Breadcrumb Trail Overview:
What is a Breadcrumb Trail?
A breadcrumb trail is a visual representation of a vehicle or asset’s movement over time, created by GPS tracking devices. It consists of a series of location points recorded at regular intervals, forming a path on the map that shows where the asset has traveled.
How Breadcrumb Trails Work:
Each point in the breadcrumb trail includes location data, a timestamp, speed, and heading information.
The points are connected to display a route, allowing users to review historical movement.
Breadcrumb trails help track vehicle activity, verify routes, and monitor performance in real-time or through past trip history.
Why Breadcrumb Trails Matter:
Route Verification – Confirms that vehicles followed planned routes.
Performance Monitoring – Identifies delays, detours, or inefficient routing.
Safety & Compliance – Ensures drivers adhere to company policies and regulations.
Troubleshooting – Helps diagnose GPS tracking issues, such as missing or inaccurate location data
Below is an example of the FleetWatcher Breadcrumb Trail.
Breadcrumb Trail Navigation:
Where can I access the breadcrumb trail?
To access the Breadcrumb Trail within FleetWatcher, use the equipment card from the Map or the GPS Transmission Activity Report. The Breadcrumb Trail map window has the same functionality from all locations.
In the top right corner of the map window you will find four buttons.
Animate:
Legend:
Log:
Close: Closes the Map window.
Animate: The animate button is used to animate the equipment path.
How do I use the animate button?
Click the Animate button.
Choose the speed of the animation. The blue dot represents the speed at which the animation will run.
Click Begin. The equipment card will follow the path of the equipment providing time/date, speed/heading, and GPS latitude and longitude of each transmission.
Legend: The legend provides a definition of each event icon. Green arrows indicate Engine Running. Click HERE for a full list of descriptions. The checkboxes allow you to view or hide each icon type. Blue checkbox means the icon is visible on the map. Uncheck to hide the icon.
Log: The log represents each transmission from the device. Navigate directly to the location by selecting one of the log entries.
Breadcrumb Trail: Map > Equipment Card:
Navigate to the Map view by clicking the word Map from the top legend.
Note: The Equipment Card on the Map has a 12 hour breadcrumb trail view.
Use the Map search to locate a piece of equipment.
Click the word Map from the top legend.
Click the word Search to the right of Follow Find. The asset search box will appear on the left side of the map.
Use the search box at the top to locate the asset.
Select the asset name for the search results.
The map will center on the asset.
Click the words Breadcrumb Trail to open the breadcrumb trail map window.
Refer to the Breadcrumb Trail Navigation above for details about the breadcrumb trail map window.
Breadcrumb Trail: GPS Transmission Activity Report:
Navigate to: Fleet > Location > GPS Transmission Activity.
Running the GPS Transmission Activity Report:
To generate the report:
Select a piece of equipment.
Choose a start and end date (if no date is selected, the last transmission date will be used).
Click the Generate Report button.
Click the View Breadcrumb Trail button to open the breadcrumb trail map window.
The report will list each transmission based on the ping rate of the device. Ping rates range from 30 sec to 24 hours.
Click the information icon to learn about the messages on the GPS Transmission Activity Report.
Note: The GPS Transmission Activity Report breadcrumb trail is based on the search dates.
Refer to the Breadcrumb Trail Navigation above for details about the breadcrumb trail map window.