Link a tracker to a vehicle and follow it on the map

Introduction

Some vehicles carry a small tracking box that reports where they are, how fast they are moving, how much fuel is in the tank and whether the doors are shut. RentVisie keeps one record per box on the screen headed Device, and plots the boxes it can see on the screen headed Asset positions.

The Device screen is one list, one row per box, with the vehicle's registration number in the first column and a pencil icon at the end of each row that opens the box's own record. Two buttons above the list fetch boxes from your supplier. The map screen holds a Back button, the heading, a Refresh button, and the map itself.

You would come here when:

• a new box has been fitted and nothing in RentVisie knows about it yet;
• you want to see where the fleet is right now, with nothing wrong;
• a customer says the app will not open the car;
• a vehicle is overdue and nobody can reach the driver;
• the mileage filled in at pickup looks nothing like the dashboard.

Terms used on this screen

Every way to reach this

Use this page when the box is already fitted and RentVisie needs to know which vehicle it is on.

How to use

Configuration

RentVisie talks to two tracking suppliers, set up separately. Each tracker belongs to one of them.

Set up the Traci connection

1. From the main menu, open Settings, then click Integrations. The screen headed Integrations lists one row per supplier.
2. Find the Traci row and click Setup. A popup headed Traci opens.
3. Fill in Token with the key your supplier gave you, and leave is active ticked.
4. Click Save.

Set up the Conneqtech connection

1. From the main menu, open Settings, then click Integrations.
2. Find the Conneqtech row and click Setup. A popup headed Edit Conneqtech Connector opens, in three parts.
3. In the top part, fill in Base url, Application id and Group id, and leave Active ticked.
4. Under Authenticate, fill in Username and Password, then click Retrieve auth key. If either box is empty the screen refuses and marks the empty one. When it works, Auth key fills in by itself; you cannot type in that box.
5. Under Retrieve data, click Get all group devices. RentVisie fetches every tracker in that group and drops you on the Device list. If Active is not ticked you get "Connector not active" instead and nothing is fetched.
6. Click Save.

Each row on the Integrations screen also has a small on/off control next to the supplier's name. The screen says of them: "Below radio buttons are for internal tracking. To disable the integration, make sure to disable the connector from the corresponding setup page." So turning a row off there does not stop anything — untick is active on the Traci popup, or Active on the Conneqtech popup, instead.

Before you start: setting up a connection, fetching trackers and linking a tracker to a vehicle all need a Company admin account. Only administrators see the Devices tile at all: an ordinary staff account gets the version of the Assets screen that has Track and Trace but no Devices. If yours has no Devices, ask your Company admin. Everything here is reached from tiles on the Assets and Settings screens — none of these lists is a main-menu item of its own.

Using the tracker list and the map

From the main menu, open Assets, then click Devices. The screen headed Device opens.

1. Click Get devices (traci) above the list. Every box your Traci account holds appears as a row. If no Traci connection has been set up yet you get the message "Please set up the Traci connection first.", and the Traci setup popup opens straight after it.
2. For Conneqtech boxes, click Get devices (3rd party) instead. It does the same job against the Conneqtech connection.
3. Find the new box's row, matching it on Name or Unique id — the fitter usually writes one of them on the paperwork. The first column, RegistrationNumber, is empty on any box not yet linked.
4. Click the pencil icon at the end of the row. A popup headed View Device opens: the supplier's details down the left, the boxes you can change down the right.
5. Down the left, check Tracker type says Vehicle for a car or van, Trailer for a trailer, and that Platform names the right supplier.
6. In the Asset box on the right, pick the vehicle by its registration number.
7. Click Save. Nothing is stored until you do; Cancel throws the change away. The RegistrationNumber column now shows the plate.

To see where the vehicles are, go back to the main menu, open Assets and click Track and Trace. The screen headed Asset positions draws a marker per tracker. Click one and a popup headed View Device shows the tracker's Name and Model, then latitude, longitude, speed and course, and below those odometer (m), fuel, out1, out2 and ignition. Refresh redraws the map; nothing refreshes on its own.

A worked example. A box named RV-0142 is fitted to a Renault Clio, plate 12-ABC-3. You click Get devices (traci), find the RV-0142 row with an empty RegistrationNumber, click the pencil, leave Tracker type on Vehicle, pick 12-ABC-3 in Asset and click Save. The row now reads 12-ABC-3. On Track and Trace, its marker reads latitude 52.0907, longitude 5.1214, speed 0 and odometer (m) 4 205 000 — parked, with 4,205 kilometres on the clock, because that box counts in metres.

Key details

What the fetch buttons change and what they leave alone. Fetching adds any box new to RentVisie and refreshes Name, Status, Last update, Model, Phone, Category, Position id and Group id on ones it knows. It never touches Asset, so your links survive, and it never removes a box the supplier has dropped.

Only Traci trackers appear on the map. Asset positions reads from the Traci connection alone, so a Conneqtech tracker has a row on the Device list but no marker. Both screens show your own company's boxes only.

These are the boxes you can type in on a tracker record; come back to a row when it comes up:

Everything down the left of that popup comes from the supplier and cannot be typed in, including Disabled, which looks like a pair of buttons you could press and is not.

Boxes fetched from Conneqtech arrive set up differently. They come in as Trailer, with their own four command words filled in rather than the Traci ones above. A Conneqtech tracker also carries a TrackerDevice button at the top of the popup, which opens the matching Conneqtech record; it is hidden on any tracker whose Platform is not Conneqtech.

Nobody at the desk sends a lock or unlock instruction by hand. No button on these screens does it. The four command boxes are only the words RentVisie uses when the customer's self-service app asks for the car to be locked or unlocked, or when the customer finishes a self-service pickup or return. Setting one wrong is silent — you find out when a customer cannot get in.

The link is what everything else looks up. Once Asset is filled in, the pickup and return screens can pre-fill the mileage from the vehicle itself, and the customer's app can unlock that car. Past bookings are untouched.

Unticking is active on the Traci popup does not switch the map off. It stops only the mileage and fuel pre-fill at pickup and return. The map and the fetch button carry on.

What to do next. If a customer is waiting on the phone, open Track and Trace first — that answers "where is my car" in one click. If you have just linked a tracker, open the vehicle's own record next and check the Self service switch, because the app refuses to unlock a vehicle that does not have it. Then read Mileage and fuel readings for what the tracker does to the odometer box at pickup and return.

Q&A

A customer says the app will not unlock the car. What do I check? Four things, in this order, because each one produces its own message in the customer's app. The booking must be at status PickedUp — if it is not, the app says "Please update booking status first (pickedUp)"; put the booking through pickup on the Hand a vehicle over to a customer screen. The vehicle's Self service switch must be on, or the app says "Self service not supported". A tracker must be linked to that exact vehicle, or the app says "No linked Tracker found" — open Assets, then Devices, and check the plate is in the RegistrationNumber column. And the Traci connection must exist, or the app says "No traci connection"; that one needs a Company admin to open Settings, then Integrations, then Setup on the Traci row.

A customer cannot finish a self-service return. Why? The vehicle is checked before it will lock itself, and the customer is shown one word naming what is wrong: Ignition (the engine is running), Doors (a door is open) or Key (the key is not in its holder). Geofence means the vehicle is not parked inside a return area. There is no check on a moving vehicle; it is switched off. See Help a customer whose self-service return is refused. Only the customer can fix any of these, standing at the car. If they cannot, take the vehicle back yourself on the Take a vehicle back at the end of a rental screen instead.

The vehicle is a trailer and the return went through without any of those checks. That is expected. The engine, movement, door and key checks only run on a tracker whose Tracker type is Vehicle. A tracker set to Trailer or Other skips them and locks straight away, so set Tracker type deliberately when you link a box.

A self-service return fails with "Unsupported platform". What went wrong? The tracker's Platform is set to Rentalcheck or Unknown. Only Traci and Conneqtech can complete a self-service pickup or return — Rentalcheck belongs to the customer identity checks, not to trackers, so it is never right here. Open Assets, then Devices, open the tracker and set Platform to the supplier the box actually reports to. If you do not know which, ask whoever fitted it. See Screen a customer before renting for what Rentalcheck really does.

I linked the wrong vehicle. How do I undo it? Open the tracker again from the Devices list, clear the Asset box with its own clear control, and click Save. There is no delete button on the Devices list, so a tracker you no longer use stays there with an empty RegistrationNumber — that empty column is how you spot the ones still waiting to be dealt with. Conneqtech's own Tracker list does have a delete icon beside each row.

Two trackers ended up pointing at the same vehicle. Which one wins? Nothing stops it, and nothing warns you. The pre-filled mileage and the remote unlock each use one of the two, and which one is not something you can predict or see. Clear the Asset box on whichever tracker is no longer fitted.

A tracker I know is fitted is not on the list. Click Get devices (traci) — or Get devices (3rd party) for a Conneqtech box — and look again. If it is still missing, RentVisie is only showing what the supplier returns, so the box is not yet in the supplier's own account. That is a call to your tracking supplier, not something this screen can fix.

I clicked TrackerDevice on a tracker and got "No tracker found". That button only works on a tracker whose Platform is Conneqtech and which came in through Get all group devices. A Conneqtech tracker added any other way has no matching Conneqtech record behind it. Run Get all group devices again from Settings, Integrations, Setup on the Conneqtech row.

The map marker does not tell me which car it is. The popup shows the tracker's Name and Model, not the registration number. Note the Name, then open Assets, then Devices, and find that name in the list — the plate is in the first column. If your trackers are not named after their vehicles, that is worth fixing with your supplier.

Why has nothing on the map moved? The map draws once when you open it. Click Refresh to redraw it. A marker that still does not move after a refresh means the box itself has not reported — check Status and Last update on its row in the Devices list.

Can I see a vehicle's history of where it has been? No. Both screens show the latest position only, and nothing is kept. For anything historical, ask your tracking supplier, who keeps the full trail.

Related pages:

• Mileage and fuel readings — where the reading a tracker sends ends up, and what to do when it looks wrong.
• Record odometer and fuel on the vehicle — the vehicle's own readings, separate from anything the tracker sends.
• Hand a vehicle over to a customer — the pickup that has to finish before a remote unlock will work.
• Hand over keys through a key box — the other device integration, for sites that use a key safe instead of a tracker.
• Add a vehicle to your fleet — the vehicle record a tracker is linked to.