How mobile phone tracking works
Welcome to Track My Ride, where managing your team's mobility becomes effortless and efficient. In today’s fast-paced world, the ability to track and manage your mobile assets and team effectively is more important than ever. Our comprehensive guide is designed to provide you with a straightforward, step-by-step walkthrough on how to enable mobile phone GPS tracking with Track My Ride and using its advanced features. This process not only enhances your personal safety but also offers a wealth of benefits for your business, including improved efficiency, asset management, and peace of mind. Whether you’re new to GPS technology or looking to refine your current tracking capabilities, this guide will equip you with all the necessary information and tips to get the most out of your mobile tracking experience. Let's dive in and explore how you can unlock the full potential of mobile GPS tracking.
To get started, simply equip your team with an iPhone or an Android phone. We recommend one from our list of supported devices. To enable mobile tracking, each phone requires a mobile tracking licence. Good news for our customers using TMR Hardware trackers: we include a complimentary licence for each active hardware tracker in your account. If you need additional licences to track additional phones, you can purchase these from your account page.
Follow this guide to seamlessly integrate Track My Ride into your business operations and keep a real-time pulse on your team's location.
Mobile Tracking Licences
Bonus! Each active hardware tracker on your account includes one free mobile tracking licence!
You will need to purchase a mobile tracking licence for each mobile phone you wish to track. You can manage your mobile tracking licences from within your account and billing page. Licences are used when you enable mobile tracking in the driver record editor, or use the mobile tracking link page to setup mobile tracking on your own phone.
How Mobile Tracking Works
With the Track My Ride mobile app, managing your team's movements and activities has become simpler using just a smartphone. You have the flexibility to capture tracks continuously, around the clock, or on a customised schedule, like during business hours. Mobile tracking is an excellent complement to our hardware tracking solutions. It's particularly useful for businesses with more staff than vehicles, or when tracking individual movements is key for enhanced safety and operational efficiency. Best of all, you don't need a hardware tracker to utilise our mobile tracking feature.
How to set it up > Tracking someone else
It's against our terms and conditions to track anyone who isn't aware they're being tracked. It's also against the law in almost all jurisdictions including Australia. Be a good person and use GPS tracking responsibly.
Mobile tracking data is saved against a driver, so first you need to create a driver record if you haven't done so already for the person you wish to track. Next, we need to enable mobile tracking for the driver and link their mobile phone. It's pretty easy and only takes 30 seconds to do.
- Navigate to the drivers page.
- Choose the Drivers tab, if not already selected.
- Create a driver record if you haven't done so already, or edit an existing driver by clicking the pencil next to their row.
- Click the Mobile Tracking tab at the top of the driver editing window to access the mobile tracking settings.
- Enable mobile tracking by clicking the toggle switch (you will need 1 available mobile tracking licence, how to buy licences).
- Configure the settings for this mobile tracked driver, such as tracking mode, path colour and local time-zone.
- Press Save to save your changes
- The tracking linking QR code will be displayed. You can also send it in an email with instructions included.
- Install the TMR mobile app (Apple, Android) on the driver's smart phone
- At the login page choose Got a tracking link key.
- Scan the QR code or enter the link key manually to link the phone to this driver.
- Follow the prompts on the phone to finish setting up tracking and you're done! Their location will now be displayed on the map.
A mobile tracked driver without a linked TMR account will only be able to access the simplified mobile tracking interface in the TMR mobile app, they cannot view the location of other team members.
How to set it up > Tracking your own phone
If you're already using Track My Ride and want to add mobile tracking on the same phone, it's a breeze. There are two ways to setup mobile tracking for your own phone, either through the TMR mobile app, or via the TMR website app at https://app.trackmyride.com.au
Setup via the mobile app
Open the TMR mobile app and login to your account. Look for the new mobile phone icon shown at the bottom of the app, and click it. Follow the instructions for setting up mobile tracking.
Setup via the website
To setup mobile tracking for your own phone, you will need to associate your TMR account with your driver record. This can be accomplished by navigating to the drivers page, editing your Driver record, selecting the Mobile Tracking area at the top of the drive edit the popup, and then choosing your account from the list in the Account Link field.
- Navigate to the Drivers page.
- Choose the Drivers tab, if not already selected.
- Create a new driver record for yourself, or edit your existing record by clicking the pencil next to the row.
- Click the Mobile tracking tab at the top of the driver editing window to access the mobile tracking settings.
- Enable mobile tracking by clicking the toggle switch (you will need 1 available mobile tracking licence, how to buy licences).
- In the Account Link field, choose your account from the list.
- Configure the settings for your mobile tracking, such as tracking mode, path colour and local time-zone.
- Press Save to save your changes.
- Install the TMR mobile app (Apple, Android) on your smart phone and login to your account.
What if you switch phones? No worries! When you sign in on a new phone, your mobile tracking shifts to that phone automatically and stops on the previous one. Remember, mobile tracking is linked to one phone per driver at a time.
Tracking your team and the vehicles they drive separately
Pro tip! If you want to track vehicle movement without a hardware tracker, ensure that your drivers choose the right vehicle from within the app before going for a drive.
Track My Ride offers a dual approach to managing both your vehicles and your team members effectively. Here's how it works...
- Tracking for Drivers: When your team members use mobile tracking, their movements are recorded individually against their driver record. This means every trip a driver makes, whether driving or walking, gets logged under their driver record and is visible on the map.
- Tracking for Vehicles: For vehicles, we recommend TMR hardware trackers, available in our online shop. These devices keep a record of all trips and movement made by a particular vehicle. Being physical hardware installed in the vehicle means it always goes where the vehicle goes and operates 24/7! Hardware is the gold standard for vehicle location tracking. Alternatively, you can also use the TMR app's automatic vehicle driving detection as part of the driver's mobile tracking to record where your vehicles have been. The driver just needs to choose the vehicle they're driving in the app.
- Combining Both for Comprehensive Tracking: You can track your vehicles in two ways
- Using Hardware Trackers: Directly track vehicles fitted with TMR hardware trackers. Tracks shown will be be those recorded by the hardware tracker.
- Create Virtual Vehicles: For vehicles without hardware trackers, you can assign a virtual vehicle to your mobile-tracked drivers. We use a special algorithm to detect the phone's activity so we can determine if it is driving or if it is walking. When a driver logs into a virtual vehicle, all their driving tracks get recorded under that vehicle's record. This is especially useful if your team uses different vehicles not equipped with TMR hardware trackers but you want to keep track of those too!
This dual approach ensures you have complete visibility over your team's movements and vehicle usage, regardless of whether they are driving or on foot, and irrespective of the vehicle they are using.
Automatic start/stop of tracking
Pro tip! To save your phone's battery, TMR may need up to 200M to 1000M of movement before tracking commences. To ensure a good GPS signal, use a phone mount in your car for the best results.
TMR mobile tracking operates automatically in the background. This means you don't need to remember to turn it on, just grab your phone and go! If you've been stationary for a while, to save battery your phone's operating system may require between 200 metres to 1000 metres of movement before tracking starts. Unfortunately we cannot control this, as it's managed by your phone to reduce power usage.
Minimising power usage, real-time tracking and the upload frequency
At Track My Ride, we're acutely aware of how crucial your phone's battery life is, especially when it comes to tracking activities. That's why we've engineered our app to be exceptionally power-conscious. Our design ensures that the app uses minimal battery, targeting a usage of just about 5% per hour while tracking is active and your phone is on the move. While you're stationary, we use the motion sensor to automatically pause tracking, meaning 0 power usage while you're at rest.
Capturing GPS points, which is fundamental to the tracking process, is surprisingly light on power usage. The part that demands a bit more energy is the transmission of these points over the mobile network to our servers, enabling us to display your movements on the map and to send you up to date tracking alerts. To optimise battery life, Track My Ride smartly batches up to 200 GPS points before sending them. This means you'll typically see your location updated every 10 minutes while on the move. Also, if you stop moving for 5 to 10 minutes, the app will send any points it is currently storing to our servers.
For those situations where you need updates more frequently or desire point by point real-time tracking, TMR offers this flexibility. You can customise how often the app uploads GPS points by adjusting the Upload Frequency setting in the driver record during the setup of mobile tracking. This feature ensures that you can balance the need for up to date tracking while maintaining your battery life.
Choose between scheduled tracking and 24/7 automatic tracking
Notice! Enabling, disabling or changing the schedule will notify the mobile user with a push notification.
With Track My Ride, you have the flexibility to tailor your mobile tracking to fit your needs.
- Automatic 24/7 Tracking: This option keeps the tracking on all the time, capturing every movement, day and night.
- Scheduled Tracking: Prefer tracking only during certain hours? No problem! Set up a schedule that suits you. You can specify the hours when tracking should be active for each day. The tracking will automatically turn on and off according to the times you've set, and you can adjust these times in hourly increments for any day of the week.
Instantly locate a phone with the Ping feature
Notice! You cannot ping a phone if scheduled tracking is enabled, and it is outside its scheduled tracking time.
If you need to find out a phone's current location quickly, use the 'Ping' feature in Track My Ride. Here's how it works...
- Send a Ping: Click ping from the map or the driver record. This action triggers a push notification to the phone you're trying to locate, requesting its current location.
- Notification Alert: The user of the phone receives this notification, making them aware that an updated location is being requested.
- Quick Location Update: Upon receiving the ping, the phone will attempt to acquire its current location within 60 seconds and then send this information back to our servers.
We chose this transparent approach to GPS tracking because we value honesty and openness at TMR. Covert tracking isn't our style. The visible notification also prompts the phone's operating system to prioritise the ping, making it more effective at quickly obtaining a new location.
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