On Track
There’s a lot to like about TeleNav Track. You can customize its Web-based dashboard with various tracking information like time-card records, locations, speeds of travel and job progress reports. Administrators can see with a single glance where workers are, where they’ve been and whether they’re on schedule. “Geofences” let administrators know when employees enter or exit specific locations. They can even communicate with users via TeleNav’s text-message service or e-mail.

Data entry is simplified. Wireless time cards and forms, assigned to users’ phones, eliminate error-prone paperwork. Users fill in the forms, which can include pretyped responses designed by the administrator, and then send them to the Web interface. (Bluetooth bar-code scanners that work with TeleNav Track are available, but I didn’t test any.)

TeleNav Track’s cost (with five plans, starting at $9.99 per month) is among its plus points. Standalone GPS systems can cost more than $600, but because TeleNav users don’t pay for hardware, you can budget significantly less for the mobile phone-based service. However, new phones required to support the service may cross out some of those cost savings; we’ll get to that in a moment.

The GPS navigation application within TeleNav Track could be a lifesaver for mobile workers who travel frequently via automobile. However, on top of TeleNav Track, the BlackBerry 8800 used for this review included the most recent version of the TeleNav’s standalone GPS Navigator application, v5.1, which is much more polished and feature-rich than the version within TeleNav Track. Once I used v5.1, it was difficult to employ an earlier version without really noticing its shortcomings.

One favorite feature of the service is the Biz Finder option, which can locate the nearest restaurants, hotels, gas stations and even movie theaters. You can search for specific businesses, like Olive Garden or Shell, all on your handheld.

Because TeleNav is simply an application on users’ phones, it is much more portable than standalone GPS systems, and probably requires less setup.

Finally, I like how you can monitor your mobile workforce on both TeleNav Track’s GPS map interface, and on satellite images from Google’s mapping service.