While mobile users can only see their tracks, other users who are not administrators—such as supervisors and field crew chiefs—need to view the tracks of others. A track view contains the last known locations and tracks of a set of mobile users. Anyone with the privilege to view location tracks and access to a track view can view the tracks of the specified mobile users.
Once track viewers have access to tracks, they can view them in the Track Viewer web app or another map or app. Track Viewer provides an overview of the last known locations and the tracks of mobile users and allows the track viewer to do simple filtering and analysis. If that is how you use your tracks, see View tracks in Track Viewer.
If you need a more complete picture of the locations of your mobile users and where they've been in relation to other assets and information important to you, add the hosted feature layer view of the tracks to your own map or app. You can also use the tracks to do advanced analysis in ArcGIS. If that is how you use your tracks, continue reading this topic to learn about the tracking layer's schema and the advanced analysis and configuration that can be done.
Overview of the location tracking schema
Location tracking uses a service with two feature layers and two coded value domains with a predefined schema. When using track information in your maps and apps, use hosted feature layer views created with track views that follow the same schema. These hosted feature layer views provide users who are not administrators with access to the tracks they should see.
The location tracking feature layers and hosted feature layer views are created in a Location Tracking folder in the contents of the account that was used to enable tracking. The location tracking feature layer is named Location Tracking and the hosted feature layer views are named the same as the track view for which they were created.
Tracks feature layer
The tracks feature layer (and any hosted feature layers view based on it) is a point layer that contains a record for each location where a mobile user was tracked with the Tracker mobile app or the Field Maps mobile app. These records include information about the track point, including whose track it is, the activity type of the mobile user, battery information about their device, their course and altitude (from mean sea level), and the accuracy of the location.
Points are only inserted by the Tracker mobile app or the Field Maps mobile app and are never updated or deleted. No filtering is applied to the points that are recorded, and they reflect the raw data from the mobile user's device. The layer is in the WGS 1984 Web Mercator (Auxiliary Sphere) [WGS84] coordinate system, which has the well-known ID (WKID) 4326.
Last known locations (LKL) feature layer
The last known locations feature layer (and any hosted feature layer view based on it) is a point layer that contains a single record for each user representing their most recently reported location. It has the same fields and information as the tracks feature layer, and is also in the WGS84 coordinate system.
The table below lists the fields for both the tracks feature layer and the last known locations feature layer.
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| objectid | The system-managed ID field. |
| activity | This represents the activity of a mobile user at the time a track is recorded. There are six possible values for this field:
See How is the value for the location track's activity attribute determined for more information. |
| altitude | The altitude of the device measured in meters above mean sea level (MSL). |
| app_id | The app that recorded the location. This value will be tracker for points uploaded from Tracker. |
| battery_percentage | The battery percentage of the device. This range is 0 to 100. |
| battery_state | This represents the state of the device battery. There are four possible values that can be recorded:
|
| category | The category associated with the track. |
| course | The direction of travel in units of 0 to 360 degrees. |
| device_id | A unique ID given to the device. |
| floor | The floor number reported by the location service provider. |
| globalid | The global ID of the feature generated by the server. |
| full_name | The full name of the user. |
| horizontal_accuracy | The horizontal accuracy of the recorded location measured in meters. |
| location_source | The source of the location (Wi-Fi, GPS, fused, and so on). This is only recorded on Android devices. |
| location_timestamp | The date and time when the location was recorded by the device. |
| session_id | A unique ID that is generated every time tracking is turned on. |
| signal_strength | The signal strength of the device. |
| speed | The speed of the device recorded in meters per second. |
| vertical_accuracy | The vertical accuracy of the recorded location measured in meters. |
| created_user | The user name of the mobile user. |
| created_date | The date and time when the point was uploaded to the server. |
| last_edited_user | The user name of the user that last edited the feature. |
| last_edited_date | The date and time when the point was last edited on the server. |
Note:
All datetime values are recorded in coordinated universal time (UTC).
The full_name and category fields are only available in ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Enterprise 10.8.1 and later. If you enabled location tracking in ArcGIS Enterprise 10.8 or earlier and are upgrading to ArcGIS Enterprise 10.8.1 or later, click Upgrade location tracking in the location tracking settings to add these fields to your existing location tracking service.
The signal_strength and category fields are not currently populated by Tracker.
Advanced analysis and configuration
To use the location tracking schema for advanced analysis and configuration, use ArcGIS API for Python. It provides a module to automate the management of location tracking layers, track viewers, and mobile users. In addition to managing content, ArcGIS API for Python can be used to develop more complex analyses of tracks. For examples and best practices, see the sample scripts and notebooks available on GitHub.
Limitations
Using tracks comes with the following limitations:
- Tracks in ArcGIS Online can only be exported as shapefiles or CSV files.
- ArcGIS Online analysis tools cannot be used on location tracking layers.