Monthly Archives: April 2019

Version 19.04

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New Features

Its all about Tasks in this release.  Lots of great new features.

  • Auto start of external applications in fieldTask. (requires fieldTask 6.10). An external application will be automatically launched if you set the parameter “auto=yes”.
  • Geofencing for tasks. A “Show Distance” can be set on a task so that it will only be shown to the user if they are within that distance of the task location. In addition a “download distance” can be set on a task group. Tasks in that group will only be downloaded when the user is closer that that distance from the average center of all the tasks in the task group.
  • Set initial data for a task.
  • Tasks API.

Geofences

Show Distance

This is for tasks that have been downloaded to fieldTask. The app will show and hide them as the user moves in and out of the geofence.

You tube video showing creation and use of a geofenced task

There are two geofence capabilities added in this release.

  1. “Show Distance”. The tasks are downloaded to the phone but only shown to the user when they are close enough to the task location. This distance is set per task.
  2. “Download Distance”. Tasks are only downloaded to the device when the user is close enough. This distance is set on a task group.

Set Initial Data for a Task

Amazingly this was not previously possible.  You could set a task to update an existing record however now you can also create a brand new submission but initialise it with some arbitrary data.  When creating tasks from existing data you can select one of the following 3 options:

No initial data means that your form will open empty. “Pre-populate form with existing data” is the new option, the data will be taken from the existing record and mapped to compatible questions in the new form that you want completed and the original data will not be updated. The third choice “Update Existing Results” continues to allow you to update an existing record. The data for that record will be shown in the form that you are going to complete.

You can’t yet add initial data when you add an ad-hoc task via the user interface. However you can do this via the new tasks API (see below).

Tasks API

A tasks API is slowly emerging. This is documented on the Smap website at http://www.smap.com.au/apiTasks.shtml.

  • Get task groups for a project
  • Get tasks
  • Get task details
  • Get initial data for a task
  • Create a task