How to set up live geo location tracking?

Overview

All our subscription plans include geo time tracking when workers Clock IN and OUT. That is, we will tag the worker's location at the instant of Clock IN and instant of Clock OUT. We can also enforce geo fences where workers clock IN and OUT. For more information on setting up geo fences, see the following Help article: How do geo fences work?

However, this basic geo tracking does not track users during the entire span of the shift between Clock IN and Clock OUT. For that, we have an add-on feature called "Background Geo Tracking" that is available on our Premium plan. This feature will allow you to view each worker's live location while they're clocked IN, as well as view "breadcrumb" history of everywhere they were during the shift including trip information. Administrators can also get alerted in real time if a worker leaves an assigned geo fence, or if the location connection goes offline. This tracking occurs when the worker Clock IN on their own personal phone, and works even when the Fareclock app is closed or not in use.

Setup

To enable this feature, go in the Console to Settings -> Devices -> Defaults -> Geo Settings. Make sure both "Enable Geo Location Tracking" and "Enable Background Geo Location Tracking" are enabled.

For more information on the basic geo settings, see the following help article: How do I prevent workers from turning off geo location or internet access to evade shift and geo policies?

There are also some settings specific to the background geo feature:

• Power efficient vs Aggressive:  Choose a trade off between minimizing battery consumption and maintaining exactness. The main differences are:
  (1) In Power efficient mode, it may sometimes (but not always) take up to 200-400 meters of movement outside an original stationary location for the app to "wake up" and start tracking motion. Aggressive mode will immediately detect the motion, unless the worker terminated the app or changed the permissions.
  (2) Normally, when the device is stationary, the app will send periodic "heartbeats" to our servers in order to verify the app is still tracking and provide live location. In Power Efficient mode, occasionally the device operating system may delay these heartbeats or terminate them altogether. In Aggressive mode, the app will more reliably deliver these heartbeats, unless the worker terminated the app or changed the permissions.
• Connection timeout: If a worker's device does not send its location while clocked IN for longer than this amount of time, then both the worker and administrators will receive a realtime alert notification. An additional will be sent later if the device comes back online. To receive these alerts, the administrator's user profile should enable "Geo alerts" in the Notifications section.
• Accuracy threshold: Mobile devices are able to report a location accuracy level based on the strength of GPS, cellular and Wifi signals. The lower the number, the higher the accuracy. If a location record's accuracy number is higher than this threshold, then the location record will be ignored.
• Stationary theshold: When a device is considered stationary, i.e., not in motion or on a trip route, and the device moves further than this threshold distance, then device will then be considering to have started moving on a trip.
• Idle max speed: If the device is in motion on a trip, then the device must maintain a speed less than this threshold in order to transition to a stationary state. This setting is used in combination with then next setting "Idle time to stationary".
• Idle time to stationary: If the device is in motion on a trip, then the device must maintain a speed less than the "Idle max speed" setting above for this amount of time in order to transition to a stationary state.

An administrator can receive real time alerts related to this feature by going to the admin's profile under Settings -> Users, and in the Notifications section, enable "Geo location alerts".

The administrator will receive notifications via either the mobile app if installed a personal admin device, or in the Console there is a notification bell icon in the top right that will show all alerts.

Worker Setup

The background geo tracking is used when the worker clocks IN using their phone in personal device mode. It is not used when the device is shared by multiple users in "group mode". For more information on setting up a personal device, see the following help article: Can employees set up the Fareclock app on their own personal devices?

This background geo tracking feature requires that the worker have version 3.4 or later of the Fareclock mobile app.

Once the worker has setup their phone, they will be prompted by the Apple or Android operating system to allow permission for the Fareclock app to track their location always. However, Fareclock will only track their location while they are clocked IN during their shift. If they are clocked OUT or if the shift expired, then the location tracking will automatically stop.

Monitoring

The live location and breadcrumb history can be viewed in the Console under Manage -> Geo Mapping. In the Live Location list, a green icon means worker is Clocked IN and connection is live. If icon is red, it means the worker is Clocked IN but location connection is offline. If icon is gray, then the worker is not current on shift.