Quick Start Guide

Creating Your TrackAbout Site

TrackAbout Creates Your Site

TrackAbout will create your website for you. You cannot create the website yourself. We will just need your Site Name to create your site.

System Requirements

See TrackAbout System Requirements for information about minimum software/hardware requirements for utilizing TrackAbout applications.

See Basic_Hardware_Requirements_for_Handheld_Computers for information about device minimum requirements for using TrackAbout mobile applications.

See Smartphone_App#Requirements for minimum smartphone requirements for running TrackAbout iOS/Android applications.

Site Name

By default we will use your domain name as your TrackAbout site name. So if your companies website is YourDomain.com we will call your trackabout site YourDomain. This is important only because then your people or your customers (if you allow your customers to access your site) can then go to YourDomain.trackabout.com to get to your site. Please let us know if you want a different name than your website domain name.

Logging in

Your TrackAbout representative will create your first system administrator user for the site. You will get an email from with a link for you to set a password and then log into the site. You can log into TrackAbout in a few ways:

Go to YourDomain.trackabout.com. So if your website was abc.com then you could go to abc.trackabout.com.
- The benefit of using this YourDomain.trackabout.com url is that you will always see your customized banner across the top of the page - even when logging in from a new computer or a customer computer. When you log in with the two methods below, you will first see a generic TrackAbout banner the first time that you log in from any give computer. After that first login the computer should remember your banner, but the banner may be cleared periodically if you flush the browsers cache of stored info.
- This url is also easy to remember and makes the site seem more like it is your site.
Go to https://www.trackabout.com/public/login.aspx
Go to trackabout.com and click the "Login" link in the upper right corner of this page.

Setting up Basic Information

The information below is use to help you get started with a tracking project.

If you need assistance with any of these steps, please feel free to contact TrackAbout Support to guide you through this process.

Locations

Setup your locations from the List Locations page.

This page can be found in the TrackAbout Config section of the site.

"Locations" in TrackAbout are really any location where an asset can be located - except for customers. Every asset is either in a Location or at a Customer. Refer to the Locations page for more information about TrackAbout Locations and how to create them.

Product Codes

In TrackAbout a Product Code is the code used to indicate a specific kind of asset. It is also normally called your part number, item number, stock number, product number or sku. It is the code used by your business system to track your inventory and sell things to customers.

These codes are stored in a 4 level hierarchy inside of TrackAbout called your Asset Classification. Your product codes will be structured within this hierarchy.

Refer to the wiki page Adding_Asset_Classifications_and_Product_Codes for morning information about Asset Classifications and for instruction to manually create Classifications and Product Codes.

For large numbers of Product Codes, these can be bulk loaded for you:

This spreadsheet is the template needed to mass map your product codes.
- Excel spreadsheet template: Map Product Codes
- Some sample data is in the spreadsheet so that you can see how it is formatted.
- Replace this sample data with your own real data.

See here for Product Code Tracking_Status
See here for Mapping New Product Codes

Owners

In TrackAbout, ownership refers to who owns a particular asset. This is used to keep track of vendor and customer owned assets, as well as of company owned assets.

Refer to the Ownership page for instructions about how to manage Owners.

Mobile Roles

Mobile Roles are used to limit the actions of the handheld to just those actions that a given kind of user needs to use. These are a requirement for customers regardless of whether they are using TAM6 or iOS/Android.

Mobile Roles are set up and managed through the List Mobile Roles page. For more information about how they work and how to set them up, refer to the Mobile Roles wiki page.

People

Setup your people from this web page: Internal Users
This page is in the TrackAbout Config section of the site. For detail instructions go to Internal Users
Each User will be assigned to website and mobile roles. These determine what permissions your users have within the system. System Administrator Role and Requirements

Mobile Users

You will need to setup all of your mobile workers from this Internal Users page. This includes truck drivers, plant workers and anyone else who will use the handheld computers.
Important: You will need to decide if your mobile workers will be required to use a password to log into the mobile units. The password is used by most TrackAbout customers to ensure that the person logged into the handheld is authenticated. This is a configuration that TrackAbout support can turn on or off for your entire site. Either you will always require passwords for logging into your mobile units or never require these passwords.

Website users

You will also setup website users from the Internal Users page.
The website users must all use passwords to log into the website.
It is recommended that you send your website users a 'Welcome email' from the TrackAbout site that will let them setup their own password. In this way nobody knows the users password except for the user.
If any users do not have an email address, you can set them up with a username instead and manually set their initial password. Once logged in these users can change their password, but they are not forced to change their password.

Setting up Mobile Units (Handheld Computers)

Charge the Batteries

The first thing to do is charge up the batteries for your mobile units.
So if you have a stack of boxes with handhelds inside, open them up and get them charging while you move on to the next steps.
Do not plug anything into your computer yet, we're just charging up the batteries.

Download and Install Software

Next, you'll need to download the software you need

For rugged devices

The software will be available for download here: Software Download This is in the Mobile Units section of the site.

You should find instructions on how to setup your handhelds from this page.
You will need a desktop or laptop computer running Microsoft Windows to complete this setup.

For iOS/Smartphone

You'll download the app from the respective App Store. See our Smartphone page for assistance.

Business Processes

Your TrackAbout will be configured based on the modules, features and processes that fit your business.

You're next steps will be defining these processes and implementing them. Review information about Modules and Features to tailor TrackAbout to your needs.

Modules

Other helpful resources to get started

Advanced Setup Options

Customized Banner

Across the top of your TrackAbout site there is a spot for you to have a customized banner. Generally you would put your logo here or any other graphics, text or links needed to make your TrackAbout site look like your site. We generally recommend keeping the banner to about 50 pixels tall so that it does not take up too much of the screen. Also there will be 4 buttons shown off the the right side of the banner. Your graphic or background colors may go under these buttons, but the buttons must be shown. A customized banner is not required, but we do recommend one. Without a customized banner a generic 'TrackAbout' banner will be shown. The image below shows the area of the banner.

Getting Started

Contents