Officers can perform two of the most common activities right from the main user screen in SOVA Mobile, those activities are starting a tour and starting a task. This article addresses how to conduct tours in SOVA Mobile.

• From a mobile device, login and select an officer name from the list
  
• The main user screen of SOVA appears below
  

• Tap "Begin/Resume Tour.
  
• The tour select screen opens below:
  

• If you are unsure what tour you want to start, hold your finger on screen for 2 seconds over a tour name to open a popup menu where you can preview the tour. We selected the "Golf Course Tour". See below:
  

• Tap "Preview Tour". The screen below opens showing a description of the tour and a list of the tour checkpoints for the Golf Course Tour. You can click the "View Image" button in the popup below to see a tour image (if an image has been added for the tour). We recommend capturing a satellite view of your property from Google Maps and adding pins to mark the location of the tour checkpoints. However you can also take a scanned image of the interior of your building and add map markers to that to give a user a sense of where they will be traveling to to complete the tour:
  

• After closing the popup above, we return back to the tour list. We tap the "Golf Course Tour" to start this tour
  
• The checkpoints for the tour, "office" and "G Gate" are shown in a list and the tour is now active:
  

• The screen above shows the start time of the tour, tour name, how many checkpoints have been scanned and how many remain, and the toggle to "Show Tour Buttons" is currently set to ON. Setting this toggle to OFF would show the SOVA logo with a pulsing "eye" indicating that the tour is active. It is a matter of preference which view to use
  
• Hold your finger on top of the "office" checkpoint button above to add a comment to the tour button. This is useful if you want to pass information to the tour report regarding a button that is not scanning, or perhaps a checkpoint area is inaccessible for some reason.
  
• The screen below shows the "Add comment popup". Here, you can add a comment to be used once or save a comment for later, which is useful of you routinely write the same comment over and over to indicate, as an example, that the public restrooms are out of service and inaccessible, and that is the reason that the checkpoint was missed while on tour. Remember, comments added here are directly transferred to the tour report (onscreen and PDF) so managers are aware of the reason for the missed checkpoint:
  

• While on tour, If an officer is unsure where a checkpoint is located, SOVA gives them information to assist in locating the checkpoint. Tapping on any checkpoint in the tour button list opens the location hint popup for the selected button. Below is the screen that opened after we tapped the 'office" checkpoint for our sample tour. The text "On the AED box, left side from the lobby", should be useful in helping the officer find the checkpoint:
  

• If the officer is still unsure of the checkpoint location, they can tap the "View Image" button above to see a full screen image of the checkpoint location, shown below:
  

• Once they have located the RFID checkpoint button, they can scan it using their mobile device to mark the checkpoint visited on their tour. To get a successful read of the RFID button, follow these simple rules:
  

• Grip the device with your fingers extending on either side by approximately 1/2 inch, or 12mm
  
• Position the device 1 to 2 inches (25-50mm) above the RFID button, and lightly place your finger tips on the object (wall, door jamb, etc.)
  
• Slowly glide your device down and over the top of the RFID button
  
• There are two sounds that the device emits, one is a shorter beep, the other is a longer beep. If you hear the longer beep, this means that the mobile device got a successful read of the RFID button
  
• After a successful read, the device vibrates briefly, and the screen flashes
  

• You may have tasks assigned to the checkpoint that you have scanned. If so, you will see a popup similar to below:
  

• This popup is asking the officer to confirm that the floors were found clean. Here an officer is required to check the box, even if they do not agree with the question. If the floors were not clean, they are able to add a comment by selecting "Done & Add Comment". Generally, an officer would click "Done & Back".
  
• Back at the tour checkpoint list, we see that the "office" checkpoint is shown in red to indicate that the checkpoint has been successfully scanned and the visit registered. You will also see a speech bubble icon next to the "G Gate" checkpoint. This tells us that a button comment was added, by long pressing the button name and adding a comment like "Could not scan checkpoint to X":
  

• Complete these steps for each checkpoint in the list
  
• While on tour, the context menu (which is accessible by clicking the three vertical dots at the top right) has a few functions that are useful:
  

• Flashlight - light the night with your Android!
  
• Screen Lock - dim the screen when you no longer need to see the checkpoint names after you have learned your routes. Also has a feature allowing you to dim the screen and lock it, so if you like to carry your mobile device in your hands or in your coat pocket, you won't need to worry about "pocket dialing" anyone
  
• Tour Notes - write notes specific about the current tour. These notes appear in the tour report
  

• Below shows the options when selecting the "Screen Lock" option from the tour context menu:
  

• Below is the result of selecting the "Dim and Lock" option above:
  

• The screen dims and no longer responds to touch, but still permits scanning tour checkpoints. To remove the screen lock and return to normal operation, tap the context menu and select "Screen Lock" again to remove the lock and brighten the screen
  
• Below shows the "Tour Notes" option, accessible from the tour context menu at any time during the tour:
  

• If a tour is completed with all checkpoints scanned, SOVA automatically returns the user back to the tour list, which would show the tour completed and ready for submission. For this example, we will instead tap the back button to return to the tour list view. In the screen below we see that 1 of 2 buttons are remaining for the Golf Course Tour:
  

• In SOVA you are able to complete tours in any sequence you want (meaning you can scan checkpoints in any order), and you are able to submit incomplete tours
  
• Let's submit this tour. There are two ways to submit tours. First, if submitting a single tour, you can hold your finger on top of the glass for a couple seconds above the tour you wish to submit until the popup appears similar to the screenshot below:
  

• In the popup shown above, you have a few options:
  

• Submit Tour
  
• Cancel Tour
  
• Preview Tour
  
• Pause/Resume
  

• You can tap "Submit Tour" to submit your tour to the web. You need to have a WiFi or cellular data connection to complete this step
  
• The other way to submit tours is useful when you want to do a bulk submit of many tours at the same time. Let's say for instance you have 8 different tours at your property, and you have just completed 7 of them. They would all show in the tour list as complete, ready for submittal.
  
• You can submit all of the tours at once by tapping the user context menu at the top right and choosing "Submit All Tours". See below: