SnowManager records your position only while a dispatch you started is running on your phone. It does not track you between dispatches, off shift, or after you finish. This article says what is recorded, what it is used for, and what you need to allow.
The permission
The app asks for location access the first time you press Start route or Open navigation, not at sign-in. It first explains itself (GPS while you drive) and then iOS asks twice: once for use while the app is open, and once more to allow it in the background. Choose Always Allow. With anything less, recording stops the moment the phone locks or you switch to your navigation app, and your stops are no longer checked in for you.
If you declined earlier, the start button shows Location access is off with Open Settings: set Location to Always for SnowManager there.
While recording, iOS shows the usual location indicator, and the app keeps a card on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island with the dispatch's progress: GPS active, the percentage driven on a road route, or the stops done, and Route completed at the end.
What is recorded
Your position is taken about every 25 metres while you move, and sent to the server in batches roughly every 45 seconds. Positions the phone itself rates as worse than 100 metres are thrown away on the phone; the server ignores anything worse than 75 metres. If the phone loses signal, the positions are kept and sent when it is back; nothing is lost in a tunnel or a courtyard.
The dispatch you started is remembered, so if iOS closes the app in the background or the phone restarts, recording resumes by itself when you move again. It stops on its own after 16 hours, in case a dispatch is forgotten.
What it is used for
- Check-in and check-out on stops. Every address has an area: the shapes the office drew on it, or a circle of 40 metres round its pin. Entering the area stamps the stop's arrival time, and leaving it for five minutes in a row stamps the departure, set to the last position inside. Times you or the office set by hand are never overwritten, and a stop that is already completed or unable is left alone. The details are in how GPS check-in and check-out work.
- Progress on road routes. On a painted road route the roads turn green as you drive them, and the percentage on the map and the Lock Screen comes from these positions.
- Documentation. The office sees your position and trail live on the dispatch's map and can replay the run afterwards, with the time you passed each point, see follow a dispatch live. The run, its distance and the visits at each stop are also what an insurance report of a stop is built from.
- Your own history. Under Routes, History, you can replay your own runs.
Who can see it
Your company's office, on the dispatch you drove. A business that handed the address to your company sees the stop's times and outcome, not your trail. Customers see the times of the visit if the office chose to share them, never the trail.
When recording stops
Recording ends when you press Finish route or Finish driving, when the dispatch is cancelled, or when you start a different dispatch (the app asks first: Another drive is running). Closing the map or the app does not stop it; that is the point of the background permission. If you want to stop recording without finishing, sign off the dispatch with Finish driving; the dispatch stays open for the office.
Battery
A run uses about what a navigation app uses, and a little more inside a stop's area, where the app samples every few metres instead of every twenty-five so a car park is recorded as a shape rather than two dots. Keep the phone on the charger in the vehicle on long nights; the app does not lower its accuracy to save battery, because the stop areas are small.