TERMINOLOGY #

Track: A sequence of dots. A track is what the user actual­ly sees on the map. Plea­se note that this is dif­fe­rent from a rou­te – a rou­te is crea­ted based on a track (explai­ned below).

Dot: A geo­gra­phi­cal loca­ti­on, visual­ly repre­sen­ted on the map as a cir­cle or as a poin­ty mar­ker. A dot can also con­tain an Event. A set of two or more dots crea­tes a track.

Rou­te: A rou­te on a map, inclu­ding the navi­ga­ti­on ins­truc­tions. They are crea­ted by the ser­ver, based on the track. The rou­te con­sists of the navi­ga­ti­on ins­truc­tions and stop-by-stop ins­truc­tions for the dri­ver, such as do some­thing on the left, on the right, on eit­her side or just dri­ve along the route.

Save track: Is the action to save a tem­po­ra­ry ver­si­on of the cur­rent edi­ted track to the ser­ver. Saving a track indi­ca­tes to save chan­ges yet they will not be published to any device yet.

Publish track: All chan­ges made are her­eby published on the end devices. Tech­ni­cal­ly, this action marks the cur­rent tem­po­ra­ry ver­si­on as per­ma­nent. As soon as the device is syn­chro­ni­s­ed any published track will be visible.

CHANGING THE APPLICATION LANGUAGE #

The Fol­low­Me Edi­tor is offe­red in Eng­lish, Ger­man, French, Dutch, Spa­nish and Polish. The appli­ca­ti­on will try to deter­mi­ne the set­tings of your system and offer the con­tent in your own lan­guage. If your com­pu­ter is set to Eng­lish, the edi­tor will be available in Eng­lish automatically.

The default lan­guage can be chan­ged any time using the lan­guage sel­ec­tor in the hea­der of the appli­ca­ti­on (fig. 1). Once the lan­guage is chan­ged, it is saved by the appli­ca­ti­on in your brow­ser. So the lan­guage you’ve manu­al­ly cho­sen will be set auto­ma­ti­cal­ly the next time you use the same brow­ser on the same computer.

Fig. 1: chan­ging the lan­guage manually

REQUESTING AN ACCOUNT #

User accounts are crea­ted after purcha­sing a soft­ware packa­ge from info­wa­re GmbH. To get your account(s), plea­se cont­act our sales team at vertrieb@infoware.de and they will be hap­py to pro­vi­de all the infor­ma­ti­on you may need.

Most fea­tures of the Fol­low­Me Edi­tor can be tested wit­hout being log­ged into any account. The­re is a Demo Ver­si­on available which will show­ca­se all fea­tures which don’t requi­re an actu­al account to use – saving and loa­ding func­tion is not available. To use the Demo Ver­si­on plea­se choo­se the “DEMO” but­ton on the log­in page (fig. 2).

Fig. 2: Acce­s­sing the Demo page

LOG IN #

Your account con­sists of three pie­ces of infor­ma­ti­on: your com­pa­ny name, a user­na­me and a pass­word. You will recei­ve this infor­ma­ti­on from infoware.

A com­pa­ny can have any num­ber of user accounts. For exam­p­le, a com­pa­ny which ope­ra­tes in Bonn and Ber­lin may choo­se to have two user accounts, one for each city, with their own rou­tes and spe­ci­fic user events. All saved infor­ma­ti­on will be asso­cia­ted to the sepa­ra­te users.

USER INTERFACE #

The inter­face con­sists of a hea­der (1), a retrac­ta­ble side­bar (2) and the main screen (3):

Fig. 3: The editing inter­face with no track loaded

The hea­der shows gene­ral infor­ma­ti­on of the appli­ca­ti­on: what account you used to log­in, links to log­out, the imprint and the lan­guage selector.

The side­bar shows you dif­fe­rent func­tions accor­ding to your work process:

The basic sta­te gives you 3 opti­ons to choo­se a track:

• Upload a track
• Crea­te a track from the scratch
• Edit a track

Once a track is loa­ded the side­bar shows you addi­tio­nal func­tions such as:

• Ope­ra­te and edit default events and user gene­ra­ted events
• Cal­cu­la­te the resul­ting rou­te as well as seve­ral blen­ding in and blen­ding out opti­ons of the track on the map.

You can see a ran­dom tip how to use a cer­tain func­tion in the edi­tor on the but­tons of the sidebar. 

You actual­ly edit a track in the main screen, such as adding dots, dele­te, move them or add any events:

1 = Paste into new track, 2 = load sta­tus and remarks, 3 = down­load track, 4 = Edit track info, 5 = Save the cur­rent track sta­te, 6 = Dupli­ca­te this track, 7 = Clo­se the cur­rent track wit­hout saving

Fig. 4: The editing inter­face with a track loaded

CREATE A TRACK FROM SCRATCH #

The first step to crea­te a track from the scratch is to click on the “Crea­te new track” but­ton on the left side­bar. Clicking this but­ton will open a win­dow promp­ting you to enter a name and a descrip­ti­on for the track. This is known as the track meta­da­ta. The name you pick should be short and yet descri­be the track pro­per­ly. You can use let­ters and num­bers – yet no punc­tua­ti­on or other spe­cial cha­rac­ters. If you like to add a fur­ther expl­ana­ti­on, you can use the descrip­ti­on field. The name and the descrip­ti­on will be shown later in your list of saved tracks.

After saving the meta­da­ta infor­ma­ti­on, you are able to add dots to your track. The­r­e­fo­re, put your mou­se poin­ter on the street you would like to start. Make sure the zoom level is set so you can pro­per­ly see the street and add the first dot.

The func­tion how to add a dot is enab­led by hol­ding the CTRL-key on your key­board and click on the map whe­re you would like to insert the dot.

A track con­sists of at least two dots added onto the map. Hold the CTRL-key and add as many dots as neces­sa­ry to descri­be your track. We recom­mend you to insert the dots with a small inter­face respec­tively every 30m/ 40 m.

In order to make one-way streets or clo­sures pas­sa­ble for rou­te plan­ning, seve­ral dots must be pla­ced on this sec­tion of the road. Other­wi­se, e.g. if the­re is only one dot pla­ced on a one-way street, the rou­te is cal­cu­la­ted taking into account the appli­ca­ble direc­tion of travel/ closure.

Releasing the CTRL-key will allow you to move the map around by drag­ging it with your mou­se. You can con­ti­n­ue adding dots at any time by hol­ding the CTRL-key again. Plea­se see the “Adding dots” sec­tion below for a fur­ther descrip­ti­on of this functionality.

 

To save the track plea­se klick on the sym­bol “Save the cur­rent track sta­te” in the right upper cor­ner. You will recei­ve a con­fir­ma­ti­on that the track has been suc­cessful­ly saved.

RECORD A TRACK USING THE MAPTRIP APPLICATION #

You can record a track while you dri­ve with our Map­Trip appli­ca­ti­on using the Fol­low­Me Record Mode on your mobi­le device. You can add cer­tain remarks along the way while you are recor­ding the track.

 You can export this recor­ded rou­te as an. nmea file and trans­fer it to your com­pu­ter. From here you are able to upload or syn­chro­ni­se it into the Fol­low­Me Edi­tor and do any touch-ups.

UPLOAD A PRERECORDED ROUTE #

Click on the “Upload track” but­ton on the left side­bar of the edi­tor to upload a track. This will open a screen that prompts you to: 1) sel­ect the file you wish to upload and 2) fill in its metadata.

Click on the (+) plus sign and it will open your brow­ser. Choo­se the file you would like to upload, enter a new name and choo­se the desti­na­ti­on fol­der. Con­firm to upload the track by click on the “Upload track” but­ton.

To upload a track, you have the below opti­ons. The con­tents below are also explai­ned in the upload window:

1. NMEA file: The Fol­low­Me Edi­tor is ful­ly com­pa­ti­ble with the exports the Map­Trip mobi­le appli­ca­ti­on offers. To edit a track, you recor­ded with the appli­ca­ti­on, sim­ply export it from the device you used to record it to your com­pu­ter and from here upload it in the edi­tor, or syn­chro­ni­ze them auto­ma­ti­cal­ly from the device.
2. GPX file: Exter­nal recor­ded track in GPX for­mat can be uploa­ded into the Edi­tor and will be chan­ged to a. nmea respec­tively .csv format.
3. KML file: Also files in KML for­mat can be loa­ded into the Edi­tor and will be con­ver­ted to a. nmea respec­tively .csv file.
4. CSV file: The CSV for­mat counts as the inter­nal default for­mat, also becau­se of the low file size. Plea­se find a detail­ed descrip­ti­on of the CSV-for­mat in the attach­ment. If pos­si­ble export/import the recor­ded rou­tes as CSV. In case this might not be pos­si­ble, you can use an online con­ver­ter to chan­ge from any other for­mat to CSV. You can edit CSV files in Excel. Plea­se make sure you export them as CSV for­mat and not any other for­mat. Click on “Upload track” to load the track into your editor.

CHOOSE A TRACK FROM YOUR LIST OF TRACKS #

The third opti­on to load a track into the edi­tor is to load it from the list of your alre­a­dy saved tracks. Click on the “Sel­ect from list” but­ton on the left side­bar. This will lead you to a screen with a list of all tracks you have ever saved using the cur­rent username.

To load a spe­ci­fic track, click on it in the list and then click on the “Choo­se track” but­ton. This will load the track into the map. The map will be cent­red so you will have the full track into view.

FOLDER STRUCTUR #

You can group tracks insi­de the Fol­low­Me Edi­tor into fol­ders. In this win­dow, you can also mana­ge the fol­ders with actions like adding a new fol­der, editing a fol­der name and dele­ting a folder.

If no fol­der struc­tu­re is crea­ted, the default fol­der is the base. You can move tracks from one fol­der to ano­ther in two ways:

1. By Drag&Drop.
2. Click on the “Edit track info” but­ton and sel­ect the new fol­der name from the Fol­der dropdown.

Die­se Liste ent­hält sowohl Ihre ver­öf­fent­lich­ten als auch Ihre unver­öf­fent­lich­ten Tracks. This list con­ta­ins your published and unpu­blished tracks.

Tracks that are actual­ly published are accom­pa­nied by a green icon in front of the track name: 

 To unpu­blish a track click on this but­ton in the list next to the track’s name: 

Once you have con­firm­ed to unpu­blish the green icon in front of the track name will dis­ap­pear. Once you have syn­chro­ni­zed your mobi­le device the unpu­blished track will no lon­ger be visi­ble on your device.

EDIT MULTIPLE TRACKS AT ONCE #

With the edi­tor you can load and dis­play any num­ber of tracks the same time. If you open a track while ano­ther track is open, the new track will be shown along­side the first one. You can use all three ways of adding a track: crea­te it from scratch, upload it or open it from a file – the­se actions are available in the sidebar.

If more than one track is loa­ded in the Edi­tor, a “Open tracks” panel appears on the screen:

Fig. 5: Edit mul­ti­ple tracks with dif­fe­rent colours

By clicking can zoom direct­ly to a track. The (x) but­ton is to clo­se one track.

To distin­gu­ish tracks on the map, they each recei­ve their own ran­dom colour. You can see which colour is used for which track in the Open Tracks win­dow (Curr­ent­ly editing mul­ti­ple tracks) in front of the track name and the tracks them­sel­ves are drawn in this colour on the map also.

Tracks can only be edi­ted indi­vi­du­al­ly. So you need to sel­ec­ted the track you would like to edit in the “Curr­ent­ly editing mul­ti­ple tracks” screen. Tracks can also be sel­ec­ted by clicking on a dot of this track on the map.

DELETE A TRACK #

To dele­te one of your exi­sting tracks, you need to call up your list of tracks. You can do this by clicking on the “Sel­ect from list” but­ton on the left side­bar if the­re is no track loa­ded into the edi­tor yet. This will show the list of all your tracks and each of them will have a small “Dele­te” sym­bol next to them. The “Dele­te” sym­bol is repre­sen­ted by an icon of a trash­can. Clicking on the sym­bol will prompt a screen in which you can eit­her con­firm or can­cel the dele­ti­on of the track.

ADD DOTS #

The­re are two ways to add dots to the map:

1. The first and quickest way is to press and hold the CTRL-key and click on the map with your mou­se poin­ter whe­re you would like to add the dot. You can add as many dots as you want like this. Releasing the CTRL-key allo­ws you to take con­trol again over the map to move it. Pres­sing the CTRL- key again re-enables you to add fur­ther dots on the map.
2. The second way is by pla­cing your mou­se poin­ter whe­re you would like to add a dot and do a right click on the map. A con­text menu will appear and you would need to choo­se the “Insert” button:

Fig. 6: Con­text menu ope­ning by right click on the map

It is important to know, that each point will be added right after the cur­rent sel­ec­ted dot into the dri­ving direction.

New dot after the last dot of a sequence: Sel­ect the last dot of a sequence by clicking on it. Press the CTRL-key and click on the map whe­re you want to insert the new point.

Alter­na­tively sel­ect the last point of a track, place your mou­se poin­ter on the map whe­re to insert the new dot, do a right click and choo­se “Insert” in the Con­text menu.

New dot in the midd­le of a sequence (track): The new dot will be added bet­ween the sel­ec­ted dot and the next one in the dri­ving direc­tion of the route.

Sel­ect the dot after which one you want to add the new dot. Press the CTLR-key and click on the posi­ti­on you want to add the new dot.

Alter­na­tively place your mou­se poin­ter bet­ween the sel­ec­ted dot and the fol­lo­wing dot. Do a right click on the map and choo­se “Insert” in the Con­text menu.

SELECT DOTS #

Once a track is loa­ded in the edi­tor and the­re is at least one dot added on the map, you can click on dot(s) to sel­ect them. Once a dot is sel­ec­ted you are able to move it or dele­te it (see below).

Sel­ec­ted dots do appear slight­ly enlar­ged in com­pa­ri­son to non-sel­ec­ted dots.

It is pos­si­ble to sel­ect more than one dot at one time. You can do this by hol­ding the SHIFT-key pres­sed on your key­board and simul­ta­neous­ly click on each dot. Once seve­ral points are sel­ec­ted you can (mass) move or dele­te them.

DELETE DOTS #

If you need to dele­te one or more dots, you would need to sel­ect them first by clicking on them. Once they are sel­ec­ted, the­re are two ways to dele­te the dots:

1. Press the Dele­te key on your keyboard.
2. Right click on any of the sel­ec­ted dots and press the “Dele­te” but­ton in the con­text menu that appears.

MOVE DOTS #

To move one or more dots on the map you need to sel­ect the desi­red dot(s). Once you have sel­ec­ted them, use your mou­se poin­ter to drag them to the desi­red loca­ti­on. For exam­p­le, if you are editing a pre-recor­ded rou­te, it may hap­pen that all dots were added a few meters off the street due to poor GPS signal. To place them cor­rect­ly on the street, sel­ect all the dots and drag them a litt­le bit to their cor­rect posi­ti­on on the street.

THE CATERPILLAR #

A “cater­pil­lar” appears when you sel­ect one dot. Its pur­po­se is to indi­ca­te the dots that are in pro­xi­mi­ty and they are poin­ting into the dri­ving direc­tion. The peak of the dots is show­ing the direc­tion of tra­vel. When a cater­pil­lar is dis­play­ed, three dots ahead of the sel­ec­ted dot and ten dots behind it will be highlighted:ыяцё1

Fig.7: A cater­pil­lar on the map

You can con­trol the cater­pil­lar by using the fol­lo­wing shortcuts:

1. Left Arrow/Right Arrow: moves the cater­pil­lar one dot back­wards or forward.
2. Space + Left Arrow/Space + Right Arrow: moves the cater­pil­lar 10 dots back­wards or forwards.
3. Shift + Left Arrow/Shift + Right Arrow: sel­ect one dot back­ward or forward.

DEFAULT EVENTS #

An event is some­thing that hap­pens along the rou­te which the dri­ver needs to be awa­re of. An event is atta­ched to one dot and is shown on the rou­te at that spe­ci­fic dot posi­ti­on and also be acou­sti­cal­ly dis­play­ed. The­re are two types of events in the Fol­low­Me Edi­tor: default (system) events and user gene­ra­ted events.

Default (system) events are events that are pre­de­fi­ned in the Fol­low­Me Edi­tor. They are shown to all users. Their major impli­ca­ti­on, when pre­sent on the map, is that they influence how the rou­te is going to be cal­cu­la­ted and shown to the driver.

The default events them­sel­ves are split into the­se cate­go­ries: Trans­fer mode, Ser­vice mode, Onroad/Offroad mode and Backwards/Forwards drive.

1.Trans­fer Mode: tells the dri­ver the­re is no need to per­form any ser­vices on that sec­tion of the rou­te and they can speed up the trans­fer to the next ser­vice area.

Trans­fer mode

2. Ser­vice Mode: the dri­vers need to fol­low a sec­tion of the rou­te on which they need to per­form ser­vices e.g. coll­ec­ting dustbins/delivering packages/etc. on the left, right or both sides. Or accor­ding to spe­ci­fi­ca­ti­on (= System is in coll­ec­tion mode yet not spe­ci­fic to a side e.g. sprink­le road salt or not). Once added on a dot, this event will app­ly to all addres­ses on the rou­te, until the event is overwritten.

3. Onroad/Offroad: Even­tual­ly you need to do ser­vices in an area which is not in your map yet, such as new buil­ding are­as, com­plex indu­stri­al are­as with no ent­ry for the map­ping indu­stry yet.

The Off­road mode crea­tes a navi­ga­ti­on path on the exact coor­di­na­tes you defi­ne by adding the dots on the map.

In Off­road mode, the Map­Trip system can only access to the given GPS coor­di­na­tes wit­hout the pos­si­bi­li­ty to balan­ce GPS devia­ti­ons on the exi­sting roads.

In Onroad mode on the other hand, the coor­di­na­tes will be pro­ce­s­sed with the help of road geo­me­try for rou­te cal­cu­la­ti­on and inac­cu­ra­te GPS coor­di­na­tes will be compensate.

4. Back­ward dri­ve: is used to indi­ca­te the dri­ver that the road they are about to enter does not allow turns. Instead of dri­ving down the road as usu­al, they should back into it so it’s easier to exit.

For­ward event assigns the dri­ver to dri­ve with the dri­ving direc­tion again.

User gene­ra­ted events are addi­tio­nal events, which will be shown and read out loud to the dri­ver when he rea­ches the posi­ti­on. The con­tents are free­ly con­fi­gura­ble by the user. For example:

• As a spe­cial note for the dri­ver or the ser­vice to be per­for­med: “Dri­ve slow­ly here” or “Dan­ger from biting dog.
• As a job refe­rence: a spe­cial posi­ti­on or cont­act per­son. E.g. “Gar­ba­ge can behind the gara­ge” or “Report to Mr. Müller”.

ADD A USER GENERATED EVENT #

You can only add user gene­ra­ted events when a track is loa­ded in the Edi­tor. To add a cus­tom event, you need to click on “User gene­ra­ted events” on the left side­bar and click on “Crea­te new event”. A Pop-Up will appear and you need to enter the name, descrip­ti­on and choo­se a colour for the event. The name should be short, as it’s just an iden­ti­fier for the event. The descrip­ti­on can be more detail­ed. Both – name and descrip­ti­on – will be read out to the dri­ver in the appli­ca­ti­on. The colour doesn’t influence anything and it’s only used to distin­gu­ish more easi­ly bet­ween the sin­gle events when editing a track.

One important note about cus­tom events is that a user can save event tem­pla­tes in the system – yet not the events them­sel­ves. Once a cus­tom event is atta­ched to a dot, an inde­pen­dent copy is crea­ted. This copy can be edi­ted indi­vi­du­al­ly wit­hout affec­ting the parent template.

For exam­p­le: a new user gene­ra­ted event is added — tel­ling the dri­vers to slow down the speed below the limit on a par­ti­cu­lar street:

This event will be atta­ched to two dots, on two dif­fe­rent streets:

Fig. 8: A cus­to­mer gene­ra­ted event

But on the second street, the speed should be a maxi­mum of 22km/h and not 7km/h. The Edi­tor can edit the event inline (plea­se see the “Editing events inline” sec­tion below) to chan­ge the mes­sa­ge that the dri­ver is going to get, wit­hout affec­ting the parent template:

Fig. 9: A cus­to­mer gene­ra­ted event which is modi­fi­ed inline

Like­wi­se, updating the parent tem­p­la­te does not affect events which are alre­a­dy added on the map.

EDIT AND DELETE A USER GENERATED EVENT #

Once crea­ted, a user gene­ra­ted event can be edi­ted or dele­ted by a right click on it in the left side­bar and sel­ect one of the opti­ons in the con­text menu. By sel­ec­ting the “Modi­fy” action, a Pop-Up with the event infor­ma­ti­on is shown and you can edit the name, the descrip­ti­on and the colour.

Editing or dele­ting a user gene­ra­ted event does not affect events of the same type which are alre­a­dy atta­ched to dots.

EDIT OR REMOVE A USER GENERATED EVENT WHICH IS ATTACHED TO A DOT #

This is also cal­led “Inline editing” becau­se it means to edit an event that was alre­a­dy atta­ched to a dot, on the map. To edit any event inline, you just need to right click on it and sel­ect the desi­red opti­on “Modi­fy inline” in the con­text menu.

Editing or dele­ting an event on a dot does not influence events of the same type atta­ched to other dots.

ADD AN EVENT ON A DOT #

The­re are two ways to add an event to one or more dots:

1. You can add an event by sel­ec­ting one or more dots on the map and then click on the event name in the left sidebar.
2. Or you can sel­ect one dot and right click on it and sel­ec­ting the “+Crea­te” but­ton in the con­text menu. This will show a list with all the events from the appli­ca­ti­on. You need to click on the desi­red event name and click on the “Choo­se event” but­ton to add it to the dot.

Fig.10: Con­text menu to add an Event

ADD A BACKWARDS/FORWARDS EVENT TO A DOT #

The Backwards/Forwards events needs to be men­tio­ned espe­ci­al­ly becau­se they work a litt­le bit dif­fe­rent. Their main pur­po­se is to visual­ly and audi­bly indi­ca­te that a vehic­le needs to back up on a street instead of dri­ving regu­lar­ly, becau­se the street is a dead end with no place to do a U‑turn.

They are dif­fe­rent becau­se you need to enable and disable them, which means you need to tell the dri­ver to do a back­wards dri­ve right befo­re the next street cor­ner and then do a for­ward dri­ve right befo­re the end of the street. You do this by adding a dot on the track befo­re the street cor­ner and assig­ning a “Back­ward event” to it. Then, you add a track dot just befo­re the end of the street and you assign a “For­wards event” to it. You can con­trol if the actions are set cor­rect­ly by loo­king at the ins­truc­tions on the green bubbles. In addi­ti­on, the rever­se rou­te will be mark­ed in red in Map­Trip for the driver.

Fig. 11: Event back­wards pla­ced befo­re the street cor­ner and event for­wards befo­re the end of the road

COPY PASTE DOTS BETWEEN TRACKS #

 To copy one or more dots from one track to ano­ther you have to sel­ect them and do a right click of one of the sel­ec­ted dots. In the now appearing con­text menu, you can click on “Copy Item(s)”:

Fig 12: Con­text menu copy item(s) and paste item(s)

You have two opti­ons to paste the dots:

1.If you want to paste the dots into a new track, you can click on the “Paste into new track” but­ton on the top right-hand side: 

This will clo­se the cur­rent track and open a form to crea­te a new track.

Once you input the name, fol­der and descrip­ti­on of the new track, the edi­tor will add the points you copied to the track and show it on the map.

2. If you want to paste the dots insi­de an exi­sting track, you have to load the track on the screen, sel­ect the dot after you’d like to paste the copied dots in and right click on it. This time, you need to click on the “Paste item(s)” but­ton. This action will add the copied dots after the sel­ec­ted dot.

CREATE A ROUTE #

You can pre­view how the rou­te is going to be shown to the dri­ver at any time. This is useful to see, for exam­p­le, how an event affects the rou­te, or if the rou­te can go on a cer­tain street or not. To show the rou­te, you just need to click on the “Crea­te rou­te” but­ton on the left sidebar.

It is important to note that the rou­te you see is not what’s going to be sent to the dri­ver. The dri­vers recei­ve the track you are editing and, for them, the rou­te is cal­cu­la­ted on the spot in the Map­Trip application.

When you cal­cu­la­te a rou­te based on a track, you will recei­ve three sets of infor­ma­ti­on: the rou­te its­elf, drawn on the road as it will be used for the navi­ga­ti­on, the tex­tu­al ins­truc­tions the dri­ver is going to recei­ve (like turn left, turn right etc.) and a visu­al repre­sen­ta­ti­on of the “ser­vice points” (the points in which area the dri­ver needs to stop and do some­thing, on the left, right or both sides of a street):

Fig. 13: Loa­ded Route

The rou­te is going to be drawn in a Bur­gun­dy colour, the ins­truc­tions will be shown, in order, in green bubbles and the ser­vice points will be shown with colou­red bubbles as fol­lows: dark blue for “both sides”, red for “left side”, green for “right side” and oran­ge for coll­ect “accor­ding to specification”.

To recal­cu­la­te a rou­te after you’ve edi­ted the map, you need to click on the “Redraw Rou­te” but­ton on the left sidebar.

HIDE AND SHOW INFORMATION: TRACK, INSTRUCTIONS AND EVENTS #

When show­ing a rou­te, all the ele­ments visi­ble on the map can crea­te some clut­ter. You can fil­ter what you see by clicking on the “show track”, “show ins­truc­tions” and “show events” but­ton on the left side­bar. “show track” and “show events” are self-expl­ana­to­ry, yet when clicking on the “show/Hide ins­truc­tions” but­ton, the Edi­tor will show and hide all the ins­truc­tions bubbles and the ser­vice points at the same time.

HIDE AND SHOW INDIVIDUAL EVENT INFORMATIONS #

The event descrip­ti­ons in a small space can over­lap, so that only the top­most event descrip­ti­on is cle­ar­ly legible.

To show or hide indi­vi­du­al event descrip­ti­ons, hold down the ALT key and click on the point to which the event is attached.

The track point remains dark blue — so you can see that an event is atta­ched to this point. To show the descrip­ti­on again, click on the point again while hol­ding down the ALT key.

OTHER FUNCTIONALITY: UNDO/REDO AND ZOOM-IN/OUT #

Any action you do on the map can be undo­ne or redo­ne by pres­sing on the but­tons in the far left cor­ner of the application’s main area: 

To zoom in or out on the map, you have two opti­ons: eit­her use your mouse’s scroll wheel or click on the plus/minus signs in the bot­tom far right cor­ner of the application’s main area. To zoom in you can also dou­ble click into the card.

DOWNLOAD A ROUTE #

If you want to upload a track manu­al­ly to a device, you can do this by down­load it to your local com­pu­ter in a first step. By clicking the “down­load track”

icon in the application’s main area while editing a track, you will be pre­sen­ted with a CSV or a .nmea file. You can down­load it now on your local com­pu­ter and now be able to upload this file onto your device. You can upload this file back at the edi­tor at any time and start from whe­re you left off.

DUPLICATE A ROUTE #

If you need to base your new track on an alre­a­dy exi­sting one, you can use the dupli­ca­te func­tion­a­li­ty. To do so,

CLOSE A TRACK #

Once you’re done editing a track, you can click on the icon to clo­se it. Clo­sing a track will dis­card any

 unsa­ved chan­ges so, you can use this func­tion­a­li­ty after you’ve added some chan­ges you don’t wish to save or right after you saved the track.

SAVE A TRACK #

When you do chan­ges to a track, they are only saved local­ly. Clo­sing the brow­ser win­dow and coming back later will pre­sent you the track in the form you’ve left it, but clo­sing the track will dis­card any chan­ges. To save the track on the ser­ver, you need to click on the “save the cur­rent track sta­te” icon.

Important note: this saves a track, but it doesn’t make it available to devices. To make a track available to devices (after you’ve first added it or after you’ve done some chan­ges to it), plea­se see the “Publish a rou­te” func­tion­a­li­ty from below.

EDIT TRACK METADATA #

You can edit a track’s name and descrip­ti­on by clicking the but­ton “Edit track info”

in the application’s main win­dow. This will bring up a win­dow simi­lar to the one shown when you first crea­te a track. You can chan­ge the name, fol­der and descrip­ti­on of the track.

PUBLISH A TRACK #

This is the final step in the track editing pro­cess. Once you’re done with all the chan­ges and you want to make the track available on your devices, just click on the icon in the application’s main window. 

Once you con­firm­ed again this will make the track available on your devices once the dri­ver has tap­ped on the syn­chro­ni­se but­ton in the appli­ca­ti­on its­elf. It will also mark the track as published with the green icon: 

 to indi­ca­te its published and available on the devices.

This is also app­ly­ing for any chan­ges on alre­a­dy exi­sting tracks. You need to publish the track again and syn­chro­ni­ze on the device.

The­r­e­fo­re, you need to click the Syn­chro­ni­ze but­ton on your device in the Map­Trip appli­ca­ti­on in the right, upper corner.

MISCELLANEOUS: SEARCH FOR AN ADDRESS #

To search for an address on the map, you can click on this but­ton on the right bot­tom side:

A click on the but­ton will open a win­dow asking for an address. You can input the address in natu­ral lan­guage, yet the more exact it is, the more accu­ra­te the results will be. If the­re is more than one address found for your query, you will be pre­sen­ted with a disam­bi­gua­ti­on screen asking you which of the addres­ses you wanted.

Once the address has been found, it will be dis­play­ed on the map:

Fig. 14: Search result

MISCELLANEOUS: SEEING STATUS AND REMARKS #

Sta­tus: When one of your dri­vers fol­lows a rou­te you crea­ted with the Fol­low­Me Edi­tor, you will see a recor­ding of it when you load the track in the Edi­tor. You can see the cur­rent sta­te live for e.g. pau­sed or finished.

Remarks: The­se are feed­back mes­sa­ges saved by the dri­ver loca­li­zed while dri­ving at cer­tain point on the rou­te. They are shown in light blue bubbles on the map as soon as the dis­patcher loads the data by clicking on the but­ton “Load sta­tus and remarks”.

To access the recor­dings, you can click on the “Load sta­tus and remarks” but­ton on the upper right-hand side: 

 It will open a win­dow listing all entries:

Fig. 15: Sta­tus and remarks per device

When you load the data for an ent­ry, it is dis­play­ed on the map:

Fig. 16: Sta­tus and remarks

The fol­lo­wing colours are used to repre­sent the live sta­tus of a rou­te in the Edi­tor while the dri­ver is actual­ly fol­lo­wing a route:

1. TODO (not dri­ven on yet)
2. DONE (dri­ven on successfully)
3. MISSED (part of the tour, but not dri­ven on)
4. Con­nec­tion error (couldn’t com­mu­ni­ca­te to the server)

Actions from the dri­ver, like paus­ing or ending the tour are shown in dark blue bubbles on the map.

EMBEDDING THE EDITOR INTO YOUR OWN APPLICATION/WEBSITE #

The Fol­low­Me Edi­tor is a stan­da­lo­ne web-appli­ca­ti­on, which means you can embed it into your own pro­ducts easi­ly. The­se are the requirements:

1. The appli­ca­ti­on must be shown in a land­scape form, whe­re the ratio bet­ween width and height should be at least 1.5 (ide­al­ly 1.7)
2. If the area of the screen you are embed­ding the app is smal­ler, it is advi­sa­ble that you zoom-out the embed. You can see an exam­p­le of how that can be done here: https://followme.infoware.de/embed- demo/with-zoom.html
3. If you want to embed the edi­tor into a web-view, plea­se make sure that the imple­men­ted com­pa­ti­bi­li­ties are up-to date. The edi­tor uses some func­tion­a­li­ty that might not be available for older ver­si­on. It is safe to assu­me that, if the web-view imple­ments a modern ver­si­on of web­kit, the edi­tor will func­tion properly.
4. You can take the user through a log­in screen, or you can log them auto­ma­ti­cal­ly in the backend and load the embed using the ses­si­on id. In that case, you should embed this url: https://followme.maptrip.de/embed.html?username=demo&session-id=’ + sessionId
5. You can pre-set the lan­guage of the edi­tor by adding the lan­guage code to the embed: https://followme.maptrip.de/embed.html?language=de&username=demo&session-id=’ + sessionId

Soft­ware-Docu­men­ta­ti­on #

Docu­men­ta­ti­on: #

Map­Trip For­mat descrip­ti­on Fol­low­Me rou­te (CSV) #

Descrip­ti­on	Map­Trip For­mat descrip­ti­on Fol­low­Me rou­te (CSV)
Ver­si­on
Tit­le	Map­Trip For­mat descrip­ti­on Fol­low­Me rou­te (CSV)
Date	June 2020

For­mat descrip­ti­on Fol­low­Me rou­te (CSV) #

This descri­bes, how a Fol­low­Me rou­te should look like in a CSV for­mat, so that it can be impor­ted it into the Fol­low­Me Editor.

1.Requi­red file format

The file for­mat CSV stands for Com­ma-sepa­ra­ted values (rare­ly Cha­rac­ter-sepa­ra­ted values) and descri­bes the struc­tu­re of a text file for sto­ring or exchan­ging sim­ply struc­tu­red data. The file exten­si­on is .csv. The­re is no gene­ral stan­dard for this CSV file for­mat. CSV files can con­tain tables or a list.

The CSV file must be encoded in UTF‑8 for­mat. The edi­tor Note­pad ++ can be used to set the UTF‑8 enco­ding, for exam­p­le. Plea­se see the fol­lo­wing screenshot:

2.Requi­red for­mat of the first line

The CSV file must con­tain the neces­sa­ry column hea­ders in the first line. The colum­ns can be divi­ded by dif­fe­rent sepa­ra­tors. The semico­lon (;), com­ma (,) and tab cha­rac­ter are per­mit­ted for MapTrip.

lat long

EVT_TYPE EVT_DESCR

lat and long are the column hea­der for the coor­di­na­tes The descrip­ti­on lat is also per­mit­ted for: latitude

The descrip­ti­on long is also per­mit­ted for: lon­gi­tu­de or lng

The iden­ti­fiers lat or long — or the alter­na­ti­ve iden­ti­fiers — are requi­red for the trans­fer of a Fol­low­Me rou­te. Exam­p­le of a first line:

lat;long;EVT_TYPE;EVT_DESCR

Expl­ana­ti­on for the for­mat of the coor­di­na­tes lat and long:

• The coor­di­na­tes must be spe­ci­fi­ed in deci­mal degrees: 50.701610;7.141167
• A divi­si­on of coor­di­na­tes into minu­tes, seconds (and mil­li­se­conds) is not supported
• The dot cha­rac­ter must be used as deci­mal separator.

The iden­ti­fiers EVT_TYPE and EVT_DESCR are optional.

3.Defi­ni­ti­on of Events

Events are actions which are added to the Fol­low­Me rou­te to pro­vi­de bet­ter ori­en­ta­ti­on while fol­lo­wing the Fol­low­Me route.

Listing of the Event types: EVT_TYPE: Code of the event as shown in the fol­lo­wing table. The com­ple­te list of events can be found in the Fol­low­Me Edi­tor manual.

EVENT	EVT_TYPE
1	Free text
65539	Trans­fer start
65540	Coll­ect on right side
65541	Coll­ect on left side
65542	Coll­ect on both sides
65543	Coll­ect accor­ding to specification

Addi­tio­nal column hea­ders may be pre­sent, but will not be eva­lua­ted and pro­ce­s­sed by MapTrip.

If addi­tio­nal column hea­ders are pre­sent, they must be sepa­ra­ted in each line by the appro­pria­te num­ber of sepa­ra­tors. They do not have to be fil­led with values.

Exam­p­le (lat;long;EVT_TYPE;EVT_DESCR) filled: 

50.681713333333335;7.141875;65539;Transfer

Exam­p­le (lat;long;EVT_TYPE;EVT_DESCR) last two digits not filled 

50.682071666666666;7.141625;;

4.Which sepa­ra­tors to use bet­ween the columns

The colum­ns can be divi­ded by dif­fe­rent sepa­ra­tors. The semico­lon (;), com­ma (,) and tab cha­rac­ter are allo­wed in MapTrip.

5.Recom­men­ded distance bet­ween the dots

When plan­ning a Fol­low­Me rou­te, it is recom­men­ded to keep a maxi­mum distance of 50m air-line bet­ween the dots to ensu­re the most pre­cise rou­te pos­si­ble. The shor­test rou­te bet­ween the dots is cal­cu­la­ted taking into account all clo­sures and one-way streets. In this con­stel­la­ti­on (50 m point distance), clo­sures and one-way streets against the direc­tion of tra­vel are not used. To make this pos­si­ble, the num­ber of dots on the cor­re­spon­ding one-way street, clo­sure must be increa­sed. In this case the Fol­low­Me rou­ting igno­res clo­sures and one-ways streets. The streets beco­me passable.

6.Exam­p­le of a Fol­low­Me rou­te wit­hout events

lat;long; 50.68258333333333;7.141048333333333

50.682626666666664;7.140946666666666

50.68266833333333;7.140841666666667

50.68270666666667;7.14073

50.682743333333335;7.140618333333333

50.68278;7.140508333333333

50.68281666666667;7.140396666666667

50.682851666666664;7.140285

50.682885;7.140175

50.682916666666664;7.140066666666667

50.682948333333336;7.139958333333333

50.68298166666667;7.139855

50.683015;7.13976

50.68304666666667;7.13968

50.68307166666666;7.139618333333333

50.68309;7.139575

50.68309;7.139575

50.68309166666667;7.139568333333333

50.683105;7.139521666666667

50.6831;7.139456666666667

Screen­shot of Map­Trip of the abo­ve rou­te from a CSV file.

7.Exam­p­le of a Fol­low­Me rou­te in CSV format

(Hier rück­wärts = Here backwards)

Here the column hea­dings lat, long, EVT_TYPE und EVT_DESCR are used

lat;long;EVT_TYPE;EVT_DESCR 50.681691666666666;7.141931666666666;;

50.681713333333335;7.141875;65539;;

50.68175;7.141823333333333;;

50.6818;7.141781666666667;;

50.68186166666667;7.141743333333333;;

50.68192833333333;7.141706666666667;1;Backwards

50.68199833333333;7.1416683333333335;;

50.682071666666666;7.141625;;

50.682143333333336;7.1415766666666665;;

50.68221833333333;7.1415283333333335;;

50.682291666666664;7.141461666666666;;

50.682356666666664;7.14138;65538;;

50.68242;7.1413;;

50.68248;7.141221666666667;;

50.682535;7.14114;;

50.68258333333333;7.141048333333333;;

50.682626666666664;7.140946666666666;;

50.68266833333333;7.140841666666667;;

50.68270666666667;7.14073;1;Attention

50.682743333333335;7.140618333333333;;

50.68278;7.140508333333333;;

50.68281666666667;7.140396666666667;;

50.682851666666664;7.140285;;

50.682885;7.140175;;

50.682916666666664;7.140066666666667;;

50.682948333333336;7.139958333333333;;

50.68298166666667;7.139855;;

50.683015;7.13976;65541;;

50.68304666666667;7.13968;;

50.68307166666666;7.139618333333333;;

50.68309;7.139575;;

50.68309;7.139575;;

50.68309;7.139575;;

50.68309;7.139575;;

50.68309;7.139575;;

50.68309;7.139575;;

50.68309;7.139575;;

50.68309;7.139575;;

50.68309;7.139575;;

50.68309;7.139575;;

50.68309;7.139575;;

50.68309;7.139575;;

50.68309;7.139575;;

50.68309;7.139575;;

50.68309;7.139575;;

50.68309;7.139575;;

50.68309;7.139575;;

50.68309;7.139575;;

50.68309166666667;7.139568333333333;;

50.683105;7.139521666666667;;

50.6831;7.139456666666667;;

50.683065;7.139366666666667;;

50.68302833333333;7.13928;;

50.682986666666665;7.139193333333333;;

50.68293833333333;7.139106666666667;;

50.68288166666667;7.139028333333333;;

50.682815;7.138951666666666;;

50.682743333333335;7.138873333333334;;

50.682671666666664;7.138793333333333;;

50.68259666666667;7.138708333333334;;

50.682523333333336;7.138625;;

50.682451666666665;7.138543333333334;;

50.682381666666664;7.138458333333333;;

50.68231;7.138371666666667;;

50.68223833333333;7.138283333333334;;

50.68217;7.13819;;

50.68210666666667;7.138093333333333;;

50.68205;7.137995;65542;;

50.682;7.137915;;

50.681955;7.137831666666667;;

50.681918333333336;7.137761666666667;;

50.68189666666667;7.137711666666666;;

50.68188333333333;7.13768;;

50.681873333333336;7.1376566666666665;;

50.68186333333333;7.137631666666667;;

50.681841666666664;7.1375866666666665;;

50.68181;7.13752;;

50.68177166666667;7.137435;;

50.681736666666666;7.137343333333333;1;Almost done

50.68169833333333;7.13724;;

50.68165333333334;7.137125;;

50.681603333333335;7.137003333333333;;

50.681556666666665;7.136886666666666;;

50.68150833333333;7.136773333333333;;

50.68146;7.136653333333333;;

50.68141;7.136533333333333;;