prior to LEAVING (if it started the day in that landmark) and how long it stayed there through the end of the stop, if it was parked there at the end of the day. These are the kind of “nice to have” features our customers (and we) insist on, so we provide it.

You can easily tell I left (late for the day, really…), then forgot something, came back, then left, and eventually came back, precisely at the same 4:18 PM time I marked the stop complete via the Garmin interface:

Times in and out of my house, matching the Garmin "Done" timestamp

At least I left early the next day to make up for it — 6:22 AM.

This new capability is very helpful for proving service to a customer, determining how quickly your drivers react to dispatch items, and other investigations about your drivers’ daily activity.

Enjoy!

Thanks,
Rob.

Tags: Fleet Tracking, garmin dispatch, Garmin Timestamps, gps fleet tracking, GPS Tracking, gps tracking devices, gps tracking software, Vehicle Tracking

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Jul 23 2011

New Dashboard Available and demo here

Category: dashboard dashlets,New Features,New Features — rdonat @ 10:46 pm

We made the new GPS Insight Dashboard available last week to customers (in Beta).

Here is the new demo!:

New GPS Insight Dashboard Demo

Click on the image to watch the video and enjoy the new GPS Insight Dashboard. It’s several months of hard work and REALLY good. Enjoy!

Thanks,
Rob.

Tags: dashboard, demos, Fleet Tracking, fleet tracking software, fleet tracking system, gps fleet tracking, GPS Tracking, gps tracking devices, Vehicle Tracking, videos

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Jun 30 2011

You can attach pictures to stops now in GPS Insight

Category: cell phone capabilities,Ease of use,GPS Insight Employees,Mapping,New Features,New Features,Reporting,Reports — rdonat @ 8:09 am

Using your smart phone, you can now attach a picture from the field to any stop’s detail.

Here’s how it works:

Take a picture that you want associated with your stop (or someone else’s stop, if you’re a supervisor in the field) — this can even be a screen shot from a dispatch system, etc.

Send that picture to our GPS Insight notes email address [you generate this in the system here under User Management:]

Add an inbound email address for GPS Insight queries/notes

You want to use our “gps [vehicle] note here is my note detail” format to annotate the note and minimally let us know which vehicle the picture should be associated with.

send a picture to GPS Insight to attach to a vehicle's activity

Once we receive the photo and note, it becomes available on our mapping and on the stop notes report:

Picture under the "notes" tab of the vehicle detail in mapping

When you “hover over” the note, the picture pops up to give you more information — this could be a picture proving service, showing a problem which justifies further time/billing, or just a reference photo to remind you later on about your customer.

Field pictures show up in Stop Notes Report

Adding pictures from the field into our mapping and reports will help better document (and verify) working conditions as well as pick-ups/drop-offs from stop to stop.

Close up of added Photo

Give us a call if you have any questions regarding this functionality. There is a “wizard” which is launched when you choose the option at the top from the Admin->User tab. It asks you to choose a user and a vehicle group, then provides you the email to use (and store in your phone for easy access in the future). For your convenience, you can click on that email to send to it, cc’ing yourself or your drivers so that they can just save it as a contact for future use.

Then all they need to do is email photos to that address in order to have them associated with their GPS tracking records for the day, available in both mapping and reports.

This is included in basic GPS Insight functionality, and available for all users at this time.

Enjoy!

Rob.

Tags: Fleet Tracking, fleet tracking software, gps fleet tracking, GPS Tracking, gps tracking software, gps truck tracking, gps vehicle tracking, photos, stop notes, truck tracking, Vehicle Tracking

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Jun 27 2011

2 new alerts (DTC’s and Maintenance due)

Category: Alerts,Ease of use,maintenance,New Features,New Features — rdonat @ 3:47 pm

We have added 2 new alerts, bringing the total we provide to 12!

2 new GPS Insight Alerts

The DTC alert will send you an email (or SMS text) when your vehicle experiences a diagnostic alert (diagnostics devices only).

The Maintenance alert will send emails (or SMS text) whenever you are X miles/hours/days within a mileage/hours/calendar-based maintenance alert for a vehicle’s scheduled maintenance (within GPS Insight’s maintenance module).

You set it like this, and can override the number of miles/hours/days:

GPS Insight Maintenance Alert

When you receive the alert, it looks like this:

GPS Insight Maintenance Alert email

As with all our alerts, you can specify “push” as the recipient address (or one of them) and we will “push” that data to your system for you to work with it programmatically. This requires your developers to expose a web service and provide us the details, and then all your alerts can be automatically populated in your systems (ERP, dispatch, maintenance, etc.).

If you’re not using our alerts, you’re missing a key benefit of GPS Insight. They’re available to all customers.

Enjoy!

Thanks,

Rob.

Tags: DTC Alert, Fleet Tracking, fleet tracking software, GPS Tracking, gps tracking devices, gps tracking software, Maintenance Alert, new alerts, New Features, Vehicle Tracking

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