Jan 09 2011

New “Copy Dashlet” capability released in GPS Insight

Sometimes customers (and I) spend a minute or two customizing a dashlet to be “just right.”

But then what if you want 2, 3, 4, or more copies of that same dashlet?  You used to have to do the same thing 2, 3, 4, or more times.

Not now!  I got tired of that so we developed a “copy” function to carry all those settings forward into a new Dashlet with the only difference being the vehicle group (which is taken from the “available dashlets” dock):

So I create a customized version of the location dashlet:

Customize your GPS Insight Dashlet

Customize your GPS Insight Dashlet

In this case I changed the update interval to 1 minute, show the Address/City/State, and show Landmark Names when they are inside a landmark.

Now if you want a copy of that dashlet with a NEW vehicle group (in this case ATL [Atlanta]) you just click the new “Copy” button near the other buttons (Edit, Move, Minimize, Close):

Create a copy of your GPS Insight dashboard dashlet

Create a copy of your GPS Insight dashboard dashlet

After clicking the copy button, a new copy of that dashlet appears but with the ATL group chosen instead:

Copy of the GPS Location dashlet is created

Copy of the GPS Location dashlet is created

Now when you want to see something specific for 3, 6, 9, etc. different groups, you just need to choose the group once in the dock dropdown, and click copy.  The dashlet is created exactly where the first one is, and the original is pushed down one.  You can then move them around as you need to.

THEN REMEMBER TO CLICK SAVE on your dashboard:

Save your new dashboard layout here!

Save your new dashboard layout here!

That’s it — we just made your custom dashboards much easier to create!

And, by the way, we increased the number of dashboards you can save from 10 to 40 recently, so you can really have one for about every application of your operations.

Rob.

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Oct 04 2010

New Dashlet “grouping” mechanism

Category: dashboard dashlets,Ease of use,New Featuresrdonat @ 2:31 pm

We just added the ability to “group” dashlets by a letter (A through H) by choosing a letter before dragging them off the dock:

Choose your dashlet group

Choose your dashlet group

This allows you to choose a lettered “grouping” for maps, graphs, location dashlets, etc.

So when you click on a location, that vehicle is shown in the corresponding map, etc.

Here is a REALLY big screen full of a LOT of dashlets, and each column is either the A, B, or C dashlet group so any activity in a column corresponds to other dashlets in that column:

Linked GPS Insight dashlets

Linked GPS Insight dashlets

Now when I decide to add a 4th set of dashlets at the bottom someplace, and I want them to “link” to each other, I choose the “D” group on the dashboard dock, and drag them off (in this case a Landmarks dashlet and Map dashlet).

Now they are “wired” together as “D” dashlets and when I click on a landmark with vehicles in it (“PHO” in this case) it pulls up that location in only that one map.

Linking 2 dashlets using Dashlet Group letters

Linking 2 dashlets using Dashlet Group letters

This reduces the amount of customization of dashlets and allows you to very quickly create useful dashboards within GPS Insight.

Rob.

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Sep 24 2010

New SMS message sending capabilities from the Dashboard

We just added the ability to select a vehicle group and send an SMS message to all those drivers from the dashboard.

Simple stuff, here are a couple screen shots:

Send a message to all/some of a group (only those with cell #’s assigned show up):

Here is where you send the message

Here is where you send the message

And look at outbound/inbound messages

here's where you see the past messages in & out

here's where you see the past messages in & out

And here’s what I sent earlier/just now on my iPhone:

here is what it looks like on your phone (my iPhone)

here is what it looks like on your phone (my iPhone)

Easy stuff — send messages to your drivers, and when they reply, you get it.

You don’t need to do anything except enter their cell # once, either by driver or by vehicle.

And they can send SMS to you at 477-477 (GPS-GPS).

Rob.

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Feb 03 2010

New Map Dashlet size & “Follow Me” capabilities

Category: dashboard dashlets,Ease of use,Mapping,New Featuresrdonat @ 11:28 pm

We recently made some new enhancements to our Dashboard Maps.

Now you can size them in any of 4 heights (and the width is determined by the dashboard style you choose).

Additionally, we allow you to display 8 maps per window now, vs. 4. You can still open as many windows as your PC is OK with.

In addition, we now allow you to “follow” a single vehicle, and display ALL the vehicles around it (determined by which vehicle group you choose).

Here is a screen shot of 3 “half-height” maps which are all “following” a different vehicle (noted in the title area of each map):

3 "Follow me" half-height graphs in GPS Insight's Dashboard

3 "Follow me" half-height maps in GPS Insight's Dashboard

These are only the right-most column of the full dashboard, which has a “twice-height map in the middle:

New multi-height maps within GPS Insight

New multi-height maps within GPS Insight

You can choose which vehicle or vehicle group to SHOW, which landmark group to DISPLAY, which vehicle or vehicle group to FOLLOW, and which zoom level to use.  Additionally, the same Map Group choices apply so you can “tie” these maps to the other various dashlets (e.g. location, alerts, landmarks, etc.).

As always, click on the “pencil” icon at the top right of the map dashlet to open the edit settings screen which looks like this:

GPS Insight Map Dashlet Settings

GPS Insight Map Dashlet Settings

Make sure to save your dashboard here:

Save your changes to the GPS Insight dashboard!

Save your changes to the GPS Insight dashboard!

An upcoming enhancement will allow you to simply “tear off” a vehicle from a dashlet to automatically show that vehicle in a “follow me” map, which will make it quicker to create these ad-hoc maps for vehicles you may have a short term interest in following closely.

View our GPS Vehicle Tracking Features for more information on what we can do.

Rob.

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