Tracker for ArcGIS

Mobile
11th December 2019

Tracker for ArcGIS allows you to track the location of anyone with access to a mobile phone and the correct licence. Knowing where field staff are has clear health and safety benefits for remote locations. Near real-time position data is also key to the deployment of response teams in an emergency. Tracker for ArcGIS is underpinned by an organisational capability called Location Tracking. This was released for ArcGIS Enterprise in the summer and is now also available in ArcGIS Online. Let’s look at how it works.

Enabling Location Tracking

Tracker for ArcGIS is a premium app and as such requires an additional licence. It can be licensed against any User Type but each person you need to track needs a Tracker licence. If you have Tracker licenses you can enable Location Tracking from within Organization Settings. Doing so creates a new Feature Service which acts as a store for tracks and last known location points. Note that this has a fixed schema and cannot be changed.

Tracker Mobile App

Designed for ease of use, Tracker for ArcGIS is available on both iOS and Android platforms. It allows users to enable and disable tracking, set reminders and view recent tracks. Importantly it supports both online and offline workflows.

In addition to location, Tracker takes advantage of additional sensors on the device to detect and capture activity type (cycling, walking, driving etc.), battery level, bearing, speed, and GPS accuracy. The accuracy of the results will of course depend on your device’s sensors.

The app works in the background and has been developed to minimise impact on the battery. When using online, tracks are typically uploaded every 10 minutes.

Track Viewer

The Track Viewer allows managers to see the location history of those being tracked. Track Views define who can see and query the tracks of other users in the organisation. The web app provides the ability to filter tracks by user, time, accuracy, speed and activity type.

As all data is stored in the Location Tracking Feature Service, the tracks can also be consumed by other apps in the platform for further analysis.

Want to know more?

You can find out more about Tracker for ArcGIS here. If you’d like to check out a video of the application in action you can find one here.

Mobile