Explanation of the importance of the Start Trip button when Drivers are beginning a trip.
Start Trip
For geofenced events or workflow actions to register correctly on a trip, that trip must be started. If a driver does not press the Start Trip button when they begin their trip (or at least before their first arrival event on a trip), then the underlying logic does not know which trip the action should be applied to and it will be effectively skipped.
Missing Start Trip
If a driver skips Start Trip then arrives at their pickup, the next button they see is the Arrive for their first stop, they should then press this button. (Since Start Trip was missed, which is needed to ‘activate’ geofencing so to speak, they will have the ability to press this Arrive button, it will not disappear when they get to the location). The platform can catch that Arrival event and apply this to TMW, then any workflow and actions at an Arrive destination will be displayed if applicable.
If you have automatic arrivals with geofence zones, the arrival has already taken place since the vehicle is already inside of the geofence crossing. So when the press Arrive as their first button, then the Start Trip Time and the Arrive Time will be sandwiched together as it is trying to catch up your times to the most recent action. If the driver does not Start Trip or perform Arrive actions, or any workflow actions until they are at their Delivery location, you could see times and actions in TMW pinched together even further. Therefore, pressing Start Trip first is more accurate.
Why can Start Trip not be automatic?
There are challenges that revolve around attempting to automatically start a trip – it is very difficult to determine which trip in a driver’s shift should be the one that gets started, and more importantly to do so consistently. Data in TMW is much more likely to be accurate when the driver themselves indicates when they are starting a trip. Thus, Start Trip actions are manual.