How to Set Up Geofences in Verizon Connect
Quick Summary
Setting up geofences in Verizon Connect creates virtual perimeters around meaningful locations, so you can monitor when vehicles arrive, depart, or spend time on-site. In Reveal, geofences live inside the Places tab, where you can draw a custom shape, accept a suggested geofence, or upload many locations at once from a spreadsheet. From there, you can attach alerts, run reports, and track metrics like visit duration and frequency. This guide walks through every creation method, along with how to organize, correct, and report on your geofences once they exist. For a broader look at the platform’s full feature set, visit Verizon Connect Fleet Management Software & Solutions.
What Is a Geofence in Verizon Connect and Why Set One Up?
Verizon Connect Fleet Management Software & Solutions uses geofences, also called Places, to give fleet managers near real-time visibility into activity around key locations. Rather than only watching vehicles move across an open map, geofences let you focus attention on the addresses that matter most to your business, such as customer sites, job sites, warehouses, or restricted areas.
Once a geofence exists, the platform can automatically alert you when a vehicle enters or leaves that area. This is particularly useful for confirming job site visits, tracking how long a vehicle stayed, and spotting drivers who visit locations they should not. Consequently, geofencing turns a simple map view into an active monitoring tool that works even when you are not watching the screen.
How Does Geofencing Strengthen Security and Productivity?
Beyond simple visit tracking, geofencing can strengthen security, asset utilization, and productivity across your fleet. For example, you can set up a geofence around your yard to receive alerts if a vehicle leaves after hours without authorization. Similarly, geofences around customer sites help confirm arrival and departure times, which supports accurate billing and reduces disputes over service windows.
How Do You Create a Geofence From Live Map?
The most direct way to create a geofence is through the Actions menu on Live Map. This method works well when you already see the vehicle or location you want to monitor and want to build the geofence around it immediately.
To create a geofence this way:
- Open Live Map.
- Open the Actions menu by clicking the three dots beside a vehicle on the Vehicle Status list, or by right-clicking a vehicle’s status icon or any point on the map.
- Click “Create a Geofence here.”
- Review the geofence shape that appears, which defaults to a circular perimeter around the selected address.
- Adjust the shape as needed, then save.
Since this method creates the geofence directly at the vehicle’s current location, it is especially convenient for quickly capturing a site you are looking at in real time.
How Do You Adjust the Shape and Size of a Geofence?
Once the Create Geofence panel opens, you are not limited to the default circular shape. A custom shape works well for a parking lot or a site with an irregular boundary, since you can trace the perimeter to match the actual layout of the location. To adjust an existing shape, drag the dots along the perimeter to resize it, or drag from inside the perimeter to move the entire geofence to a new position.
What Additional Details Can You Add While Creating a Geofence?
While setting up the geofence, you can also assign it to a category, which helps with organization as your list of locations grows. In the Advanced Options tab, you can add a contact name, contact phone number, and a geofence ID, the last of which is useful for searching the geofence later in Live Map and in reports. Additionally, you can control whether the geofence appears on the map or alongside its address in reports by adjusting the Map and Address check boxes, though changes to this visibility can take up to 24 hours to update.
How Do You Create a Geofence Through the Places Tab?
Beyond Live Map, the Places tab offers a more structured way to build and manage geofences, particularly when you are setting up several locations at once rather than reacting to a single vehicle’s position.
To create a Place through this tab:
- Open the Places tab from the main navigation menu.
- Click Create Geofence, or select an address from a report or the map to open the same panel.
- Enter a name for the Place in the Name field, since this is mandatory and is how Reveal refers to the location in reports and on Live Map.
- Assign the Place to a Category, creating a new one if none of the existing options fit.
- Optionally add a description, contact name, contact phone number, and Place ID under Advanced Options.
- Save the Place once all details are entered.
Notably, when drawing the perimeter, it helps to avoid overlapping it with another geofence, since overlapping perimeters can make it difficult to distinguish between Places later in your reports.
How Do Groups Help Organize a Large List of Places?
If your account includes many Places, Groups provide a way to organize them more efficiently. To assign a Place to one or more Groups, open the Groups Selected drop-down list and select the relevant check boxes. It is worth noting that only users with access to a particular Group will see that a Place has been assigned to it, which can be useful for controlling visibility across different teams or departments within a larger organization.
How Do You Use Suggested Geofences?
Rather than building every geofence manually, Verizon Connect can also identify locations your vehicles visit frequently and suggest them automatically. This feature is particularly useful for uncovering patterns you might not have noticed otherwise.
Suggested geofences appear in the Places tab, highlighted in red text within reports, alert options, and on Live Map, until you review and either accept or delete them. Since these suggestions come directly from GPS data your vehicles have already generated, they often reveal locations, such as frequently visited job sites or unofficial stops, that were not part of your original planning.
What Should You Do if You Accept a Suggested Geofence Without Editing It?
If you accept a suggested geofence without making changes, it keeps its default name and remains in the Uncategorised category. To properly organize it, click the pencil icon to open the Create Geofence window, where you can rename the geofence and assign it to a more meaningful category. Taking this extra step keeps your Places list consistent and easier to navigate as it grows over time.
How Do You Correct a Geofence That Is Not Capturing Activity?
Occasionally, a geofence fails to capture vehicle activity correctly, usually because vehicles are parking or stopping just outside its boundary. The Places tab includes a dedicated section for identifying and fixing this issue.
The table below summarizes the main sections found in the Places tab.
| Section | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Places | Displays all Places you have created or categorized, plus suggestions |
| Geofences to Correct | Lists geofences that are not capturing vehicle activity |
| New Suggested Geofences | Displays newly identified frequently visited locations |
When reviewing a geofence listed under Geofences to Correct, red dots on the map show exactly where vehicles have been parking outside the current perimeter. From there, you can expand the geofence boundary to include these areas, which improves the accuracy of future reporting for that location.
How Do You Upload Multiple Geofences at Once?
For fleets with many locations to set up, creating geofences one at a time is inefficient. Fortunately, Reveal supports uploading a batch of geofences directly from a spreadsheet, which is especially useful when migrating data from another system.
To upload geofences in bulk:
- From your Account Profile, choose Admin, then Places, then Upload Geofences.
- On the Choose File tab, click Download the Template.
- Open the template and enter details for each geofence, including PlaceName, Address or Lat/Lng, and an optional PlaceID.
- Save the completed file.
- Upload the file, then review the Successful Rows tab to confirm which geofences passed validation.
- Clear the check box beside any geofence you do not want to upload, then click Upload Selected.
Since this method supports up to 300 geofences per upload, it works well for larger migrations, though very large files should be uploaded in smaller batches to avoid timing out during processing.
What Happens if You Provide Both an Address and Coordinates?
When completing the template, latitude and longitude generally produce a more accurate result than an address alone. If you choose not to include coordinates, you must provide a complete address instead, including the street, city, state, and zip code. Consequently, gathering accurate coordinates in advance, where possible, tends to reduce the need for manual corrections after the upload completes.
How Do You Set Up Alerts Based on Geofences?
Once a geofence exists, attaching an alert to it turns passive monitoring into active notification. This step is often what makes geofencing genuinely useful on a day-to-day basis, rather than just a visual reference on the map.
Common geofence-based alert triggers include:
- A vehicle entering a specific Place, or geofence.
- A vehicle departing from a specific Place.
- A vehicle remaining stopped near a Place for longer than a set amount of time.
Since alerts rely on GPS pings from the tracker, the accuracy of the alert depends partly on how frequently the device reports its location. Trackers that report only periodically, such as once every 24 hours, produce less precise alert timing than those reporting continuously as movement starts and stops.
How Do You Fine-Tune Alert Accuracy for Asset Trackers?
If your fleet includes asset trackers with a low reporting frequency, alert timing around geofences may feel delayed compared to standard vehicle trackers. In these cases, contacting support to request a change to the reporting rate can improve the accuracy of geofence-based alerts, since more frequent GPS updates give the system more data points to work with when determining entry and exit times.
How Do You Report on Geofence Activity?
Beyond alerts, several reports let you review geofence activity after the fact, which is useful for confirming past visits or analyzing patterns over time. Reports such as the Detailed Report, Geofence Report, and Daily Report all support this kind of review, often displaying existing Places in green text and suggested geofences in red.
Within these reports, you can typically choose whether to display address-only information, geofence names, or both together, and select how many nearby geofences to include when a stop does not fall neatly inside a defined perimeter. This flexibility makes it easier to match real-world stops to the correct location, even when a vehicle parks slightly outside an existing geofence boundary.
Conclusion
Setting up geofences thoughtfully turns Verizon Connect Fleet Management Software & Solutions into an active monitoring system rather than a simple tracking map. Whether you build geofences directly from Live Map, organize them carefully through the Places tab, accept helpful suggestions, or upload dozens at once from a spreadsheet, each method serves a slightly different need. By pairing your geofences with well-configured alerts and reviewing activity regularly through reports, you gain reliable, near real-time visibility into the locations that matter most to your business, along with the historical data needed to confirm exactly what happened and when.
Frequently Asked Questions
You can create an unlimited number of geofences and modify them at any time through your account. For bulk uploads specifically, the Upload Geofences feature supports up to 300 geofences per file.
Check the Geofences to Correct section of the Places tab, which highlights geofences that are not capturing vehicle activity. Red dots on the map show where vehicles are actually parking, so you can expand the perimeter to include those areas and improve accuracy.
Yes. You can create a geofence directly from Live Map by selecting a vehicle’s current location, which builds the perimeter around that point automatically. Alternatively, when uploading geofences in bulk, you can use latitude and longitude coordinates instead of a written address.
