GPS Insight Blog » Garmin Integration

Jul 29 2011

New Timestamps in Garmin Dispatch/Messaging Module

Category: Driver Accountability,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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Mar 19 2011

I’ve (We’ve) Been busy! — lots of new capabilities

Category: Ad Hoc Reports,dashboard dashlets,Garmin Integration,GPS Navigation,New Features,New Features,Reporting,Reports,Scheduled Reports — rdonat @ 1:22 pm

Sorry, it’s been a while since I put any new blog articles up.

I had knee (ACL) surgery 5 weeks ago (the day I dispatched myself to the hospital here).

Not fun, don’t tear your ACL. And don’t think you can play paintball with your 11 year old when you’re 41, not 22 like when you were in the Army.

So, in the meantime though, we’ve added a few new capabilities which I want to let everyone know about.

Dispatch multiple vehicles at once

We had a customer ask if they could dispatch multiple vehicles to the same place (e.g. a fire) using Garmin. The next day we put that in place for them via our “Closest To” dashlet.

Here is how you do that:

Dispatch multiple vehicles at once to an address/landmark/vehicle/lat-lon

Use the familiar “Closest To” dashlet to find the closest vehicles to your site, then sort by the appropriate column (driving distance, travel time, or absolute distance), then choose your threshold (in this case 30 minutes or less) and un-check the ones you wish to exclude (or toggle them all using “Check/Uncheck All” — then just click on “Dispatch Selected Vehicles” and they are all dispatched. Note that ONLY Garmin enabled vehicles are eligible, and you can still click on the Garmin logo (blue triangle) in order to dispatch just a single vehicle. Pretty cool, and convenient (beats clicking 5-20 Garmin icons to dispatch everyone). We are working on allowing you to “un-dispatch” drivers and it will be available in a month or so. This will delete the dispatch items from the drivers’ Garmin.

Run a favorite/saved Report with 2 clicks (maybe more)

We added a “Scheduled Reports” dashlet which allows you to simply click on a saved/scheduled report and run it in the browser at that time.

This is pretty self-explanatory and available in the “Utilities” dashlets, as shown below:

Drag and drop new scheduled reports dashlet to access it

[by the way, note the top right -- as I was writing this in the passenger seat of my vehicle Nav2, I checked quickly to see what exit I needed to take to get to where we were taking the family for the weekend -- we use GPS Insight all the time ourselves, even from a moving vehicle on an aircard while getting some past-due blog articles published!]

list of scheduled reports - filtered to only ones containing the word "Landmark"

Choose one (we chose the bottom one — the rarely used “Unmarked Landmarks Report” which shows stops NOT IN a known landmark:

Choose a report and then change the vehicle group/dates if necessary

Then run the report and out comes your result. This dashlet helps you run frequently-run reports very easily. Here’s the report, 4 seconds later:

Easily run report!

This is available now for all customers to use. You can also edit the settings to show ONLY/BOTH active/inactive reports, as well as how many reports to show per page.

Vehicle Selector filters now change the vehicles shown on the dashboard maps

When you filter the list of vehicles in your vehicle selector dashlet now, any maps it is tied to (via dashlet group letter) now restrict which vehicles are shown. This is convenient if you have a large number of vehicles, but only want to see a certain number of them by either filtering or un-checking them in the vehicle selector dashlet:

Way too many vehicles on the map

Now after filtering by adding “*3000″ (or you could uncheck some as well):

Just the vehicles you want to look at

And of course clicking on one will zoom you straight to that vehicle, as always:

clicking on a vehicle takes you right there

That’s it for this (long) update on what’s new. We have several other features I’ll get around to highlighting shortly as well.

Rob.

Tags: dispatching multiple vehicles, Fleet Tracking, fleet tracking software, Garmin, GPS Tracking, gps tracking system, New Features, saved reports, Vehicle Tracking

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Feb 11 2011

Add a stop name to a Garmin dispatched address

Category: Garmin Integration,GPS Navigation,New Features,New Features,New Garmin Features — rdonat @ 6:07 am

We added the ability to “name” your address now within GPS Insight’s Garmin dispatch module.

Add a stop "name" to a Garmin dispatched address

Now your drivers will see the name, as well as the address (so they’ll still know which building to go in).

Rob.

Tags: Fleet Tracking, fleet tracking software, Garmin, GPS Tracking, gps tracking system, named addresses, stop name, Vehicle Tracking

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Feb 10 2011

New ‘broadcast’ Garmin message capabilities

Category: Garmin Integration,Garmin Messaging,New Features,New Garmin Features — rdonat @ 8:36 am

We want customers to be able to send a single message to multiple Garmin’s, so we added this capability:

Now you can click on “Show Groups”:

And you will be able to choose a single group (e.g. techs, service, parts, supervisors, etc.):

Then you can easily check all/check just a few, and send the same message to those Garmin’s you want to communicate with.

Rob.

Tags: Fleet Tracking, fleet tracking software, GPS Tracking, gps tracking system, Vehicle Tracking

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Feb 05 2011

New Garmin Canned Messages interface

Category: Company Efficiency,Garmin Integration,Garmin Messaging,GPS Navigation,New Features,New Garmin Features,Safety — rdonat @ 4:38 pm

We have recently given customers the ability to store “canned messages” on their drivers’ Garmin in the vehicle.

This allows them to choose from a list of commonly sent messages, rather than have to type each one out on the mini-keyboard on each Garmin.

Here’s how you do it:

Open the Garmin page:

Open the Garmin interface

Choose the Canned Messages tab and then create new messages, assign them to message groups, and assign those message groups to vehicles:

GPS Insight Garmin Canned Messages Interface

Create a message:

Create a Canned Message

Assign it to a group of messages:

Assign Garmin canned messages to groups

Then assign them to vehicles:

Assign message groups to vehicles

Then press “Sync Now” and your messages will be “pushed” to the appropriate vehicle’s Garmin.

To send one from your Garmin to dispatch, follow these steps:

Push Dispatch

Push Messages

Push "Quick Message"

Then up comes a list of “your” quick (canned) messages. Scroll through to select the one you want:

Choose a Canned Message

The Garmin will then prompt you if you want to send OR EDIT the canned message, so you can make small changes, such as add an amount, change a time, etc.

This definitely beats using the small on-screen keyboard to send free-form/ad-hoc messages:

Edit a canned message

Keyboard interface for editing a canned message

And here’s the message, in “red” to indicate it’s new and un-read. Once you click on it, it turns back to white:

Canned Message in the Garmin dashlet

This will help our customers enable their drivers to communicate more effectively, and help avoid the potential for distracted texting on their Garmin.

Rob.

Tags: gps fleet management software, gps fleet tracking, gps garmin integration, gps insight garmin tracking, GPS Tracking, gps tracking devices, gps vehicle tracking

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Feb 01 2011

New Garmin “tally” function — let us count your drivers’ activities for you using Garmin (or SMS)!

Category: Ad Hoc Reports,Garmin Integration,Garmin Messaging,Graphs,New Features,New Garmin Features,Reporting,Reports — rdonat @ 9:51 pm

We have had a few customers ask for the ability to report on their drivers’ activities throughout the day.

One needed to count the number of passengers picked up.

One needed to count the number of mobile blood draws and mobile x-rays performed.

So we advised them to enter these numbers into the Garmin in their vehicle.

By doing so, with a space between the various numbers, we now allow them to report on the number of “activities” throughout the day/week/month.

They simply enter the # on their Garmin, and it shows up like this in a report

Reporting how many "things" a driver does throughout the month

This report shows the number of “draws” and “Xrays” performed, as input by the driver into the Garmin.

If you wanted to show it by day (then export into Excel, for instance) you would check the “Daily” box shown in this report below:

Reporting how many "things" a driver does daily for a week

This then breaks it out by day (and you can run up to 31 days currently):

Reporting how many "things" a driver does daily for a week

If you want to see exactly when the driver performed this, you can simply run a stop-notes report as shown below:

Running a Stop-Notes Report

This shows each stop’s detail, along with the entry by the driver stating how many of a “thing” he or she did:

Stop Notes detail on how many actions performed by a driver (via Garmin Entry)

Generically, we simply call these “Tally 1″, “Tally 2″, and “Tally 3″ — but if you want to let us know what your numbers mean (and in which order), then we will label them for your account so they show up more meaningfully in reports for you.

Then you can run your own simple analysis on this data within Excel, create graphs, etc:

Graph showing number of blood draws and X Rays performed over time

As always, we’re open for new ideas, and happy, willing, and QUICK to put these features into GPS Insight for your and other customers’ use.

Enjoy!

Rob.

Tags: fleet management software, fleet tracking devices, garmin input, gps fleet tracking, GPS Tracking, gps vehicle tracking, stop notes, tally, vehicle tracking software

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Nov 08 2010

Torn between two Garmin’s

Category: Garmin Integration,Garmin Messaging,GPS Navigation,New Features — rdonat @ 6:03 pm

I just got a couple new Garmin GPS Navigation device models which are both very cool but neither does everything:

2 new Garmin models

One knows all about Truck Restrictions:

Garmin Nuvi 465 T knows about trucking restrictions

And the Garmin Nuvi 1490 T has “EcoRoute” which helps you know how “Green” you (or your drivers) are driving:

Garmin Nuvi 1490 T tells you how "green" you are driving

So both are cool, and both work with GPS Insight to allow you to send and receive messages, as well as send destinations and routes wirelessly to your drivers.

Both have real time Traffic to help you decide which is the quickest route to your destination (although to make Traffic work with GPS Insight, you should buy the Traffic AND Fleet Management cable from GPS Insight, and buy the “non-T” version of these devices).

If I was a truck driver (I’ll pretend I am for now) I would like the 465 since it allows you to set truck-specific attributes such as width, length, height, hazardous material status, weight, and number of trailers. Then it keeps you from taking incompatible routes where you won’t make it under a bridge, or somewhere you’ll be fined for driving a commercial vehicle:

Truck Friendly Routes

It also helps you to optimize your route for the day (although so does GPS Insight with its Garmin integration):

Optimize your Route using your Garmin

As far as saving fuel the Garmin 1490 with EcoRoute (many other models support EcoRoute) will tell you when you are accelerating, braking, and speeding in a way which either wastes or saves fuel — it does this in real time. You can even purchase a module which plugs into your OBD-II and gives the Garmin real time data about speed, RPM, acceleration, and fuel consumption. I haven’t gotten this yet, but it looks very accurate.

You can pull mileage reports and fuel consumption reports from the Garmin (although again, you can do this with GPS Insight as well without needing to use this Garmin for it).

The “Green” leaf turns yellow and ultimately red if you don’t drive “Green”:

Garmin "Red" leaf shows you're not driving efficiently

If you’re a truck driver, the 465 is a MUST. If you’re worried about fuel consumption and proper driving, the 1490 is ideal.

I like the bigger screen on the 1490 but it’s good to know that the 465 is around for our trucking customers’ drivers – it’s an absolute must have.

Best of all — they both integrate with GPS Insight:

GPS Insight / Garmin integration

You can dispatch your drivers using GPS Insight, and monitor their status in real time, with the assistance of Garmin Personal Navigation Devices (PND’s):

GPS Insight / Garmin integration

Great products — thanks Garmin!

Rob.

Tags: fleet tracking software, garmin integration, garmin nuvi 1490, garmin nuvi 465, gps fleet tracking, GPS Tracking, truck routes, Vehicle Tracking, vehicle tracking solution

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Sep 23 2010

New improved iPhone App coming soon

Category: cell phone capabilities,Garmin Integration,Garmin Messaging,mobile mapping,New Features — rdonat @ 10:45 pm

We’re putting the final touches on our new iPhone App which will be available free to all GPS Insight users.

Here are some highlights of improvements to the first version:

First choose a group (in this case we’ve chosen ALL VEHICLES) and then choose a vehicle [we'll choose "Ray" who is at a landmark named "BowlingAlley" -- landmark names can be turned off as a setting and addresses will show up instead]

Color coded list of vehicles (color indicates recent activity)

Once we choose “Ray” we see the following status on a map:

Close up of Ray in hybrid map mode

The icons on the bottom let you change map mode, zoom in/out, create a landmark, or zoom to your own location using the iPhone GPS.

Clicking on the pin’s blue “>” we get more information about Ray:

Information about the "Ray" vehicle to include setting alerts

From here we can “bookmark” Ray, call Ray (using his cell phone information within GPS Insight), or open his location in Google Mobile Maps on the iPhone itself [to get directions to, check street view, etc.]

Here we click the phone icon and can either SMS text message or call Ray directly:

Call or text your drivers from within the GPS Insight iPhone App

You can easily click (“press”) here to open the vehicle’s location within Google Mobile Maps:

Open a vehicle's location within Google Maps in GPS Insight's Vehicle Tracking iPhone App

And really cool, if the vehicle has a Garmin, you can send a message to that Garmin instantly using the GPS Insight iPhone App:

Send a message to any vehicle's attached Garmin with the GPS Insight App

We will get the final version of the app onto the Apple App Store sometime in early October.

It’s free, and you will be able to search for it in the “App Store” or go here for information: (click below to go there)

Where to go in GPS Insight to find information on the iPhone App

We plan to continue improving this application for all of our customers’ use — enjoy!

Rob

Tags: Fleet Tracking, fleet tracking systems, GPS Insight iPhone App, GPS Tracking, gps tracking system, iPhone App, mobile, mobile mapping, Vehicle Tracking

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Sep 07 2010

Going to Vegas with some GPS Insight employees!

Category: Garmin Integration,GPS Insight Employees,GPS Navigation,Las Vegas,Routing — rdonat @ 10:26 pm

So I head out tomorrow morning to Las Vegas for the AFLA Conference (American Fleet Leasing Association), and probably won’t have much time for documenting GPS Insight in the blog.

So I have to pick up 2 GPS Insight employees tomorrow, & don’t know where they live (I won’t name names — what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas).

Easy enough — I just enter their addresses into the GPS Insight Route Dashlet on the dashboard, choosing a Start/End of my house & Sky Harbor Airport (both pre-defined landmarks in GPS Insight’s account):

How to route myself via Garmin to 2 employee homes & the Airport

Press “Get Route” and voila!

Create an optimized route to pick up employees before heading to the airport

Create and send an optimized route to my vehicle's Garmin to pick up employees and head to the airport

Now I am able to send the route named “Vegas” to my Garmin, which will have 4 sequentially numbered stops, and will take me in that order.

Also, I can always map it by pressing “Map This” and it will show the overall route, to include the time (1 hour & 10 minutes) and turn-by-directions (not that I’ll need them — that’s what the Garmin is for!):