Recently, MAS and the NYS Dept of Health have instituted policies regarding GPS transmissions that are to occur during the transportation you provide to MAS passengers. We have already spoken to many of you to help educate you in these changes as well as direct you towards the best practices moving forward. This guide is another way RoutingBox is here to help. Below you will find the do's and don'ts of GPS transmissions to avoid costly Incomplete GPS Statuses.
Matching Records
Ensure all of your driver and vehicle information is a 100% match between RoutingBox and your MAS portal.
Navigate to your MAS portal and look for your driver and vehicle records. The two most important pieces of information are Driver's License Numbers and Vehicle Plate Numbers. If either of these are not a 100% match with what is in RoutingBox, update the records in RoutingBox to reflect what is on your MAS portal.
For example: If a driver's license number is listed as:
"123456789" in your MAS portal but as
"123-456-789" in RoutingBox, this is NOT a match (the added dashes are the issue).
If a vehicle plate number is listed as:
"12345LY" in your MAS portal but as
"12345 LY" in RoutingBox, this is NOT a match (the added space is the issue).
If these mismatching vehicle's or driver's licenses are used on trips your GPS will be rejected upon transmission to MAS. You will then need to correct those pieces of information before utilizing the Resend GPS tool within RoutingBox's attestation screen.
Location Permissions
You'll also want to ensure your driver's device has the Location Permissions for the RoutingBox Mobile Driver App set to "Always On". This allows for your GPS data to be transmitted to RoutingBox and, through an API integration, the MAS servers. If a driver isn't properly transmitting location information while logged into the app, a banner will appear at the top of the screen notifying the driver. If the driver ignores that message, any status updates they trigger within the app will NOT register. This will become even more important later in this guide, so ensure the driver's device is setup properly and they are educated on NOT ignoring a banner within the app that is warning them that they are not transmitting location information. Any trips completed while the driver isn't properly transmitting GPS will be rejected by MAS and given the Incomplete GPS Status.
Information on how to correctly enable location permissions can be found here: https://help.intelligentbits.com/location-permissions
Proper use of the Driver App
Next, we need to dive into driver behavior. There are a few policies MAS has in place that you'll want to be aware of. First, your driver must trigger a status update during every stage of the trip. Those statuses are En Route to Pickup, Arrived at Pickup, En Route to Dropoff, Arrived at Dropoff, and Completed. Make sure your drivers are aware that missing even a single stage of the trip could result in MAS rejecting the GPS, triggering that trip to be placed into the Incomplete GPS Status. A soon to be released tool within RoutingBox will allow you to manually place a missing status within the GPS breadcrumb trail. However, if the driver misses multiple statuses there may not be enough GPS captured to utilize that tool. As a rule of thumb, drivers should be pressing the arrow within the app to register the status update of every stage of the trip as this ties a GPS coordinate to that status update.
Distance Tolerance
That brings us to distance tolerances. MAS and the NYS Dept of Health need the status updates for Arrival at Pickup, Arrival at Dropoff, and Completed to be registered within 1 mile (5,280 feet) of the pickup and/or dropoff locations respectively. For example, if a driver forgets to register that they have arrived at the pickup and they then drive over to the dropoff location before registering those status updates, the arrival at pickup status update will have the GPS tied to the dropoff location which is likely to be more than a mile away. The GPS for that entire leg of the trip could then be rejected by MAS. As previously stated, an upcoming feature may be able to assist with placing that status at the correct location, but it's best if the drivers are accurately recording those status updates within the app. Failure to do so will either result in rejected GPS (Incomplete GPS Status) or manual work for a dispatcher to correct the location of the status update.
Proper Trip Creation
All MAS trips that are brought in through the automatic importer or by the usage of the trip import functionality of RoutingBox via the MAS Direct Connection option are the ONLY ways a trip will be connected to the MAS integration. That integration is integral to the transmission of your GPS data. Any trips manually created will not be connected to the integration and RoutingBox will have no way of transmitting the GPS back to MAS. This is yet another thing that can result in Incomplete GPS Statuses.
Resend GPS
There is also the possibility that even if you do all of the above correctly that a trip is still given the Incomplete GPS Status. If this were to occur, it could have been due to the GPS simply not sticking to the MAS servers during peak transmission times. If that occurs, you can utilize the satellite icon on the left side of that trip within the attestation screen to resend your GPS to MAS.
If after a resend of the GPS, given that all of the above was done properly, there can be reasons outside of RoutingBox and/or the driver's control that results in a trip being placed into Incomplete GPS Status. Those reasons are as follows: Your driver and/or vehicle is inactive or not credentialed on the MAS portal. A driver's license and/or vehicle registration recently expired, got suspended, or got revoked. Even in the event that you took care of the issue, reach out to MAS to ensure it is updated on their end. If the information from the DMV hasn't yet reached or been processed by MAS, that could also trigger rejection of GPS resulting in an Incomplete GPS Status on all trips tied to that driver and/or vehicle.
As we learn more, we will continue to keep this guide updated. If after this guide you're still experiencing issues after exhausting all of the above options, reach out to us via the Live Chat feature in RoutingBox to bring it to our attention. We appreciate all of you and we will do our absolute best to help you navigate the GPS requirements of MAS and the NYS Dept of Health.