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Enable location tracking

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Field technicians often travel to various locations throughout their workday, and it's helpful for schedulers to know where technicians are at any given time.

An administrator enables location tracking for the Dynamics 365 Field Service app and technicians enable location sharing from the mobile app. Schedulers can visualize technician's locations on the schedule board and see their location history.

For a guided walkthrough, check out the following video.

Prerequisites

  • Administrator access to Dynamics 365 Field Service.
  • Read access to the msdyn_geolocationsetting table for the security role of mobile app users. These permissions are included with the default Field Service - Resource role.

Enable tracking

To send a technician's location information to Field Service, enable location tracking in the web application.

  1. In the Field Service web app, change to the Settings area.

  2. Go to Geolocation > Geolocation Settings.

  3. Select the current setting or create a new one.

  4. Set Enable Location Tracking to Yes.

  5. Enter a Refresh interval in seconds to define how often the system checks the location information. We recommend values between 60 and 300 seconds.

  6. Set the Tracking Times by date for when you want the system to track location data. For 24 hours, select 12:00 am to 12:00 am.

  7. Select Save & Close.

Share location from the mobile app

The app prompts users to allow location access after signing in to the app. The app requests permissions for precise location that are required to update the location consistently. Revoking the listed permissions or not allowing them in the first place keeps the location tracking disabled. To change the permissions retroactively, open the app permissions settings on your mobile device and allow the permissions.

To have location tracking work properly, allow the app to use Precise Location and set the location tracking to Always allow in the device settings.

Verify that location tracking works

In the Field Service web application, open the schedule board and select a resource that has location tracking enabled. The current location of the resource appears on the schedule board map.

Note

Dispatchers can use current locations for schedule assistant travel time calculations by selecting Real time mode in the schedule assistant filter pane. For more information, see Advanced filters for the schedule assistant.

Location tracking events

The Geolocation Tracking (msdyn_geolocationtracking) table stores location information. Users location is captured at the frequency in the Refresh interval. The users location is sent to the server and stored only during the set Tracking Times. You can view the table in Power Apps.

Note

Location tracking events might be sent less frequently based on the mobile device operating system. The frequency might be influenced by battery savings settings, device battery charge status, and other applications running on the device that might consume device resources.

You can configure how far back in time a geolocation is valid. This setting is important for scenarios when a mobile device loses internet connection, making dispatchers unaware of the true location. The time threshold can be configured in Resource Scheduling Settings area. Select Administration > Scheduling Parameter. On the Geo Data tab, select Geo Location Expires After X Minutes.