When I arrived in Saudi Arabia I was the first person in country for our contract. I had one in-country supervisor and each day when we left our compound to drive 90 minutes to the Saudi air base he expected us to text him when we departed the compound, arrived at the base and vice-versa. This system became difficult to maintain as my team grew upward to 20 people rotating in for as little as a week. Because of this I built FP Tracker in my own time to improve the ability to accurately track personnel in country to make sure they arrived on time.
I chose text messaging as the basis of the app rather than a web or phone app because most employees rotating in had only a personal phone with text and call packages but no data due to cost, and because many of the places we found ourselves had no data coverage but enough signal bars to send a text.
FP-Tracker (Force Protection Tracker) is a text-messaging-based application used to track departures and arrivals for overseas personnel leaving a secure area and going to and from work or other destinations.
FP-Tracker is designed to replace or supplement existing systems of communications where employees text their supervisor when they exit / enter a compound / base.
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It eliminates redundant messages where multiple people in departing group text the supervisor the same message.
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It prevents the supervisor from having to keep track of all incoming messages and personnel departures and arrivals. Instead he can text "sitrep" and he receives a list of personnel locations. He can also toggle on/off the autoforwarding of all messages to whichever number. Finally he can get an hourly summary of all departures and arrivals.
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911 feature allows anyone to text 911 followed by a message which will then be broadcasted to all personnel in case of emergency. This comes in handy when the supervisor is in a meeting or otherwise not checking his phone and allows anyone with text reception to see and coordinate a response.
Because of existing database tracking locations, names, numbers, etc, reporting and tracking is simplified. Messages consist of names separated by commas going to destination, for example: "damiano, austin, perdue, and fischer went to embassy."" If there is more than one person with the same last name, the app will text the sender a list of people with the last name and have them select the corresponding number including the situation where two or more of the same last name are in the same departure group.
Text last name - User can text only last names to save time for all traveling together. If there are more than 1 person with the same last name there will be a follow up text to determine which person the user meant.
