What’s New for the Month of August 2024

We are excited to introduce several new features in the SmartBus app designed to enhance user experience, improve functionality, and provide better security for student transportation. These updates will make it easier for schools, parents, and administrators to stay informed and connected.

Key Updates for Parents

Address Masking for Student Pickup and Drop

To enhance privacy, we have implemented a feature that masks information like student pickup and drop addresses, parent’s mobile number and email. This ensures that sensitive location data is protected and accessible only to authorized users.

Benefits:

• Safeguards student location information  
• Limits access to sensitive data  
• Improves security across all modules  

Temporary Tracking for Emergency Situations  

The objective of the SmartBus Btrack Manager mobile application is to improve vehicle tracking’s adaptability and reaction in emergency scenarios, including exam or traffic jams. 

This temporary tracking screen allows managers to track students’ vehicles without sending notifications, providing an easy solution during critical times.

Benefits:

• Enables real-time vehicle tracking during emergencies.
• Ideal for situations like traffic jams or unexpected delays.

Holiday Management via Mobile App  

Managing holidays has never been easier. With the new holiday management feature, school users can now add or manage holidays directly through the mobile app, ensuring flexibility and reducing administrative workload.

Benefits:

• Update holidays quickly and efficiently  
• Manage schedules without extra notifications  
• Reduces time spent on holiday-related tasks  

       

Picture-in-Picture (PIP) Live Tracking for Parents  

Parents using Android can now experience Picture-in-Picture mode for live tracking, allowing them to monitor their child’s bus while using other features on their phone. This multitasking capability enhances the parent experience without interrupting their regular phone use.

Benefits:

• New PIP mode for continuous live tracking  
• Enables multitasking while monitoring the bus  
• Provides greater convenience and flexibility for parents  

       

Key Updates for Managers

Enhanced Attendance Tracking with UHF Reader Integration  

We have added a new report that provides student attendance details by using UHF readers. This feature allows users to set an RFID swipe tolerance time, ensuring that multiple swipes within a short period are ignored, preventing inaccurate in/out counts. 

Benefits:

• Provides a dedicated UHF-based attendance report  
• Streamlines tracking with accurate reporting  
• Reduces errors with a customizable tolerance period 

Trip Tracking Alert for GPS Issues  

To ensure smooth operations, we have added an alert system that notifies parents and managers when a trip fails to start due to GPS issues. This proactive alert ensures that any GPS-related problems are quickly identified and gets resolved for better user experience.

Benefits:

• Notifies about GPS-related trip failures  
• Helps resolve issues before they cause disruptions  
• Enhances overall reliability of school bus tracking  

User-friendly Widgets on the SmartBus Dashboard  

We have introduced new widgets to make it easier for administrators to access important data at a glance. These widgets, which include a number of widgets like student trip allocation & point allocation ,failure ratios, provides a streamlined way to monitor and manage key transportation tasks.

Benefits:

• New widgets for simplified dashboard management  
• Easy access to critical information like trip performance  
• Improves operational efficiency for administrators  

Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to improve the SmartBus experience!