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Set up a site

A site set up as a building, its floors and its rooms tells you which floor and which room each asset is in, and lets a rule watch one floor or one room. This guide sets up one site in Blecon Track, from the outline of the building to the hotspots that detect your tags inside it. Work through the steps in order: each one uses the zones the step before it made.

The devices your frontline workers already carry are the site's coverage. Install the Blecon Agent on them, and each device detects the tags near it as the worker moves through the site. There is no hardware to install.

Hubs and anchors are optional, and they add to that coverage. Outdoors, and wherever the devices have a good GPS fix, your zones work without them. Indoors they help in two ways: they give the devices an accurate position where GPS is poor, and they put each asset on its floor. Each step below says when you need them.

Prerequisites

  • A Blecon Track workspace, and the Admin or Owner role in it.
  • The mobile devices your frontline workers carry: Android, iOS, Windows or macOS. See Compatibility.
  • Your hubs and the tags you will fit as anchors, if you use them (optional).
  • A floorplan of each floor (optional): an image, or a GeoJSON or IMDF file.
  • The people who work at the site, and whether they must not see the assets of other sites (optional, for a team).

Step 1: Draw the building

  1. Go to Zones and click + Add Zone.
  2. Choose Draw on the map and click Next.
  3. Search for the site's address to put a zone around it, or choose Draw instead and click out the building's outline. Double-click to close the shape.
  4. The name is suggested as "Building". Change it to the site's name, such as "Northfield DC".
  5. Click Create Zone. The building's page opens.

The building is a top-level zone. It has no floor, so it holds everything inside its outline on every floor.

Step 2: Add the floors

On the building's page:

  1. In Child zones, click + Add child zone.
  2. Select Use the outline of the building. A floor usually has the building's outline.
  3. Enter the Floor number: 0 for the ground floor, 1 for the floor above it, -1 for the floor below it. The name is suggested as "Ground floor" or "Floor 1".
  4. Click Create Zone. The floor's page opens.

Go back to the building's page and repeat for each floor. For an area that goes through every floor, such as a stairwell, leave the floor empty.

A zone with a floor holds an asset only when the asset's position is on that floor. An asset gets its floor from the hubs and anchors near it. Without a placed hub or anchor on a floor, assets are in the building but in none of its floors. Floor zones still show each floor's floorplans. See Floors.

Step 3: Add the rooms

On a floor's page, click + Add child zone and draw each room inside the floor's outline. A room takes its floor's number. Zones go three levels deep: the building, its floors, and their rooms.

The zone editor warns when a zone is too narrow to count what is inside it reliably. See How small a zone can be.

A room needs positions accurate enough to tell it from the room next to it. Indoors, GPS is not accurate enough for this. Hubs or anchors placed in or near each room give that accuracy.

Step 4: Add the floorplans

On each floor's page, in Floorplans, click + Add floorplan. A floorplan takes its zone's floor, so the map shows it only when that floor is chosen. A zone can have several floorplans.

If you use hubs or anchors, add the floorplans first. In step 8 you drag each hub and anchor to its place on the floorplan.

Step 5: Put the Blecon Agent on your devices

This step is short. For the full plan, battery settings and checks, see Deploy the Blecon Agent.

For a fleet of managed devices, deploy the app with your mobile device management (MDM) platform. The MDM platform installs the app, and on Android it also grants the app's permissions, so the workers do nothing. See Mobile device management (MDM) for the app IDs and the permissions to grant.

For a few devices, install the app by hand:

  1. Go to Network > Agent and scan the QR code with each device to open its app store. See App stores.
  2. On each device, open the app and allow Bluetooth and location. On Android, choose Allow all the time, so the app keeps working when the device is locked.

Either way, the app then runs in the background, and nobody has to open it.

Give the app to the workers who move through the parts of the site you want covered, such as pickers, forklift drivers and the yard team. A device covers the area around it wherever it goes, so the routes your workers take are your coverage. The same app also runs the workflows that register tags and fit anchors in step 7.

A device running the Blecon Agent is positioned from its own location. Outdoors, its GPS fix is good, and the assets it detects go in the right zone with no more set-up. Indoors, GPS is poor or missing, so a device needs hubs or anchors nearby to give its assets a good position and a floor.

To show the devices on the map too, set a policy in Device Tracking. A device's own location is recorded only within that policy.

Step 6: Add the hubs

Hubs are optional. A hub is fixed hardware that scans the area around it all the time. Add hubs where your frontline workers do not go often enough, such as a store room or a dock door, and where you need coverage all the time, not only when a device passes. A placed hub positions the assets it detects and puts them on its floor. If your devices cover the site and have a good GPS fix, go to step 7.

  1. Go to Network > Hubs and click + Add Hub.
  2. Enter the Hub ID and give the hub a Name.
  3. Click Choose zone, choose the floor or room the hub is in, and click Choose.
  4. Click Add Hub.

The hub is placed at the centre of that zone, on the zone's floor. For a hub you added earlier, open it and choose Move to zone. See Blecon Hub.

Access points synced from Juniper Mist or Cisco Spaces take their position from your floorplans in those systems. Move to zone gives one the zone's floor.

Step 7: Fit the anchors

Anchors are optional. An anchor is a tag fitted at a fixed place. When a device running the Blecon Agent detects it, the device gets the anchor's position and floor, and the assets it detects are placed there too. Anchors make the devices your workers carry work indoors. Fit anchors along the routes those devices take where they have no good GPS fix, such as the aisles of a warehouse, and on each floor where you want assets put on that floor. Unlike a hub, an anchor helps only when a device running the Blecon Agent passes near it. If your site is outdoors, or your hubs cover it, go to step 8. To plan where each anchor goes, see Plan anchor placement.

  1. Go to Workflows and choose Edit on Add an anchor.
  2. In Site (optional), choose the building, and save.
  3. On a device running the Blecon Agent, run Add an anchor.
  4. As you fit each tag, scan it. In Where is it fitted?, choose the zone it is in, such as "Ground floor › Cold Store".
  5. Submit.

Each anchor is placed at the centre of the zone you chose, on that zone's floor, and works at once. See Place anchors as you fit them.

Step 8: Move each one to its exact place

If you use no hubs or anchors, go to step 9.

The centre of a zone is a first position. Assets are positioned from where their hubs and anchors are, so a hub or anchor in the wrong place puts its assets in the wrong place too. Move each anchor and hub to where it is fitted:

  • On a zone's page, click Move anchors and hubs above the Zone layout map, and drag each pin. Each move is saved when you drop it. Click Done moving when you finish.
  • Or open the anchor or hub and drag its marker on its page. On a hub's page, click Save position.

To move one to another zone or floor, open it and choose Move to zone.

Step 9: Check the site

  • Walk the site with a device running the Blecon Agent. The tags near it appear on Map, in the zones you drew.
  • If you use hubs or anchors, the Not placed card on Anchors and on Hubs counts what still has no position. A hub or anchor with no position has no effect. Place each one it lists.
  • On the building's page, choose With child zones above the Zone layout map to see every asset, device, anchor and hub on the site. Point at one to see which zone it is in.
  • The building's Child zones table counts the assets and anchors on each floor.
  • On Map, Floor of the building lists its floors. Choose one to see only that floor's floorplans, zones and assets.

Step 10: Give the site a team

Teams are optional. Use a team when the people at this site share the workspace with other sites but must not see their assets, such as one team for each depot. A team member then sees only the team's assets, on the map, in lists, counts, trips, alerts and exports. Owners and Admins still see every site.

  1. Go to Settings > Members. In Teams, enter the site's name and click Add Team.
  2. Invite the site's people as Members or Viewers, and pick the team in the invite form. For people who are already members, use the team selector beside each one.
  3. Put the site's assets in the team. On Assets, filter to the building's zone, click Select, select the assets and click Assign team.
  4. Set the team on the site's workflows, such as Add an asset. Every asset that a frontline worker registers there then joins the team. See Workflows.

To hide the zones of other sites from the team, click Visibility beside the team and clear Zones. See Choosing what a team can see.

Step 11: Add rules

A rule on a zone covers everything inside the zone's outline, including the zones drawn inside it. On a floor's zone, it covers only that floor:

Questions? Contact Blecon support — we're happy to help.