Geolocate Tour Checkpoints

Geolocate Tour Checkpoints

Adding geo-coordinates to your tour checkpoints can greatly enhance the dispatch view so the positioning of your security officers on the map will be more accurate as they carry out their duties. It will also solve the issue of seeing a blank screen when viewing a tour map .

There are many activities that are completed by your officers during the day, from conducting property tours where they register their presence at a series of electronic tour checkpoints spread throughout your facility, to recording tasks like attending to a guest injury, to providing escorts for employees after-hours out to the parking garage.

Tours and tasks are dealt with differently in SOVA, primarily because tour checkpoints are static and are not moving, while tasks can occur anywhere on property. When an officer performs a task, SOVA Mobile attempts to get a GPS fix on the officers location, and it updates the server with these coordinates. A dispatch officer see this as movement on the dispatch map where officer positions are shown. Tasks recorded outdoors on a mobile device with a good GPS signal will show the officers position on the map very accurately. On the other hand, if the task is recorded inside a building and the officer is surrounded by concrete and steel, the GPS signal strength can suffer and as such, the GPS coordinates for that task can be inaccurate as well. We have partially addressed this limitation by introducing our new Task Button feature. Learn more about adding RFID task buttons and improve the accuracy of the map by adding task checkpoints throughout your property for tasks that occur routinely at fixed locations.


With tour checkpoints, the situation is different. We are able to install an RFID button or Bluetooth beacon to define a fixed, non-movable checkpoint region. An example might be the entrance to your pool washrooms, the Finance Office, or the loading dock. Once we install hardware at these checkpoints, we then define the location of the checkpoints on a Google map and place a pin on the map at their exact location. In so doing, we store the GPS coordinates of each tour checkpoint. When the checkpoint buttons are scanned by an officer, we can show the officer at that map location very accurately. This is essentially what the "Geolocate" process does, which we are going to learn about next.

How to Geolocate Property Tours:

Prerequisites:
  • You must have already setup tours, added some tour buttons at your checkpoints, and synced these changes from the mobile device to the web. If you haven't done these steps already, kindly read the article on adding tours first and then return to the geolocate article after you have finished adding your tours and tour checkpoints.

Below is a screenshot of the geolocate screen in SOVA:


  1. Navigate to Tours > Geolocate
  2. Click the "Tours" tab
  3. Select from one of your tours that appear below. After your selection of tour, the tour checkpoints appear below
  4. Select one of your checkpoints. After your selection, the map updates to show the current position of the checkpoint. Don't worry if it's wildly inaccurate, we'll fix it in the next step.
  5. Click on the map pin, and with your mouse button held down, drag the map pin to a new location on the map. When you are satisfied with the new location, release your mouse button. When you release the pin, the GPS coordinates are automatically updated. Repeat for other tours and checkpoints
  6. If you click a checkpoint in point #4 above and the map shows an image that is nowhere near your property, simply type your property name or property address in the search box and press the red search button. This will position the map over your property, and the map pin will show at the center of your property. You must drag the map pin to a new location, even if your checkpoint is located near the center of your property. This is necessary so the system can get the GPS coordinates of the map pin and update the database.


TIP: While geolocating your tour checkpoints, feel free to zoom in and out and click to drag the map to re-center it, etc. It functions just the same way as any other Google Map you may have used. When locating your tour points, you want to try to be as accurate as possible, but trying to position a pin with less than one meter accuracy is really unnecessary. The idea here is to give your dispatch officer a good idea where all security officers are located and to track their movements in real-time which if done right, can greatly enhance the safety and security of all customers, guests, residents and employees.


Watch a video on how to geolocate tour buttons in SOVA:


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