GPS tracking and parent notifications

GPS devices

Go to Transport → GPS Devices to register the trackers fitted to vehicles.

Record the device identifier — usually the IMEI printed on it — and the vehicle it is fitted to. Once it is reporting, the vehicle appears on the live map.

A device that stops reporting is usually a power or SIM problem in the vehicle rather than a fault in ShuleOne. Check the vehicle before raising a support call.

Transport → Devices covers other in-vehicle hardware, such as card readers used to record boarding.

Live tracking

Transport → Live Tracking and Transport → Map show where the vehicles are now, with their route and current trip.

Use it for the questions the office is actually asked:

• Where is the bus, and how late is it?
• Which vehicle is nearest to a breakdown?
• Did the vehicle follow its route?

Alerts

Transport → Alerts raises a notification when something happens that someone should know about:

• A vehicle deviating from its route.
• Speeding above a set threshold.
• A late departure or arrival.
• A prolonged unscheduled stop.
• A device going offline mid-trip.

Configure alerts to go to the transport officer and, where appropriate, the head.

Set thresholds honestly

An alert that fires every day is an alert nobody reads. Set the speeding threshold to what the school actually considers unacceptable rather than to the speed limit on paper, and set the deviation radius wide enough to survive an ordinary diversion. Then treat the alerts that do fire as real.

Parent tracking

Transport → Parent Tracking controls what parents can see of the vehicle their child is on.

Where it is enabled, a parent sees the vehicle’s position and its expected arrival at their pickup point while a trip is running — through the parent app, or a tracking link.

Transport → Messaging Settings decides what parents are told automatically:

• The vehicle has departed the school.
• The vehicle is approaching their pickup point.
• Their child boarded, or did not.
• The vehicle is running late.

Two things worth deciding deliberately:

Timing. An “approaching” message five minutes ahead is useful. One thirty seconds ahead is not.

Scope. Parents should see the vehicle their own child is on, during the trip their child is on it — not the whole fleet all day. The default settings do this; check them before enabling tracking rather than after.

Messages

Transport → SMS and Transport → Messages send to the parents on a route — a delay, a breakdown, a change of arrangement. This is a route-scoped version of the communication module, and it is the right tool when a particular bus is an hour late.

Reports

Transport → Reports covers trips completed, punctuality by route, distance and usage per vehicle, and alert history.

Punctuality by route is the useful one. A route that is late three mornings a week has a schedule problem, and the fix is usually the pickup times rather than the driver.