Location services, commonly known as GPS, are a feature on mobile devices to determine where the device is in the world. If ExakTime Mobile has permission to use location service data, the mobile device will provide whatever location data it has to ExakTime Mobile. This location data will be used for a variety of functions such as:
- Associating location data with a time punch to determine where the employee was at the time of their clock in/out.
- Using location data to highlight locations that the device is within the Geofence of.
- Using location data to associate with a Location to establish the GPS coordinates and Geofence.
- Using location data to track the device with Geotrakker.
ExakTime Mobile does not generate its own location/GPS data and fully relies on whatever data the mobile device provides.
Table of Contents
- What Are Location Services?
- Location Services and ExakTime Mobile
- Troubleshooting ExakTime Mobile & GPS
What Are Location Services?
The Location Services on your mobile device is a combination of different services to help determine where the device believes it is in the world. The three most common services are, but are not limited to:
- GPS (Global Positioning System) - The device receives and calculates signals from satellites orbiting the Earth to determine your relative position.
- Cellular Towers/Network - The device receives and calculates signals from cellular towers to determine your relative position.
- Wi-Fi - The device receives data from the manufacturer of the operating system (such as Apple or Google) that has been crowdsourced from other devices to help determine your relative position. This is what allows devices such as tablets that lack GPS/Cellular antennas to generate your relative position.
Of the three common data sources above:
- GPS is the most accurate but can be the longest to generate usable data as it calculates your relative position.
- Cellular Towers can be the fastest but is not as accurate as GPS.
- Wi-Fi is used differently as it does not actually generate GPS data but instead crowdsources the GPS data of devices that were near the Wi-Fi access point, meaning that the Wi-Fi data is only as accurate as devices that have connected to it.
Location Service Accuracy
If a device is able to use all three data sources, the device will be able to generate and provide location data to ExakTime Mobile quickly and accurately. Keep in mind that even if everything is working at peak capability, there can be some oddities with location services and accuracy.
For example, when using your phone to navigate for you while driving on the highway, there may be times when it thinks you are taking an off-ramp when you are still driving on the highway or vice-versa. Even though everything appears to be working correctly, your device can still have trouble with rapid movement as it is using every sensor on your phone to determine where you are. As you continue to travel/move, your device will continually update the location data to where it best believes you are.
Another example is how often your device is updating its location data. In the animated image below, we have a device that is stationary and indoors. The blue point is drifting around as it constantly updates where it thinks you are and the light blue circle around the blue point indicates the margin of error. The blue point is where the device best believes you are, but you could also be anywhere within the blue circle.
To reiterate, the accuracy of the GPS data that ExakTime Connect/Mobile presents to you is as accurate as whatever the device generates and provides to us.
Precise and Approximate Location
In Android and iOS operating systems, there are additional options for location services to provide users with additional privacy called "Precise" and "Approximate". Older versions of Android and iOS offered these options at a system-wide level, while newer versions of Android and iOS offer these options on a per-app basis allowing users to tailor their privacy needs.
- Precise Location allows an app to receive GPS data that is accurate up to a few feet. This is generally reserved for apps such as navigation and
- Approximate Location allows an app to receive the generalized position of a device that is up to ~3 square kilometer region. This is commonly used with apps such as weather and mobile ordering.
Location Services and ExakTime Mobile
Location Services Permissions
When ExakTime Mobile is opened for the first time, it will request the user to allow ExakTime Mobile to access the location services of the device. The user should allow ExakTime Mobile access to location services to take full advantage of this feature and specify a "Precise" location, if possible, so ExakTime Mobile will have the most accurate location data instead of approximate location data.
In the event that a user has denied ExakTime Mobile permission to access location services, they can enable it from the settings of their phone. For the steps on what to do, please refer to the following article about device permissions.
Mobile Settings for Location Services
To ensure that ExakTime Mobile has the best chance of retrieving a longitude/latitude from the mobile device, we have some settings that make it so ExakTime Mobile requires access to location services and/or have GPS information before the employee can clock in/out.
These settings are generally controlled within the Mobile Settings page of ExakTime Connect or within the Settings of ExakTime Mobile, depending on your need of all employees needing location services/GPS data or only key devices.
Require Location Services - Requires ExakTime Mobile to have access to the location services of the mobile device to allow the employee to clock in/out. This does not guarantee that ExakTime Mobile will receive location data, but if the mobile device has any location data to provide, ExakTime Mobile will use the location data.
Require GPS Fix - Requires ExakTime Mobile to have received GPS data from the mobile device for the employee to clock in/out. If ExakTime Mobile cannot receive GPS data for any reason, the employee will not be able to clock in or out until ExakTime Mobile receives GPS data. While this will guarantee that you will have GPS data when employees clock in/out, if there is something preventing them from getting GPS they will be unable to clock in/out.
Requiring Location Services/GPS Data
For more information about Mobile Settings to require location services/GPS data for all copies of ExakTime Mobile, you can refer to Mobile Settings on ExakTime Connect
For more information about ExakTime Mobile settings to require location services/GPS data on a per-device basis, you can refer to ExakTime Mobile Settings.