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Automate your fleet with Visits App

Introduction​

Mobile apps are driving the digital transformation of logistics. A modern workforce automation or fleet automation solution must have a mobile app for drivers as they are out and about performing their deliveries or service visits.

In this tutorial, we consider a logistics business that has fleet managers and their teams consisting of drivers such as, for example, delivery riders, service technicians, or sales people.

These drivers are expected to visit locations for the duration of their work shift. In their Visits App, they receive a list of delivery orders in the app with details and addresses for their delivery destinations.

You can immediately get started to automate your business with live location by deploying HyperTrack Visits App to your fleet.

         

Automate your fleet with HyperTrack Visits App​

To automate your fleet with HyperTrack Visits App, please review the following steps:

Create HyperTrack account​

First, use this link to sign up with HyperTrack. Once you have done so, you will have your account to automatically configured to deploy and install HyperTrack Visits App in your fleet.

Deploy HyperTrack Visits App​

From your dashboard Apps Page you can add drivers on your fleet via Invite button under "Visits" app. One this button is pressed, click Copy link under Share invite link.

This allows you to send an invitation deep link to download HyperTrack Visits app to your drivers in your fleet.

Once they download and install the app, they get automatically added to your account and you can immediately start automating your fleet logistics with HyperTrack Geofences API.

Your drivers will not need to identify themselves to authenticate to your HyperTrack account.

Scale HyperTrack Visits App deployments with Devices Invite API​

To automatically scale deployment of HyperTrack Visits App for larger fleets, use Devices Invite API.

With this API, you can generate a list of unique deep link invitations you can dispatch to your fleet via preferred communication channel. You can send them via SMS, email, WhatsApp, and other messaging options.

Identify drivers​

In order to identify drivers in your Visits App, each of your driver will have device metadata once HyperTrack Visits App is installed and starts tracking.

You will be able to use device metadata to filter and create dedicated team dashboards. This would help you filter the views and restrict for each team and their fleet manager.

Review instructions on how to set device name and metadata and make a decision on what works best for your Visits App.

Invite team members to HyperTrack dashboard​

You can invite additional ops managers to invite to your HyperTrack account. Please use Team page and ensure to select Also provide them full access to the dashboard with tracking data and settings checkbox to sign them up.

Define visit locations with geofences​

With geofences for each delivery destination address, you start enabling fleet managers automate logistics with live location of their drivers.

Live location tracking automatically triggers visit arrival and exit events, with real-time notifications posted to your Visits App backend.

Each geofence entry and exit event provides inside into time spent at each geofence as well as distance and duration of travel between geofence visits for each driver.

For each work shift, you will create geofences for each visit location your drivers are expected to visit. HyperTrack provides Geofences API to achieve this goal.

You can create:

Create geofences for the entire fleet​

In the Visits App workflow where you may have a number of pre-defined visit locations for an entire team, you may go ahead to create geofences for all drivers.

You can use this Geofences POST API to create a geofence as shown here. Note that you may pass an array of geofence definitions in one API call at once.

Once the call is made successfully, you will get back an HTTP 200 response with this example payload below. Your Visits App backend must store a map in your database between the delivery destination and geofence_id returned in the API call.

Create geofences for each driver​

In a business use case where each Visits App user is expected to visit locations only assigned to him/her, create geofences for each driver. You will have identified each driver by device_id.

Once the call is made successfully, you will get back an HTTP 200 response whrere you will get geofence_id for each destination. Make a note of geofence_id returned below as you will need it to delete this geofence once the user is done for the day.

Track deliveries​

As your driver performs delivery visits throughout the work shift, HyperTrack automatically detects geofence entry and exits.

You can optionally receive geofence visits entry and exit events in real-time in your own backend and integrate in your business workflow with the help of webhooks as explained in this guide.

For example, you may store geofence visit locations for reporting and proof of delivery.

Additionally, in real-time, you receive time spent at each visit, actual route from one visit geofence to another which includes duration and distance, as well as real-time driver status including stops and their durations that may be made between their assigned visit locations.

Integrate webhook notifications​

HyperTrack provides webhooks integration to send you geofence visit status as well as visit notes sent as geotags from your HyperTrack SDK integration.

For further reference, you may visit this guide to receive and process geofence visit events.

Verify actual visit locations​

Additionally, Visits App user can trigger a visit note with a geotag to be sent from the app.

HyperTrack will process the geotag event and attach location associated with the marker in the webhook update payload. The geotag webhook payload contains the location as shared above in the dictionary with type custom_marker.

This data can be used to verify accurate location of the user action triggered during the visit.

Define visit locations with trips​

In addition to using geofences above, to track when a previosly scheduled visit takes place with its ETA, use Trips API to create a trip with destination for each scheduled visit.

Doing so will allow your customers see live when your service worker arrives at the customer's visit location. This provides you not only the visibility you need but also reduces your customer support workload for the primary question raised by the customer: where is my service worker and how long do I wait?

Create delay notifications with scheduled trips​

With Orders API, you want to track with notification delays by creating scheduled trips as explained in this section.

In this guide, you can see how you can empower live order tracking with these compelling features:

Create live order tracking experience for customers​

HyperTrack Trips API gives you an ability for you, as a developer, to create live, real-time, high fidelity, location sharing with your customer via share_url link.

Please see an image below for a mobile location sharing viewing experience in the web browser.

Once your customer receives the link, the web browser will continually display and update the location of your app user's device with Visits App as it moves towards the visit destination while ETA is updated live.

Tracking Experience

Please review this guide on how to create this experience for your visit customers.

Customize live visit arrival tracking for your customers​

HyperTrack offers powerful customizations for live tracking sharing experience. Please see this section for more information.

Track orders​

As your driver performs scheduled visits, HyperTrack automatically detects trip status changes, such as, for example, arrival at destination and exit.

You can optionally receive trip status notifications in real-time in your own backend and integrate in your business workflow with the help of webhooks as explained in this guide.

Create live order tracking ops dashboards and scoreboard​

Fleet managers and teams can track driver's live location, location history and deliveries in their dashboard through embeddable HyperTrack Views. Fleet managers get access to trip views in the map to drill down more efficiently.

Use Nearby API to identify closest drivers​

Optionally, to help optimize driver assignment for each visit, HyperTrack provides powerful Nearby API functionality.

Nearby API locates app users on demand, figures out which ones are nearest to the location of interest, and returns them as an ordered list with nearest first. This API can be called either synchronously or asynchronously.

info

The most important element of on-demand commerce is finding the right resource to fulfill an order. Nearby API allows you to identify nearest available drivers to assign to a visit location.

Create fleet ops dashboards and scoreboard​

Fleet managers and teams can track driver's live location, location history and deliveries in their dashboard through embeddable HyperTrack Views. Fleet managers get access to delivery notes and pictures in the map to drill down more efficiently.

Each time checkout or visit cancellation happens, visits app attaches the expected location of the visit to the actual place, where the action happens. Observing difference between those values you can capture real customer location and detect frauds instantly.

Embeddable hierarchical dashboard integration​

As explained in embed hirerchical views guide HyperTrack enables you to create embedded real-time delivery tracking in your Visits App operations dashboard. To build such a dashboard, you use inline frames to quickly embed real-time dashboard built by HyperTrack in your application.

You can create the following compelling dashboards that your fleet managers can use a real-time dashboard to view all driver locations and deliveries for the day in real-time.

  • See this guide on how to create fleet manager dashboard for all Visits App users in your account
  • See this guide on how to create fleet manager dashboard for selected Visits App users
  • See this guide on how to create single delivery rider real-time dashboard

Create powerful Scoreboard​

Additionally, as you deploy HyperTrack Visits App in your fleet, you will be able to review fleet performance progression with the Scoreboard.

Scoreboard provides an overall view of how operations are progressing with the ability to review historic data for comparison. Visualizations provide a clear indication of trends based on key metrics while focusing on a current day’s status.

Scoreboard screenshot

Please refer to this guide to learn about HyperTrack Scoreboard.

Use Insights​

Insights may be used to track the driver's productivity, efficiency, and their behavior, and export reports as CSV.

Create and embed Visits App user Insights​

Use HyperTrack embeddable daily overview Insights to let fleet managers review metrics for their teams of Visits App users. Geofences Insights provides aggregates of the geofences that have been hit by your app users in the selected time range. In addition to the columns listed below, you will also see your geofence's metadata listed alongside, so that you can sort and make groups using it. Grouping by geofence metadata to slice your data by the attributes that segment the key locations of your business. An additional group by tag of 'App User' is provided to slice your data by user.

Insights Main

Please review geofences insights section to see how Geofences insights provides aggregates of the geofences that have been hit by your app users in the selected time range.

In addition to the columns shown in the view, you will also see your geofence's metadata listed alongside, so that you can sort and make groups using it. Grouping by geofence metadata to slice your data by the attributes that segment the key locations of your business. An additional group by tag of 'App User' is provided to slice your data by user.

With this Insights view integration, you also enable fleet managers export insights data via a CSV file export.

Extend and build your own Visits App​

This approach is best for product development teams who want to create their own app for their business.

HyperTrack Visits App is also available as an open source for you to fork or clone to start developing your own application.

Start development by forking or cloning Visits app GitHub repos on Android or iOS.

                   

Questions?​

If your have questions or comments on any of the topics above, please do not hesitate to contact us.