PoolCar Booking Updater - Automated Geofence Check Out/In

What is it?

This product (which is an opt-in) adds geofence check-out and check-in functionality for Smartrak Telematics customers who use the PoolCar booking system to manage their fleet.

Open

How does it work?

• The Booking Updater runs every 5 minutes.

• Part of it’s run process is to execute the geofence check-out and check-in logic if the company has this functionality enabled in their settings.

• It finds all PoolCar customers that have the Smartrak Geofence Check Out In Enabled in the Application Settings.

• For each customer that has the setting enabled it will fetch all Smartrak remotes, for each of those remotes it will look for any matching bookings (by a rego match) that can be checked out or in.

• For each of those bookings it will query Smartrak for PoolCar geofence enter and exit events to see if the booking can be checked in or out. PoolCar geofences are specified in Smartrak by adding the PoolCar tag [PC] anywhere in the geofence name (e.g. [PC] Home base or Office [PC].

Benefits

The automatic notification of when vehicles have left or entered a location delivers several advantages:

• Highlights whether vehicle keys have been returned in environments where a key management solution isn’t in place

• Even remote locations can be monitored so you know what assets are onsite

• By eliminating manual processes, late and inaccurate notifications become a thing of the past

• Provides evidence of time spent at a location for cost centre allocation, proof of works and invoicing

Features

• A free feature that all vehicles fitted with a Smartrak telematics device will be able to take advantage of

• Integrates seamlessly with existing PoolCar (For PoolCar Solution, the geofence must have “[PC]” in the name) and Smartrak Pool Booking functions, such as auto cancellation and reallocation of bookings

• No hardware upgrade required for customers with Smartrak telematics

• No manual interaction required by the driver – check-in/out are completely automatic

Caveats

• Geofence check-in will only work for bookings of up to 7 days duration.

• Enabling geofence check-out and check-in is a developer only process

• Enabling / disabling the check-out and check-in functionality may take up to a day to take effect

• Only Smartrak telematics is supported

• Only Smartrak geofences with the PoolCar Tag “[PC]” in the geofence name are supported

• A booking will only geofence check-in once the booking end time has elapsed. Once it has elapsed the geofence check-in will retrospectively look back to see if the booking was returned earlier and check-in at that time.

  • Note: This will only check-in if the vehicle was inside the geofence at the time of booking end or when it eventually enters the geofence after the booking end (late return).

• Driving from one geofence to another geofence where both have the PoolCar Tag in their name will not check the booking in. The booking is only automatically checked in when it returns to the same geofence that caused the automatic check-out.

  • This provides support for bookings where a vehicle is driving to another campus within the same company and remains in that other geofence when the booking end elapses (i.e. the meeting ran over). This means the booking won’t be checked in until the driver returns to the original geofence and will trigger reallocations due to a late return (if enabled).

• If a geofence is renamed AND there are any PoolCar bookings that have been automatically been checked out then the booking will not be automatically checked in.

  • This is because we required the same geofence name for the check-in that produced the check-out.

• We haven’t moved any of the other booking related 5 minute robot actions into the Booking updater.

  • For auto-cancel no show bookings there is an assumption that this is disabled or the auto-cancel minutes is sufficiently high (e.g. 30 min).

• If there are two bookings right next to each other and the driver of the first booking returns the vehicle early, and the driver of the second booking takes the vehicle early (before the first booking had ended), the Booking Updater will not know this was an early return and early check out and will not check the bookings in and out but instead treat the first booking as not returned. (Manual check-in will be required on the first booking)

• If there is a booking before the current booking and it is checked out, the current booking will not try auto check-out until the previous booking has checked in.

  • The auto check-out for the current booking will only be able to check-out after the previous bookings check in time.