Introduction to device location and sharing

Available with the ArcGIS Indoors Maps extension.

ArcGIS Indoors allows you to track the location of mobile devices in and around a facility. The following examples describe cases in which information related to the current and historic location of a device can help make operations more efficient:

  • Finding the location of a colleague
  • Assigning and tracking deliveries
  • Analyzing real-time office space occupancy
  • Examining occupant movement patterns
  • Identifying bottlenecks in a facility during peak hours

Device location reported by Indoors can be classified into the following categories:

  • Current location or last known location—Locate members throughout the building or facility when they are actively sharing their device location.
  • Historic location or tracks—Visualize and monitor the path through which members got to their current location, including previous locations.

The ability to see the current location and tracks of other members is controlled by the administrator of the ArcGIS organization.

Device location in Indoor Viewer

In Viewer, you can use the last known location information provided by the Location Sharing service, if enabled in your ArcGIS organization and on individual devices, in both browser and kiosk modes.

Prerequisites

Indoors uses the Location Sharing service in Enterprise to securely store the location data uploaded by devices. Location sharing is an organization-wide capability that stores tracked locations as point features in a secure feature layer.

Note:

You must have a spatiotemporal big data store (available through ArcGIS Data Store) configured before you can enable location sharing.

Service security

For security purposes, ownership-based access control (OBAC) is enabled on the track's feature layer, and, by default, only administrators can view location data. A custom role with a privilege to view tracks must be assigned to other members of the ArcGIS organization to allow track data to be viewed.

Note:

For additional security, a tracking zone layer must be included in the mobile map package that is published for use with Indoors. Location information is not reported if a member is not in a tracking zone.

Additional information for Indoors mobile

Learn more about ArcGIS Indoors for iOS and ArcGIS Indoors for Android deployments.

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