Location

Many companies have a Corporate Social Responsibility strategy, in which they commit themselves to being able to quickly locate traveling employees in case of natural disasters, national unrest, or terrorist attacks in the area in which the employee may be traveling. With DME, the last known location of the device can quickly be shown.

The feature can also simply be used as a help locating a lost device.

Based on the network information sent in by the device with the full system information sync, which is listed in the Network properties section of the device information page, DME is able to build a link to Google Maps, pinpointing the approximate location of the device. The link is built using the open source database of cell IDs and locations at http://www.opencellid.org. Please note that in order to use this functionality, the DME server's firewall must allow traffic to that website over HTTP, as specified in the installation documentation.

If the cell ID is found in the Open Cell ID database, a link with the text Open map is shown after the Last location property in the User properties section. If the cell ID could not be found in the database, the location will be based on the Location area code. This is not as precise as using the cell ID, as the "location area" may cover an area several miles across. In this case, the text (Inaccurate positioning based on location area) is added after the link to Google Maps.

If DME is unable to open the Open Cell ID database within a certain time (half a second by default), the message Could not open location database at OpenCellID. is shown.

This feature can be disabled completely, for instance if local employee privacy protection laws requires it. To disable the feature, you need to change a field in the DME database. Change the field LAST_LOCATION_TIMEOUT in the DME_ServerConfiguration table to 0 (zero). If you disable the feature in this way, the message Disabled is shown in this window.

Note about iOS devices: The location feature does not work for iOS devices, as iOS devices never report their current Cell ID.

Locating a device

• Remember that the cell ID is sent to the server with the full system information sync. As the device only makes a full system sync at intervals, it is recommended to use the Force synchronization feature on the device before looking up its location:
  1. Select the device in question in the Devices tab.
  2. Select Force synchronization in the page menu.
  3. Choose Import system info.
  4. Click Send.
• After synchronizing, click the Open map link.

  A web page from Google Maps shows the approximate location of the device, for instance:

  

  The green arrow shows the location. Click the arrow to view the exact coordinates and see the usual Google options.

A note on precision: The cell ID gives an approximate location of the device, as the location is not based on GPS data. This is also in line with intended usage of this functionality, which is to give you a general idea where the device is rather than the exact location. For instance, you can see "Oh, he's at the airport" or "Oh, she's in New York" rather than "Oh, he's at 7, Horniman Drive".