Why does tracker/share location keep collecting even after we select to collect for only 8 hours?

[elpinguino]

Hi there, We've recently switched our team over to using Field Maps. Previously they were using GPSes, so the transition has saved a lot of post processing.

We've set up the location sharing in Field Maps Designer so users have to turn on location sharing in order to access the map. The team selects share for 8 hours so it covers their work day.

I have an overnight process in FME that does some tidying up based off of the sessionid. I noticed that the sessionid was running across several days though, and when I look in Tracker Viewer I notice I can see their movements after work hours. 

I've asked the team to turn off their location and sign out at the end of the day, but they brought up a good point... "When we open the app we usually select to share our location for 8 hours which covers our work day. How come it keeps sharing the location beyond 8hours? "

[ChristopherCounsell]

It's not designed to do that. It should run for the hours specified or until turned off. However it WILL run in the background. Users may not realise this.

Some potential causes to what you are seeing:

• Users are selecting 'until turned off' and it's continuing to run in the background
• Users are selecting '8 hours' halfway through the day, and it's running after they've finished
• It's a result of device time conversion; i.e dates are stored as UTC and FME is translating them. This would throw them off significantly - for us in Australia by 10 hours.
• You have a legitimate defect and Field Maps is not behaving as expected.

For the last one you would to lodge a support ticket and be confident it's not the previous potential causes. Technical support would want to reproduce the issue or get evidence. You'll have to get a device, reproduce it, get versions/environment info, logs. It'd be a next step - explore the other stuff first.

[elpinguino]

Thanks @ChristopherCounsell. I'll have a closer look at point number 3.

[ColinLawrence]

@elpinguino have you or the field workers observed what happens after the 8 hours expires on the device or is the device typically already stored for the day at this point? What do they observe in the app when they come back the next day? Also, it will help to know which device/platform this is occurring on and I can take a deeper look. 

I cant speak to FME but I could see how it could be a conversion problem as well. I would check directly with the Location Tracking Service in your portal to ensure the times are making sense. 

[elpinguino]

Thanks @ColinLawrence . I'm waiting to hear back from the field workers regarding your questions. I am going to have a closer look at the FME process too and see if there's something in there that I need to change.

[elpinguino]

I didn't fully get to the bottom of this one, but I think one of the issues may be that we are new to Field Maps so have the team jumping between two different versions of the same map - one with a geofence set to turn on/off the location and arcade expressions running in the forms(the testing map), and another that doesn't have a geofence or any arcade expressions. Thanks Colin and Chris for replying to my initial question.