The addition of On-site indicators for ConSol brings with it the expansion of location services functionality within ConSol Mobile - you can learn more about the new functionality here.
We've answered your frequently asked questions regarding what that means for you in the field.
What does "Location Services" mean?
Location Services are required to be enabled for key features in ConSol Mobile, such as photos watermarked with your latitude and longitude as per image requirements for most customers.
ConSol Mobile records a user's location data when they carry out any action to update an order on ConSol mobile.
On-site indication functionality will see an increase in the qualifying actions and frequency that prompt ConSol Mobile to record your location.
What are the changes for this release?
Transitioning to Work Mode and acknowledging that you are on-site will trigger what we call the "location heartbeat". When the heartbeat is active, ConSol Mobile will collect your location information (longitude and latitude) every 5 minutes and store it in the order site visit metadata associated with the order.
The location heartbeat activates when a user is marked as on-site and is deactivated as soon as they are marked off-site.
Can other users or my customers see my location?
Customers and Supplier users will be able to see an indicator that a user has been marked on-site for a specific order within the new Map Search functionality in Find Orders.
Order location pins on the Find Orders map are determined by the order address and not the on-site users location information, except in the cases where order location provided at order creation time was highly inaccurate/difficult to interpret. In these cases the latitude and longitude of the initial on-site check-in of a currently on-site user will be utilised for positioning the pin.
A user's live location information (i.e that which is collected via the location heartbeat functionality) is not displayed publicly at this time.
So the pin drop locations do not move?
Correct. Once a qualifying address for the order location has been established the pin drop does not move on the map regardless of the on-site user's location. Information that can get updated on a refreshed map is the details of how long has it been since there has been on-site activity detected from the user.
Where else is my location information used?
On-site indicators are displayed in work in progress worklists across ConSol and ConSol Mobile as well as generating time stamps within the History tab of an order at the time of a user marking themselves on and off site.
A users geo-location information for the duration the location heartbeat is active does not display publicly anywhere within ConSol, however, this information is available for some Customers to extract for reporting purposes along with all other order meta-data collected by ConSol Mobile.
Can I turn it off?
Location services are required to be enabled at a device level. You can choose to not allow location services, however, key functions such as watermarked photo taking won't be available.
It is not possible to turn location services off for individual features within ConSol.
Can my presence on-site only be visible to my team and not customers?
No. The current design allows for on-site indicators to be visible to both Suppliers and Customers equally.
Where can I learn more about how ConSol keeps my data safe?
Please read through our Privacy Policy here. Yarris and ConSol take the utmost care in ensuring any sensitive information pertaining to our users is held to the highest standards possible.