This is a big deal.

Here’s how it works (silly example — but you’ll get the concept & can adapt to your needs):

Say your company is an ice cream delivery company and you need to know what type of ice cream each truck carries.

Launch Custom Categories and Attributes here:

Open Category/Attribute creation screen

Then click on “Create new Attribute” (you can choose to treat it like a category, which is a set of pre-populated values, in the next screen):

Create a new Attribute (or category)

Then make some changes in the highlighted fields and create your category (this is for Ice Cream Type).

Create a Custom Category

Do the same to create your Attribute (Freezer Capacity in Gallons):

Create a custom Attribute within GPS Insight

Then click on one of the available green “checkmarks” to assign values to your vehicles.  Note that Custom Categories and Attributes can be assigned to Users, Vehicles, Drivers, Landmarks, and Hierarchy Nodes:

Click on a category "checkmark" to assign values

Now you can assign your pre-determined Category values by clicking on each vehicles’ list of options and choosing one.  Soon, you will be able to use a new interface to choose multiple options, and we will allow for spreadsheet import assignment of custom values to vehicles & other GPS Insight Object types.

Assign Ice Cream Types to your trucks

Then assign your freezer capacity values:

Assign freezer capacity values

And now, you can click on the “Custom” tab within GPS Insight’s 2D mapping to see the custom categories/attributes and the vehicle’s values.  This is helpful when referencing business specific information on a particular truck, and can be customized to keep track of ANYTHING you want.

Custom Category and Attributes displayed in GPS Insight maps

We also show this data in free-form format within 3D mapping when choosing a vehicle:

GPS Insight 3D Mapping with custom category and attribute information

And you can re-use that category in order to assign it to landmarks (or anything) — let’s say our distribution centers need to ALSO be labeled with a particular Ice Cream type:

Edit a Category to assign it to another object category

Check the “Landmark” checkbox:

Add Landmarks to a custom Category

And now you can click on the NEW green checkmark to start editing the values for your landmarks:

Edit Landmark Category Values with one click

Just click, enter, and OK each landmark (this will use our new rapid edit screen soon for even quicker entry):

Edit values for a landmark's Ice Cream Type

And now when looking at that landmark, it will show you that information informationally:

Show custom information about a Landmark within GPS Insight using Categories and Attributes

And when it’s time to “clean up” (as I need to do after using a customer for this example…) you just click on the trash can to delete the Category/Attribute and all associated data (we ask you to confirm first):

Delete a Category/Attribute after you're done with it

And coming soon, you’ll be able to use Categories and Attributes when filtering vehicles on a map, vehicles to appear in a report, and as parameters and filters in alerts (e.g. you’ll be able to set a “max number of minutes idling before alert” on different vehicles and alert whenever that threshold is exceeded).

Here is a sample screen (proof of concept):

Filter vehicles using Category and Attribute values

This is REALLY POWERFUL STUFF and will help us to do even more custom work for our customers easily.  Between the Hierarchy capabilities and the Custom Categories and Attributes, the sky is the limit as to how granular we can get in your mapping, reporting, and alerting capabilities.

Please let us know if you need some training on this powerful new capability.

Thanks,

Rob.