Why was a geofence not registered?

A vehicle may have appeared to pass through a geofence, however the geofence entry or exit was not registered on Kura

The Kura driver app is used to identify entry and exit of geofences, as well as location every 30 seconds.  To achieve this, Kura uses the underlying capabilities and limitations within the Android and IOS operating system.

If Kura has not registered a geofence entry or exit, which can happen in a very small amount of cases, less that 0.5%, and from the location replay it appears the vehicle did drive within the geofence, then the below are areas to investigate

Ensuring Entry and Exit of a Geofence:

In order to record an entry to a geofence, greater than 80% of the area of circle of location accuracy must be within the geofence area.

In order to record an exit from a geofence, less that 20% of the area of circle of location accuracy must remain within the geofence area

Mobile Device Limitations

Location updates and geofences are separate functions within the mobile operating systems. Location has a higher availability and less dependancies than geofencing does. In all cases, Kura is dependant upon the mobile operating system providing location and identification of entry and exit from geofences.

Mobile operating systems such as Android and IOS employ a number of techniques that may affect the recording of geofences, consider the following areas:

• Accurate location isn't available inside your geofence or your geofence is too small. On most devices, the geofence service uses only network location for geofence triggering. This approach is used because network location consumes much less power, it takes less time to get discrete locations, and most importantly it’s available indoors.

• Wi-Fi is turned off on the device. Having Wi-Fi on can significantly improve the location accuracy, so if Wi-Fi is turned off, Kura might never get geofence alerts depending on several settings including the radius of the geofence, the device model, or the Android version. Where possible enable “Wi-Fi scan only mode” which allows users to disable Wi-Fi but still get good network location. 

• There is no reliable network connectivity inside your geofence. If there is no reliable data connection, alerts might not be generated. This is because the geofence function depends on the network location provider which in turn requires a data connection

• Alerts can be late. The geofence function doesn't continuously query for location, so expect some delay when receiving alerts. Usually the delay is less than 2 minutes, even less when the device has been moving. If background location limits* are in effect, the delay can be 2-3 minutes on average. If the device has been stationary for a significant period of time, the delay may increase (up to 6 minutes).

* Background location limits are utilised by mobile operating system providers to ensure that apps that are not currently active receive reduced access to location and geofence data to conserve battery power.  Always ensure that the Kura driver app is in the foreground and the active app in use when recording a journey

Geofence triggering is affected heavily by mobile device configuration. Each device depends on the connectivity status, location status and permissions granted to the MOCA SDK. 

General troubleshooting steps on every device:

• Check that there is reliable network connectivity inside your geofence.
  • Try connecting to www.ridekura.com to check connectivity.
• Check that mobile data is turned on. 
  • Try connecting to www.ridekura.com to check connectivity.
• Check that Wi-Fi data is turned on.
  • This changes the Geofence triggering drastically as is used for triangulation.
• Check that Location is turned on.
  • If the app doesn't have location services running no location can be gathered.
• Check that the location permission for Kura is enabled.
  • Even if the device has the location enabled, the app can have the permission denied or When In Use. . Always is the recommended setting for Kura
• Check that the notification permission for the Kura app is enabled.
  • If no notifications can be invoked, devices will not get any local or remote push notifications.

Operating system dependant configurations:

On iOS:

• The Kura app requires location as "always", to control the "background App refresh" and usage of Mobile data:

•  Even if the App has all the permissions granted, the master switch of Background App refresh must be active for the Kura App:

• • "Background app refresh" has to be enabled within the app config itself. If not the app will not trigger actions unless it's in foreground.

On Android:

• • Permissions have to be requested by developer and granted by the user to the App. 
  • Location has to be set to "Balanced" or "High Accuracy". On "Device Only" Geofences are not triggered.