What is location tracking feature in Hexnode MDM?

Use the location tracking policy to enable organizations to fetch the real-time location of devices as well as the history of locations traversed by the devices. Location tracking can be enabled for iOS, Android, Fire OS, Windows, and macOS devices.

To track the location of a device, you have to enable location services on the device. Use the feature Force GPS to fetch location (Policies > Android > Restrictions > Allow Developer Options) to enable location services on Android devices.

To configure periodic or scheduled location tracking for a device, go to Policies > General Settings > Location Tracking. Enable location tracking and select the intervals (between 15 minutes and 24 hours) at which location has to be fetched. With Hexnode, you can also find the instantaneous location of a device using the action Scan Location (Manage > Devices > select the devices > Actions > Scan Location).

Apart from initiating the location fetching from the MDM console, users can manually report their location with check-in notes using the Hexnode app on their Android and iOS devices. Also, users with iOS devices can view their current location with the built-in map on the Hexnode MDM app.

To view the device’s traversed location from the MDM console, go to Manage > Devices > select the device > Location History. The location history of the device will be listed there as well as the device’s last fetched location will be shown on a map. To view the location of all the location tracking enabled devices, go to dashboard > Location History.

The location of the devices can be viewed on the portal using two different mapping services- Google Maps and OpenStreetMap by using Leaflet JavaScript library (default). To fetch the actual physical address of the device using Google Maps, you have to integrate the Google Maps API Key and Google Cloud Platform billing account with Hexnode.

You can view and export the location history of either individual devices (Manage > Devices > select the device > Location History) or of all location tracking enabled devices (Reports > Location Reports > Location History) as CSV or PDF files.

With Hexnode, you can also prevent the workforce from reporting dummy locations by restricting the mock location feature for Android devices (Policies > Android > Restrictions > Allow Developer Options > Mock Location).