Trackers & teams
These are the two core concepts. A tracker is a device identity that sends location updates; a team is the group of people who can view and use those updates.
The two concepts
Tracker
A tracker represents one reporting device configuration. It has a short identifier (TID), an access token, and publishes location data to Drup Trails through the API endpoint.
- Use one tracker per physical device or use-case for cleaner history.
- The access token acts like a password for publishing reports.
- You can update the tracker identifier later if needed.
Team
A team is a collaboration boundary. Members can access data from trackers attached to the team, based on the team's permissions.
- Attach one tracker to multiple teams when sharing is intentional.
- Detach trackers to limit visibility without deleting the tracker.
- Keep team membership current to reduce unnecessary exposure of location data.
How they work together
- Create a tracker for the device.
- Assign the tracker to one or more teams.
- Configure OwnTracks using the generated config link.
- Location reports arrive and become visible to the teams that tracker belongs to.
Sharing is isolated at the broker level. Team membership determines who may receive location data — enforced by ACL rules in the MQTT broker itself, not just by application logic.
Tracker settings
Each tracker can be customized from its row menu on My trackers — select Edit to change any of the following.
Display name
An optional name shown on the map and throughout the app instead of the owning account's name. Useful when a tracker represents a vehicle or device rather than a person.
History & retention
Location history recording can be turned off entirely, or kept for a limited window — 30, 90, or 365 days, or unlimited. History older than the configured window is removed automatically every day.
Insights
Daily, monthly, and yearly movement summaries can be turned off for a tracker if you don't need the Insights page for it.
Teams
Add or remove the teams a tracker belongs to at any time to change who can see its location data.
The dashboard's activity heatmap greys out days that fall outside a tracker's retention window, so you can tell at a glance which history has already aged out.
Viewing history
The track viewer plots a tracker's raw location history on a map for a chosen date range. Switch between Points and Heatmap display modes, and use the quick presets (Today, This Week, This Month, Year to Date, and more) to jump to a date range without picking exact dates.