GPS Insight | GPS Fleet Tracking Blog

Feb 18 2011

Scheduled Reports now have a link to run the “live” report

Category: Ad Hoc Reports,Ease of use,New Features,New Features,Reporting,Reports,Scheduled Reports — rdonat @ 11:20 am

GPS Insight has sent over 1.27 million automated reports to our customers.

We recently made them more convenient for everyone.

The “Scheduled” reports never had certain links activated such as “create landmark from this stop” or embedded maps, due to security concerns.

We just added a “Re-run Report” feature on every report which fixes this.

Now when you open your report via email, if you want to run it “live” in the system, you just click on the link shown below:

Re-Run a GPS Insight Report

This takes you straight to the report if you’re already logged in, or to an intermediate login screen if you are not:

Log in to GPS Insight to run your report automatically

Once you provide your login and password, you will be automatically shown the “live” report, which you can sort, click through links on, etc.:

Sort on the "live" version of a scheduled report

Then, if you feel like sharing this report with someone else, you can click “Email Report” and share it with them:

Email a report to a colleague

Note that I changed the email address to mine in order to actually receive the report. Also note that once you click “Email Now” we conveniently give you a link to that email address for you to send an additional explanatory email if necessary:

email address to click on to send additional information

And here is the emailed version of the report, which also contains the .xls, .csv, and .html versions for you to click through to if the “in line” html version isn’t enough (or if your email client doesn’t like to display html properly).

Emailed Report from GPS Insight

We’re always looking for good ways to make our product more useful, & it was a customer’s comment about how scheduled reports were great, but also limiting since they didn’t have the “live” feel — this is the only way to get the best of all 3 worlds — convenient (emailed nightly/weekly), powerful (live and clickable), and secure (requiring a valid login/password).

Enjoy!

Rob.

Tags: Fleet Tracking, fleet tracking software, GPS Tracking, gps tracking system, re-run reports, Reports, scheduled reports, 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,Ease of use,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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Jan 09 2011

Now you can click through graphs to reports (then maps) in GPS Insight

Category: Ad Hoc Reports,dashboard dashlets,Ease of use,Google Earth,Graphs,New Features,New Features,Reporting,Reports — rdonat @ 3:09 pm

Our new dashboard maps now allow you to click on individual items in order to instantly run a supporting report:

Click through on a graph item for supporting information

The report is then shown in a new Browser window or tab:

GPS Insight Idling Report from a graph click-through

Then you can continue to click through and choose to view the data in a Google Earth (or standard map) window:

Google Earth view of Idling Report data for a vehicle

Zooming down to an individual idling incident to investigate

Having the ability to quickly zoom down from a high level graph to detailed, satellite-view specifics truly enables our customers (you) to find out what is going on with your fleet in minutes. Just look for outliers on the graphs, and drill down to see the supporting activity.

Note that you can run the report for the entire group (vs. a single vehicle) by clicking elsewhere in most graphs:

Clicking on the legend usually runs the full summary report or a particular summary utilizing certain thresholds, such as all speeding incidents > 21 MPH over the posted speed limit, as shown below:

Click through for the report on all > 21 MPH over speeding incidents

We are constantly providing new capabilities for our customers — be sure to ask us for whatever you can think may help you and your organization to get more Return On Investment from your GPS Insight GPS Fleet Tracking System.

Thanks,
Rob.

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

Tags: click-through graphs, Fleet Tracking, gps fleet tracking, gps tracking software, graph dashlets, track my trucks, Vehicle Tracking

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Nov 29 2010

New Checkbox/Filter capability

Category: Ad Hoc Reports,dashboard dashlets,Ease of use,Graphs,New Features,New Features — rdonat @ 10:50 am

We have added a new filter & selection capability to our “Vehicle Selector” under the Graphs area of the dashlet “drawer”:

Now you can unselect certain vehicles so they disappear from graphs, and you can add a “wildcard” filter to impact what vehicles show up in graphs.

Soon we will support this for maps and in other areas of the product.

Here’s how it works:

Use the GPS Insight vehicle selector to "unselect" certain vehicles

Let’s say you have a few vehicles which are “off the charts” in the graph (shown with arrows above).

You can just uncheck their checkbox and they instantly disappear from those graphs:

Uncheck certain vehicles to remove them from graphs

Notice how the graphs are much less skewed now:

Adjusting graphs by removing certain vehicles

And you can also show only certain vehicles which match a “wildcard” pattern (in this case “*4000*” to show all vehicles with the string 4000 in them:

Choose only *4000* vehicles

Using this capability, you can now see exactly which vehicles you want in any graph, and we have many more graphs coming. Soon there will be a “comparison” graph which will show what your chosen vehicles look like relative to all vehicles or just a certain “reference group.”

Stay tuned & enjoy these new capabilities!

Thanks,
Rob.

Tags: ad hoc graphs, Fleet Tracking, fleet tracking devices, gps fleet tracking, GPS Tracking, graphs, track vehicle software, tracking vehicles, vehicle selector

Comments (1)

Sep 05 2010

How to not forget things and get in trouble with your wife…

Category: Ad Hoc Reports,Garmin Integration,Garmin Messaging,GPS Insight Employees,GPSI-4000 — rdonat @ 2:34 pm

I was working yesterday (and today) and my wife sent me an email to pick some stuff up from the grocery store.

Email asking me to get things from the store

I knew I would forget & get home, & have to drive back, so here’s what I did:

Send myself a reminder to go to the store via Garmin Message to my car

Here’s what I sent only 2 minutes after getting the email:

Modern day GPS Insight "ribbon tied on my finger"

This means when I get in my car, the Garmin will be beeping at me, with this message, and I won’t get home and forget.

Here’s what the Garmin screens looked like:

I have a message waiting for me

Click on it for the full message

Full message to remind me to go to the store

And did I remember?

Yep, and I can pull up a stop report to show it:

Run a stop report for "Rob" vehicle for yesterday

Note the 24 minute stop near the grocery store:

24 minute stop at the store to get groceries

Why did it take me 24 minutes to get 7 things?

Because I need GPS in a supermarket — I made 5 trips from aisle 1 to aisle 20 — I have no idea where anything is & am worthless in a grocery store.

That would be a very useful product for guys like me.

Rob.

Tags: Fleet Tracking, fleet tracking systems, garmin dispatch, garmin integration, gps fleet tracking, GPS Tracking, gps vehicle tracking, messaging, Vehicle Tracking

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Apr 15 2010

GPS Insight Saved a Customer $10k a Month by Cutting Idling 75%

Category: Ad Hoc Reports,Alerts,Extreme Return on Investment,Fuel Savings,reduced idling,Reports — bbarker @ 1:37 pm

Our reports and proactive alerts help you to ensure your drivers are not idling. It’s both wasteful and impacts our environment.

I pulled up a relatively new customer at random & ran an idling report for them & was happy to see that they CUT THEIR IDLING 75% WITH PROACTIVE MANAGEMENT!

Here is how I ran the report:

Run a GPS Insight Idle Time History Report

The report came up in 1.6 seconds & quantified 33,400 hours of driving since January, and the Purple Line (the important line) shows a marked decrease from a high of 20% idling to a current low of 5%:

75% Reduction in idling percentage

The full report shows all the particulars & shows very clearly the effects of both using GPS Insight as well as managing the drivers to stop idling:

Decrease from 20% to 5% idling over 3 months

Note that this is only one of our thousands of customers, and only 234 vehicles. I like the fact that GPS Insight truly is helping our customers make a big difference both in terms of saving fuel money, and the environment.

Another report shows that they have saved roughly TWO THOUSAND IDLING HOURS across their fleet of 234 vehicles by eliminating that 15% idling (based on 13,000 hours driven in the past month). With fuel costs plus wear & tear easily costing $5 per hour, they’ve seen a $10,000 PER MONTH savings, which is $42 per vehicle. We charge them $32.95. So they make $9 per month just by reducing idling, and now they have all the other benefits of GPS Insight for free – efficient dispatch, proof of delivery, proof of driver hours worked, reduction in speeding, theft recovery, and so on.

Click to learn more about our GPS Fleet Tracking System.

Rob.

Tags: cut costs gps tracking, Fleet Tracking, gps idling tracking, GPS Tracking, gps tracking save fuel, gps tracking saves money, Vehicle Tracking

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Apr 14 2010

Great Anti-Idling Commercial & Saving a Customer $10k a Month by Cutting Idling 75%

Category: Ad Hoc Reports,Extreme Return on Investment,Fuel Savings,Humor,reduced idling,Reports — rdonat @ 3:45 pm

This is very to the point:

Our reports and proactive alerts help you to ensure your drivers are not idling.

It’s both wasteful and impacts our environment.

I pulled up a relatively new customer at random & ran an idling report for them & was happy to see that they CUT THEIR IDLING 75% WITH PROACTIVE MANAGEMENT!

Here is how I ran the report:

Run a GPS Insight Idle Time History Report

75% Reduction in idling percentage

The full report shows all the particulars & shows very clearly the effects of both using GPS Insight as well as managing the drivers to stop idling:

Decrease from 20% to 5% idling over 3 months

Note that this is only one of our thousand customers, and only 234 vehicles. I like the fact that GPS Insight truly is helping our customers make a big difference both in terms of saving fuel money, and the environment.

Plus they’re not pi$$ing on the planet anymore…

Click to learn more about our GPS Fleet Tracking System.

Rob.

Tags: gps fleet tracking, GPS Tracking, gps vehicle tracking

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Dec 10 2009

Which of your vehicles has been to the crack house?

Category: Ad Hoc Reports,detecting unauthorized vehicle usage,Fleet Tracking,Fuel Savings,Google Earth,GPS Insight Employees,GPSI-4000,Landmarks,Safety,Trimble — rdonat @ 2:50 pm

I used to use this as a far-fetched example when talking about the benefits of retroactive landmark reports:

“Let’s say you catch one of your drivers buying crack at a crack house — don’t you want to know which others may have visited there in the past year or more?”

Well, in Detroit, they actually found a city employee’s vehicle at an actual crack house.

It’s detailed in this Automotive Fleet article.

So, now that there is a real life example of this, how would you use GPS Insight to easily determine the other vehicles which have visited that same crack house?

Here’s how:

First, find the exact location by looking at that vehicle/date/time and create a landmark with the convenient link from that point (we’ll pretend my house is a crack house).

First, run a 3D history map for that day (pretend yesterday):

Use GPS Tracking to find out who's buying crack with your vehicles

I’ll pick the “crack stop” at my house (really me coming home from taking the kids to Buffalo Wild Wings, a different kind of crack) and blur the street names in case anyone wants to come see for themselves — then I click on “Landmark: Create from Point”:

Pick a stop & create a landmark around it

Now I choose a Polygon landmark, change the color to green (why not?), and outline the areas a vehicle might PARK IN (not my house, which is a common mistake — you want landmarks to be where people park, not where the actual landmark is!).

I call it “Crack House.”

Now when I refresh my menu to pick up the new landmark under “Reports: Landmarks” I can run a 1 month at a time landmark report (note clicking the month name selects the entire month):

Run a GPS Tracking landmark report on a crack house in GPS Insight

Other than my wife & I, no other vehicles show up in December, so I go to November and see that a few other vehicles have been tracked in that exact area. Note the “Passing through” option which is checked — this means the visit will show up even if the ignition is not turned off while there (e.g. a drive by drug buy — my guess is crackheads like to idle too).

There was too much activity for my vehicle (with 3-4 devices), my wife’s & the company Scion (3 devices), so I created an “all but robs” group and ran the report against that:

Quickly create a vehicle group in GPS Insight

So Elliot and Ryan were in the crack house zone in November:

Elliot & Ryan at the crack house?

You get the idea. Obviously this is just a simulation — Elliot was dropping off a credit card we had forgotten at a restaurant the night before, and Ryan was dropping my wife off after her car needed service.

But what is important here is GPS Insight allows you to go BACK in time to check for landmark activity.

Several competitors do NOT (including two of the largest/oldest ones in our space). They will only allow you to report on landmark activity in landmarks which you created BEFORE the activity took place.

That means you would need to know all the crack house locations in advance! I hope our customers don’t have that information handy.

Although, I’ve often said you would have to be smoking crack to go with another solution…

Rob.

Tags: Fleet Tracking, landmark reporting, unauthorized usage, using vehicles to buy crack, Vehicle Tracking

Comments (1)

Nov 29 2009

Counting & Reconciling Tolls using GPS Insight fleet tracking

Category: Ad Hoc Reports,California,CUSTOM APPLICATIONS OF GPS INSIGHT,Driver Accountability,Google Earth,GPS Tracking,Landmarks,New Features,Reporting,Reports — rdonat @ 2:47 pm

We have a customer in San Francisco who wanted to be able to reconcile the # of trips they make across the Bay Bridge (since they pay a toll when coming into the city).

Here is a picture of the landmark they defined (along with a nice 3D representation in Google Earth):

GPS Insight Landmark of the San Francisco Bay Bridge

We added a “Passing Through” option to our standard landmark report to help with this requirement. Before this, the landmark visit would have required the vehicle to either stop or idle for a minute to register. If you click the “Passing Through” checkbox, it will count any activity through that “zone.”

GPS Insight landmark report adds "passing through" option

Now when running the report (which took less than 3 seconds), you get each time a vehicle went through that area (I’ve blurred out the vehicle names for customer privacy).

GPS Insight vehicle tracking landmark report

This makes it easy to see that 7 vehicles went a total of 23 times across the Bay Bridge.

But how many tolls is that?

You only get charged on the way INTO the city. Exporting that report to Excel gives us some additional information such as heading (what direction the trip took through the landmark). So only Southwest trips should incur a toll. That shows 8 of them according to this Excel Screenshot:

How many tolls should we be charged across the Bay Bridge?

We added Heading as well to the exported version of the report. Since space isn’t at a premium in Excel, we usually put all columns into the exported versions of the reports there.

This helps our customer, & I thought it would be worth detailing here in case other customers can think of a good use for this.

Thanks,
Rob.

Tags: bay bridge, GPS Tracking, landmark report, san francisco, toll collection

Comments (1)

Nov 15 2009

How much time in the NASCAR pits? (we use GPS tracking devices to find out)

Category: Ad Hoc Reports,Arizona,EZ-1000,Google Earth,GPS Insight Employees,GPS Tracking,Landmarks,People Tracking,Reporting,Reports — rdonat @ 10:14 pm

We were lucky enough to get a couple passes for this weekend’s NASCAR event, to include pit passes to the garage & pits.

We had a couple of EZ-1000′s with us, and I want to show how easy it is to quantify how much time we actually spent in the pits (vs. the stands/box):

I first create a landmark called “PIR Pits” around the pits:

tracking activity in the NASCAR pits

Then cut & paste the PIR Pits landmark into GPS Insight:

Paste a geofence into GPS Insight

Paste here:

Paste geofences into GPS Insight

Confirm here:

Paste geofences into GPS Insight

Run a report here:

GPS Track of Pit activity at NASCAR using GPS Insight EZ-1000's

1.9 hours in the pits

Except that missed the part where we went really close to the “inside the building” chatter from the GPS device, so I had to carefully re-draw the polygon to get a more accurate picture of the true time spent down there.

So even though we may pick up a little bit of false “in the pit” activity since it’s so close to the box/grandstand (with drift due to the device being enclosed), this adjustment to the “pits” will give a better representation of how much time was there:

Extend the boundary of the pits geofence to get all activity

While we get a couple of random “1 minute” visits which are inaccurate due to the EZ-1000′s “inside” drift, the 2.8 hours is much more accurate than the original 1.8 — both Brent and I spent half an hour in that remote area of the pits and it makes a big difference to the total amount of time in the report by accurately creating the polygon:

2.8 hours in the pits

A fun (and loud) time was had by all:

NASCAR in Phoenix

And a favorite of mine, the RedBull 83 car:

RedBull NASCAR

I like this car so much I bought the $60 model for my bookshelf. Brian Vickers may have come in 38th today, but we drink a lot of RedBull and don’t have much use for Lowe’s in our office.

Rob.

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