Advisories Overview



Advisories Overview

RASTRAC advisories enhance the vehicle tracking job by alerting you to the occurrences of specific events in the mobile environment. While it is important that you know where the vehicles are located, it is also useful to know what the vehicles are doing. Advisories can be used to display text and images. Additionally, advisories can be used to execute specialized applications, based on vehicle movements, directions of travel, switch closures, and other discrete events which occur in the field.

RASTRAC advisories have two parts: the qualification set and the content set.

The qualification set is a set of requirements which must be satisfied for the advisory to be activated. The geographic advisory region, course, event ID, and vehicle ID set are possible components of the qualification set of any advisory. When you define an advisory, you specify which of these components are needed for that particular advisory. In short, the qualification set of an advisory defines what a vehicle must do in order to activate the advisory.

Generally, there are TWO things you can use to trigger an advisory: WHERE a vehicle is located (geography), OR some EVENT that is happening in the vehicle.

A "WHERE" or Geographically defined advisory will only be triggered when the vehicle is inside or outside of some region of interest. In a case like this, you would select the 'When a vehicle is inside a specified area...' or 'When a vehicle is outside of a specified area...' option. You define how you want the advisory to behave when it triggers (its content) and then click on OK. THEN, RASTRAC will prompt you to click on the map to define the geographic region that defines the "where."

An EVENT based advisory is one that triggers when a specific EVENT occurs in the vehicle. EVENTS are reported by the vehicle's AVL modem as numeric codes (NUMBERS). Different numbers signify different EVENTS. If you want to know when event (like the ignition turning on or a door opening) occurs, then you should CHECK the 'When a specific event occurs in the vehicle...' option. Choose 'When the driver presses a specific status button..." option, if your AVL modem sends an event when the driver presses a button in the cab. For example, if an EMERGENCY button triggers event 99 and you want an advisory to tell you when that happens, use this option and put 99 in the "Event ID" edit box in the dialog. If the event code is in decimal notation, you must choose "Decimal" before you enter the event number. If your modem's documentation describes event codes in base 16 (hexadecimal) and you want to use hex notation too, then always choose the "hex" setting BEFORE you enter the number.


The content set of an advisory is all of the things that RASTRAC will cause to happen when the advisory is activated (or deactivated). When an advisory is activated, RASTRAC can display text or an image, or it can run an external application. It can also run a different external application when the advisory is deactivated. In short, the content set of an advisory defines what RASTRAC does when the advisory is activated.

Advisory Settings
Advisory Text
Automatic Advisory Program Execution
Deleting a Vehicle when an Advisory opens or closes
Advisory Text Keywords
Advisory Images
Advisory Legends
Advisory Define