Field Maps no location

[CarsonMorton]

One of the guys on our field crew is having issues where field maps will open to the map, but it won't give him a location. Tapping on the 'zoom to me' button doesn't do anything.

Last time we did a bunch of random stuff from turning on/off airplane mode, reloading the map, turning the phone off then back on... etc, until it finally worked.

But it is happening again today and none of that worked. He says it's an old apple phone, and mentioned his icloud storage is full (not sure if that could have anything to do with this)

A) does anyone know what might be happening.

B) is there some documentation on troubleshooting this kind of stuff?

[MErikReedAugusta]

Dumb questions first:

1. Are the location services on his phone turned on?
2. Does Field Maps have permission to access his location data?

It sounds highly likely that he accidentally turned off the permissions for Field Maps to access his location data.

That, or it'd been so long since he fired up the app that iOS turned those permissions off for him as a security measure.  I know Android will do that, but I can't remember if iOS does.

[CarsonMorton]

yes and yes.

he did just text me saying it was working again... but i'm willing to bet it's going to keep happening on and off.

[MErikReedAugusta]

The next thing to check would be to see if it tends to happen with any geolocational consistency.

It could be as simple as insufficient signal strength.  We occasionally have problems with that where I am, especially when our field guys end up out in the woods in the more rural parts of the county.

You could theoretically test this by having him check another map-based app when he sees this issue.  If Field Maps can't find his location, but Google Maps/Apple Maps can, then the problem might be with Field Maps.  If they can't either, then the problem is likely his signal.

[CarsonMorton]

I told him to check apple maps the next time it happened. He said he did that previously, and apple maps worked just fine, so it isn't a signal issue.

[ColinLawrence]

Are they using just the internal GPS on the iPhone (ie not connected to any external GPS)? Do you know what the GPS banner says when this issue is occurring this, where the accuracy is normally displayed? Tapping the compass/GPS tool should attempt to get your location again or reconnect if you are using an external GPS. If not, try force closing the app by swiping it away and relaunching it which should reload everything. Otherwise it could be an issue with the devices GPS as suggested by others and it would be worth seeing if the behavior is observable in another app. 

[CarsonMorton]

internal gps. tapping the compass wasn't fixing it. will check out what the gps banner says next time this happens.