GPS tracking and geofencing

What (not) to expect from the geofencing module?

Geofencing can make your availability in the rota more reliable. It sends a warning if you travel too far away (out of the geofence) while showing available in the rota. 
When returning into the geofence around the station, we cannot be sure about the firefighter's intended availability. Maybe he/she has the children in the back of the car. Maybe he/she goes to another appointment. It is impossible to know about the intended availability, which is why we will not send any extra warnings.

How to configure geofencing?

If you enable 'GPS tracking', the smartphone app can track your location. This can help you and your colleagues in two ways:

• Geofencing draws a perimeter around your station. The system will send you a push notification warning you if you are available for the station, but moving too far away from it outside of the preset perimeter. It currently will not make you unavailable automatically. 
• GPS tracking can show your location on the station display to let your colleagues know how close you are to the station (only) when you are responding to an incident.

Setup (supervisor users only)

If you are a station supervisor, please visit the Station, Settings menu. Look for the 'Geofencing' section and click the 'Edit' button for the geofence. This will allow you to set the available perimeter around the station. Roughly 100 meters outside of this perimeter people will be warned if they are available but too far away from the station.

 

Using GPS tracking

After the perimeter is set up, every individual can enable GPS tracking for themselves. It requires a couple of steps:

• In the website:
• Click on your name in the top menu and click 'My profile'. 
• Click the 'Edit profile' button and select the 'Location settings' tab.
  
  
• In the bottom 'Geofencing' table, click 'Enable' for the station(s) you wish to use the geofencing feature for.
• Select 'Share my location with FireServiceRota' and click 'Apply'
• Decide whether you want your location to be visible when you respond to an incident by selecting 'Show my location on the station display'. 
• You can opt to became unavailable for some time when you are too far away from the station. To do this, tick the box and select the minutes you want to be unavailable.  

• In the smartphone app:
• Click the 'settings' icon at the top right and click 'Privacy and Location'
  
• Here you can switch on/off GPS tracking through the same settings as you just enabled on the website. 
• Enable 'Share my location on this device with FireServiceRota'. Do this only for the device that you travel with. 

Privacy

• If you did not confirm your attendance for an incident, your location will not be displayed anywhere. 
• We do not sell your location data to anybody.
• After 24 hours all location data is deleted from our system. The 24-hour history will allow us to answer questions if the system behaved in an unexpected way. 
• You have to switch this on by yourself, and you can switch it off any time through your smartphone app or via the website.