Mar 11 2012

New “Cycle Time” Detail and Summary Reports

GPS Insight has completed two new reports for our customers who have vehicles going “back and forth” between two landmarks frequently, and where those “cycles” should be either above or below a “standard” drive and work time.  This is a huge requirement for aggregate, trash, fuel, or other materials haulers who do the same thing day in and day out, and where hitting the standard turn and drive times is key to making a profit.

These reports are the “Cycle Time” Detail and Summary report.

This report runs a “Cycle Summary” for all our vehicles running between “RobHouse” (my house) and “GPS Insight Headquarters” (work):

GPS Insight's new Cycle Summary

GPS Insight's new Cycle Summary

Here is the output summarizing all of our trips from my house, to work, then back to my house:

GPS Insight Cycle Summary

GPS Insight Cycle Summary

This quickly displays a full month’s for all vehicles completing that pattern at least once during the month.  Bear in mind that the data doesn’t make much sense since we don’t work driving back & forth between my house and work, but this will be more useful to companies which have this business model.

Running the Cycle Detail report for ONLY my 2 vehicles like this:

GPS Insight Cycle Detail Report

GPS Insight Cycle Detail Report

We get the following output (shrunk to fit, but you get the idea):

GPS Insight Cycle Detail Report

GPS Insight Cycle Detail Report

These reports still have some work to be done, but we wanted to get them out there for customers who require this functionality.

They are NOT going to help all customers in all situations, and while we are happy to listen to suggestions, these are two fairly specialized reports which may or may not see further development based on customer feedback/requests.

That said, we will most likely add functionality for an “upper limit” for drive and/or turn times before they are ignored (so that when I go to the airport for 4 days, then back to my home, that doesn’t count as a “cycle” for instance) and also, we will allow a “half cycle” to count toward the totals (where someone only completes half the cycle that day then completes the day without completing the cycle).

You will not see these reports show up in the Landmark menu by default, but if you want them turned on, please let us know and we will be happy to make them available.

Enjoy and Thanks,
Rob.

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Feb 22 2012

More fuel pumped than the vehicle’s capacity? We let you know that in a new addition to our Fuel Transaction Report

We’ve added new functionality to our Wright Express Fuel Card integration.

Now you can specify how big your fuel tanks are for each vehicle, and be alerted whenever more than that amount of fuel is pumped using a Wright Express Fuel Card.

Here is where you edit the vehicle from the vehicle administration page:

Opening the Vehicle Edit Page

Opening the Vehicle Edit Page

And where you enter the # of gallons for the gas tank:

Enter the number of gallons the fuel tank holds

Enter the number of gallons the fuel tank holds

Now when you run the WEX Fuel Transaction Report you have a new option, which is to show ONLY the exceptions:

New "Exceptions only" option to Wright Express Transaction Card

New "Exceptions only" option to Wright Express Transaction Card

The arrows pointing from “Too Much Fuel” show you where your fuel card was used to purchase more fuel than the vehicle’s capacity.  We have artificially understated the fuel tank capacity in some of our vehicles in order to simulate a true exception in this report:

New % of tank capacity column in WEX Transaction Report

New % of tank capacity column in WEX Transaction Report

So now you can check to see when a vehicle’s card is used for non-fuel purchases, too much fuel for the vehicle’s tank, or when it’s used and the vehicle isn’t actually present.

This is a great report for validating your drivers’ use of your fuel cards, and to make sure they aren’t taking advantage of them.

Additionally, you can sort on percentage of fuel tank and see when drivers are fueling when they don’t really need to.

Next change, I think, will be LONG STOPS at fuel stations, which can be used to determine both drivers who take too long to fuel, as well as stations with really slow pumps (I experienced this recently and spent 12 minutes pumping 20 gallons of fuel in the middle of nowhere — it was the inspiration for this modification….)

Rob.

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Feb 21 2012

View Garmin Message/Stop status within the Garmin Dashlet

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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Feb 20 2012

New User Preferences coming to GPS Insight soon

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

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

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

GPS Insight custom preferences button

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

GPS Insight custom preferences interface

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.

 

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Feb 08 2012

Ease of Use is hard to find

I use a lot of web-based applications — checking, CRM, email, etc.

Not all of them (in fact few of them) are easy to use and many require you to do the same thing over & over again which wastes a lot of time.

I am happy to say that at GPS Insight, we do everything we can to make it easy to use our product efficiently.

I needed to look into a customer’s question earlier today and this attention to usability made my life easy.

I needed BOTH a 3D map AND an activity detail report — these exist on 2 separate menus on the Mapping & Reporting tabs.

I ran the first one:

Running a 3D History map for a vehicle for 3 days

Running a 3D History map for a vehicle for 3 days

Then all I needed to do was move my mouse over to the Reports Menu, click on “Activity Detail” and both my vehicle AND date range (several months back, which involved a few clicks to achieve the first time) were carried over to this report.  Then one last click on “Run Report” and VOILA, my report:

Running an Activity Report for a vehicle for 3 days

Running an Activity Report for a vehicle for 3 days

Now I could stare and compare the 3D map vs. the Activity Detail Report easily and see what my customer was curious about — he wondered why the latitude/longitude wasn’t changing for multiple lines in the Activity Detail Report:

GPS Insight Activity Detail Report

GPS Insight Activity Detail Report

We don’t recommend trying to “interpret” latitude / longitude, as it doesn’t make any sense to us humans, but in our mapping, it shows what happened very obviously:

17 minute idle event

17 minute idle event

The vehicle didn’t change latitude / longitude for all those points since it was idling for 17 minutes!  The map made that clear.

And it only took a few clicks, due to our interface which “remembers” what you’re doing.  If you have 10 different reports for the same group of vehicles or single vehicle, for the same range of dates, it takes only a few clicks.  You don’t need to re-select the group/vehicle, then re-select the date range.  What a drag it is when I have to use someone else’s interface and wish they did the same things we do to make our customers efficient and happy to use GPS Insight.

Rob.

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

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Dec 12 2011

Android App coming soon

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

We finally have an Android App under development.

Here’s a very simple preview:

GPS Insight Android Application

GPS Insight Android Application

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

Thanks,

Rob.

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Nov 27 2011

Would you do away with email for your company to save a few dollars?

Would you do away with email for your company to save a few dollars?

Of course not!

Email is an invaluable tool for any organization, and its value is known to be far more than its cost.

But many companies don’t realize that by delaying the inevitable purchase of GPS Tracking for their fleet of vehicles, it’s essentially doing away with email. For their vehicles.

And these vehicles have lots to tell us, but without GPS Tracking Systems, they can’t.

They might want to tell you, the fleet administrator or supervisor:

  • I’m being used for side jobs and during weekends/evenings for personal usage
  • I’m exceeding the speed limit frequently and recklessly
  • I’m not being used when you’re paying my driver to use me
  • I’m iding excessively and wasting your fuel and money
  • I’m skipping customers or driving out of the way so you can pay more overtime
  • I’m due for an oil change and tire rotation
  • I wasn’t there when your driver used his fuel card over the weekend (but his other car probably was…)

And these emails can come automatically, just by subscribing to scheduled, regular reports:

Odd Hours Driving Report

Odd Hours Driving Report

Or they can come in real time as alerts which let not only you, but also your driver know about the idling, speeding, odd-hours, or inefficient driving behavior.

Or maybe they would only say:

  • My driver is doing a great job
  • Everything is OK
  • Go to sleep and stop worrying for a change…

And most importantly, you get instant chat for free with GPS Tracking — you never need to wonder where the vehicle is again, and you can communicate with its driver in real time if desired.

Someday soon, if you don’t have GPS Tracking on your vehicles, and aren’t using it to its full potential, you’ll be just as in the dark ages as if you didn’t have email. Just like when you needed to use the USPS to send and receive information (we’ll even skip the FAX ages).

And for the price of 2-3 stamps or so per day, you can track a vehicle using GPS.

If you’re not already doing so, give it a try to see what you’re missing.

The ROI of having your vehicle email you regularly is something you’ll realize is as invaluable as the email you receive from your peers. Actually, maybe even more valuable.

Rob.

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Oct 02 2011

Send driver alerts in THEIR time zone now

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

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

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

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.

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Oct 02 2011

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

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

Open Vehicle Administration

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

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

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

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

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?

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.

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Aug 10 2011

Traffic added to GPS Insight browser maps

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

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.

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