topic Re: workforce and iphone location in ArcGIS Workforce Questions

workforce and iphone location

KurtLebo — Wed, 07 Mar 2018 23:31:45 GMT

Anyone out there using workforce with IOS devices? If so are you running into any issue reporting proper location or at least showing up accurately in the Dispatcher side of workforce? All Android phones work fine.

When I say proper we have iphones reporting locations that are more than a mile away.

Re: workforce and iphone location

RobbieBagby — Fri, 13 Apr 2018 15:17:43 GMT

We tested workforce for search and rescue exercise today in an area that had decent but not great cell reception. We are also on AT&T First Net network for public safety. 4 out of 4 iPhone 8 showed locations 3 miles away from where they were supposed to be. 1 out of 5 iPhone 7 with same issue. Samsung Galaxy S9 had no issues but we only had 2 to test. Will test more android phones at next exercise in May and post back results.

Re: workforce and iphone location

RickeyFight — Fri, 13 Apr 2018 16:30:54 GMT

What region are you located at? It has worked for me in the past.

GPS May Not Work in Western US — the Air Force's Jamming It

Re: workforce and iphone location

RobbieBagby — Fri, 13 Apr 2018 20:08:23 GMT

1 hour south of Atlanta, GA at the Georgia Public Safety Training Center.

Re: workforce and iphone location

KurtLebo — Fri, 13 Apr 2018 20:16:15 GMT

Robbie,

When you were testing Workforce, did you also notice the Iphones were not reporting location per the time period setting in workforce? We set location reporting ot 30 seconds. All Android devices worked fine. Iphone 6, 7 and 8 all reported sporadically and often with 10 - 15 minute gaps.

Re: workforce and iphone location

RobbieBagby — Mon, 16 Apr 2018 18:57:06 GMT

Yes we did notice that behavior with the iphones. We would log out of the app and back in on those phones with no updates on location. We would then power cycle the phones and then turn Workforce back on which would update the location to the correct position only to stop reporting again after several minutes.

Re: workforce and iphone location

AprilChipman — Wed, 23 May 2018 21:32:12 GMT

Did this issue ever get resolved? We are running Workforce on several iPad Air 2 and are having similar bad location issues.

Re: workforce and iphone location

KurtLebo — Wed, 23 May 2018 21:40:08 GMT

As far as I know these issues are not resolved. From our perspective we are beginning an investigation of other products that do similar functions. ESRI tech support told be me this was a hardware issue rather than an app issue - thus why we are looking for an alternative solution.

Re: workforce and iphone location

RobbieBagby — Thu, 24 May 2018 13:40:43 GMT

We tested again on May 3 at the MCV exercise on Lake Lanier, GA. Same results. All iphones reported sporadically while all Androids worked as expected. This time we had 7 Androids to test and 4 iphones.

This is an image of the Androids which are tightly clustered and reporting correctly. We even put one in a helicopter which are the purple dots and it worked as well. The average accuracy of all phones was 21.23 meters over a 4 hour period.

This is an image of the 4 iphones at the same extent and they are all over the place with an average accuracy of 2,508 meters over a 4 hour period. There are even points that are well outside the extent you see here. The points in the middle of the lake should have been where the majority of the points were in the previous image.

After 2 tests, we are going to use Android phones for future events.

Re: workforce and iphone location

CraigGillgrass — Fri, 25 May 2018 19:25:47 GMT

Kurt, Robbie, April,

We'd like to track down what is happening with this - I've reached out to each of you through Direct Message.

thanks,

Craig Gillgrass

esri

Re: workforce and iphone location

AprilChipman — Fri, 25 May 2018 22:02:22 GMT

LOL Our location tracking map looks similar!

The first couple of days were with an iPad and the past few with Samsung phones.

Re: workforce and iphone location

RobbieBagby — Tue, 29 May 2018 17:18:26 GMT

We had a mix of 7s and 8s. All of them are running on iOS 11.3.
Today, I tested my iPhone 7 at my home. Here is the workflow:
1. I opened Apple Maps first and it was reporting my location accurately.
2. Then I turned Apple Maps off and Workforce on while the phone was still on Wi-Fi. I ran the app for about 15 minutes on Wi-Fi while tracking at 1 minute intervals. The average accuracy was 65 meters which is not great but better than the other tests.
3. I then turned off Wi-Fi and ran for another 10 minutes just on the cell network. Once again, the location services on the phone started reporting miles away with an average accuracy of 3,370 meters.
4. I turned Apple Maps back on and ran both Workforce and Apple Maps (in foreground) for another 10 minutes without locking the phone. Voila! Workforce started reporting my location almost to the exact spot of where I was in my house with an average accuracy of 7.3 meters. But, hang on just a minute…..
5. I turned Apple Maps off and ran Workforce for another 20 minutes. Workforce continued to report my location correctly for several minutes and then the same behavior started again. Workforce was yet again reporting locations 1.5 to 3 miles away from my actual location.
6. I turned Apple Maps back on and ran alongside Workforce and my location immediately started reporting correctly for a few minutes just to go back to sporadic location reporting again. This led me to further investigate. I put Apple Maps in the foreground (didn’t hit the home button to place app in background) and I also didn’t lock my phone this time. Workforce started reporting my location accurately again and stayed pretty consistent until I tested with the phone locked. When I locked the phone, Workforce started reporting way out again.
7. Unlocked the phone, ran Apple Maps in foreground alongside Workforce and everything worked as expected.

Final Recommendation: Best practice is to run Apple Maps in the foreground while running Workforce in order for the location services to report correctly in Workforce. Also do not lock the phone as this will also cause inaccurate location reporting.
Limitations: Test was only run over an hour period in a neighborhood. More tests need to be ran out in the field for a longer period of time.
Notes: Workforce on Android can be run without opening Google Maps. It can also run in the background while the phone is locked and still report accurately. This seems to be the limitations of iPhones 7 and 8 but those phones were all we had to test.

Re: workforce and iphone location

CraigGillgrass — Thu, 31 May 2018 21:16:24 GMT

Robbie,

Thanks for the very thorough feedback - this helps a lot.

Can I ask you to run a different test? We'd like to know how the device behaves with other apps that use location. Can you use a non-Apple app; such as Collector or Google Maps and let us know if this affects the location being reported?

thanks,

Craig

Re: workforce and iphone location

JoshHabel — Tue, 28 Aug 2018 12:06:50 GMT

Hello,

This sounds like an issue we are running into with Survey123 and iPads. We are using the latest ipads I believe they are

the 9.7. Our inspectors are reporting that the gps is wildly inaccurate. Is this an esri issue or an ios issue? Any chance this problem gets fixed soon? I'm looking into bluetooth gps devices but that would take some time to get due to budget constraints.

Thanks,

Josh

Re: workforce and iphone location

CraigGillgrass — Tue, 28 Aug 2018 12:23:38 GMT

Josh,

Can I ask that you run the same tests I asked above? What happens when you use a non-Apple app that uses location, such as Collector, Waze or Google Maps?

thanks,

Craig

Re: workforce and iphone location

LindsayWithers1 — Tue, 25 Feb 2020 18:35:27 GMT

Are there any new insights on this? We're seeing similar behavior in Workforce with iPhone users (when cell service is decent).

Re: workforce and iphone location

KurtLebo — Tue, 25 Feb 2020 19:18:11 GMT

We have not experienced any issue since our staff started using I phone 7’s or greater. From our perspective we have have equal use of both Android and Iphone users without issue.