Using Location Services
SOTI MobiControl enables you to pinpoint and track your devices in real-time and review their activity over a historical period. Using our location services, you can analyze the movements of your devices, enabling you to find lost devices, develop more efficient routes, or control which services your devices can access depending on location.
Location services are available for the following device families: Android Plus, iOS, Windows Desktop Classic, and Windows Mobile / CE. SOTI MobiControl uses a combination of a device's GPS signal, WiFi and cellular connections to determine location and requires that devices have a device agent installed and online. On iOS devices, location tracking can also be facilitated with the installation of a SOTI MobiControl SDK-enabled app. Location tracking is powered by Bing Maps and offers basic mapping and navigation services.
Tracking Devices
SOTI MobiControl provides two options for tracking your devices to accommodate different circumstances.
For short-term scrutiny, you can enable tracking in the Device Information dialog window. Once enabled, SOTI MobiControl will continue to track the movements of the device until the set end time or you manually stop the tracking. Location data is reported according to the frequency you set and each data point is reflected on the map by a point. Do not use this a replacement for long-term tracking, as it consumes significant memory and can only be active for a single device at a time.
For long-term tracking, you can leverage a data collection rule to regularly request a device's location. You must set up and activate a data collection rule for location before you can use it for long term tracking. Once enabled, the device's movements will be visible on the Location map for the period covered by the data collection rule.
Geofences
Geofences are virtual, geographic boundaries that you can apply to your devices. When a device enters or exits an area covered by a geofence, SOTI MobiControl will notify you and, if configured, perform a predefined action such as sending messages to devices, relocating the device to another device group or blocking access to certain services. Geofences allow you to track and regulate device movements easily and automatically. Geofences can be as large or small as is necessary and can be easily manipulated to cover any space.