Turn off all GPS Tracking in Workforce

[EricS]

Is there a way to completely turn off real time gps tracking?  I know about location tracking in the advanced section of the workforce project but is there a way to not track at all real time movement when a worker is "Working"?

[CraigGillgrass]

Hi Eric,

You can do this on the device by disabling Location Services for Workforce.

There is no way to do this through a configuration within a Workforce Project.

Can you add some context for the requirement to disable GPS tracking for Worker locations?  Assuming you still want to know the status of Workers.

Craig

[EricS]

It is a government requirement to not track workers

[CraigGillgrass]

Thanks Eric,

Does this apply to all Workers in your Workforce Projects?  Or, are there some Workers, i.e. Field Crew Chiefs, whose location can be tracked?

One point to consider - we use the Worker's location update to determine whether the Worker information (i.e. status and location) are stale and not up to date.  This can happen when a Worker force kills the app, Workforce does not have the opportunity to update the Worker's status in the service.

Providing a way to disable Worker location updates is something we could investigate adding to Workforce, but wouldn't be in the next release.  If you can point me to any documentation or government regulations that a Worker's location cannot be tracked, that would help us to prioritize this work.

Craig

[AllenSong2]

Yes, our team using workforce a lot; co-workers don't like sharing locations, especially when they are at home while workforce is still not turn off.  In above message,  you mentioned "You can do this on the device by disabling Location Services for Workforce", how to do this? I open my workforce app in mobile, don't know where the button to disable Location Services for Workforce", could you send me more detail instruction or screenshots. Thank you very much!

[CraigGillgrass]

@AllenSong2 this will be in the Settings app for your mobile OS; it depends if you're iOS or Android.

[AllenSong2]

Thanks for quick reply, we all use iOS; do you have some detail steps? Thanks

[CraigGillgrass]

hello, here's some steps on how to do this:
Here's how: Go to Settings > Privacy, then select Location Services. Select an app, then turn Precise Location on or off.

This Apple support article will also help.

[AllenSong2]

Thank you very much for the instruction;  we are still need to clear all historical location data after the above steps..

[PeterMilenkovic]

One workaround which i am going to implement as a level of redundancy (incase the fieldworker accidently turns on location services), is to run a script to update the geometry of the worker. Will either run it every hour or maybe create a webhook...?

from arcgis.gis import *
from arcgis.features import *
from arcgis.geometry import *

porta = ""
user = ""
password = ""

gis = GIS(portal, user, password)


workforce_item = gis.content.get('itemid')
workforce_flc = FeatureLayerCollection.fromitem(workforce_item)
worker_fl = workforce_flc.layers[1]
worker_fs = workforce_fl.query()
pt = Point({"x" : 0.0, "y" :0.0, "spatialReference" : {"wkid": 102100,"latestwkid" : 3857}})

for w in workers_fs:
    w.geometry = pt

workers_fl.edit_features(updates=workers_fs)