Trail Pro: Help for the iOS App

Welcome to the Trail Pro maintenance application. Here is some basic information:

This app is designed to make trail maintenance surveys and summaries easy to do. It allows quick and easy input of work issues, priorities, status, notes, estimated hours, images and locations. It provides for sharing of maintenance information with supervisors and other crew members. At the end of the survey process GPX, GeoJSON or CSV files can be exported with the results of the survey. Some definitions for terms used by this app:

Agency

An "Agency" is an organization that owns or has responsibility for managing or maintaining a Trail. It could be a governmental unit (e.g. USFS, BLM, State or County Park), a trail maintenance organization (e.g. Pacific Crest Trail Association) or a private landowner. Multiple Trails can be associated with an Agency.

Trail

A "Trail" is a footpath or road that is being surveyed and maintained. It has several specific properties or attributes. It has a Name and an Identifier (short name or nickname) and is located in some County, State and Country. It is managed by some Agency. It may be part of or located in some Area (e.g. a park, open space preserve, a wilderness). It may belong to a Group of trails (e.g. various segments of the Pacific Crest Trail). This application allows you to search for (via the Settings page) a collection of maintenance Reports based on these Trail properties.

Report

A "Report" describes a spot or waypoint on a trail where work needs to be done (e.g. erosion, tread repair, brushing, a blowdown). You can enter the type of work needed (e.g. erosion, tread repair, brushing, a blowdown), its priority (routine to urgent), status (e.g. Assigned, On Hold, Deferred, and more). You can enter a note with specifics about repairs or materials needed. An estimate of the time in hours needed or consumed for the repair can be entered. One or more photos can be attached to the Report. Each Report has a unique name which will be the waypoint name for the location of the work. Latitude and longitude for the Report are automatically entered for you. Some Reports are just informational, describing, for example, a junction, trailhead or parking area. A Report is associated with one and only one Trail.

Contact

A "Contact" is a person associated with an Agency or Trail (e.g. Maintenance Supervisor, Head Ranger, Land Owner, Volunteer Coordinator, etc.). The Contact list makes it easy to communicate with persons associated with your maintenance work.

Quick Start

Follow these steps for a quick start:

1. Click the "Register" menu and set the State and Country covering the area in which you will be working. State and Country are required fields. Entering your Name, Phone, E-Mail and User Id is optional and will be used in a future premium version of this app. Remember to press the "Save" button after each step.
2. In the "Agency Entry" menu enter the Agency controlling the Trails you wish to survey or maintain. This is a required step.
3. In the "Trail Entry" menu enter one or more Trails. Connect each Trail to an Agency. The Trail Name, State, Country and Agency are only required at this time. An explanation for the other fields is given below.
4. Go to the "Settings" menu and select the Trail and Agency you will be creating Reports for. The Waypoint Tag and Sequence will be used to name each Report.
5. Enter a Report and select the Issue and Status. Enter Note information if more details are needed. Take a Photo and it will be attached to the Report. You are now officially logging survey information. Save your Report. It will now appear on the Map and Review scenes.
6. Continue your survey and enter Reports as needed to describe the maintenance required.
7. The Map will show you all places that have been flagged. Clicking on a flag will show you its waypoint name and issue. Long-clicking on a waypoint information bubble will bring up the report for additional editing, for example, changing the priority or the status to completed. As you approach a reported location in the field its information bubble will become visible.
8. View the reports on the Map or on the Review list of items. Clicking on a Review list item will bring up that Report for editing.
9. When you have finished your survey Export your information as a GPX, GeoJSON or CSV file.

Congratulations! You are now using the Trail Pro app.

Tab Bar Functions

Map - Displays all waypoints selected by the Settings menu. Change the Settings to select only Reports of interest to you.

Review - Presents a list of Reports entered and selected. Click to edit any of these items.

Report - Allows for entry of a new Report on the trail selected in the Settings menu.

Settings - A set of preferences to fill in default values for data entry fields and a set of filters to select Reports to be displayed on the Map or in the Review list. See Trail Entry for a fuller explanation of Trail fields. The selected Agency is used as the default Agency for data entry and also filters Reports. The Waypoint Tag and Sequence are used to create Waypoint Names and the Sequence is incremented each time a new Report is entered. Waypoint Search is used to filter the Reports shown on the Map and Review list. Set the Search text to the prefix of the Waypoint Names you wish to display. The Map Type selects the type of map used in the Map scene.

Agency Entry - For entering or editing Agencies. An Agency name chosen in Settings will be used as the default Agency to edit and will help filter the Reports shown on the Map and Review list. The View button selects an Agency to edit.

Contact Entry - For entering or editing Contacts. The View button selects a Contact to edit.

Trail Entry - For entering or editing Trails. The View button selects a Trail to edit. Settings will specify a default Trail and other default values.

Register - User information. Selects the default State and Country of the user. Other entries are optional.

Export/Import - Export your information to the file system and share the files with your supervisor or crew members.

Help - Information on how to use this app.

Privacy Policy - A statement about use of any personal data collected by the app.

About - App date and revision.

More detailed information about this application:

This app is designed to hold hundreds of Reports for a large and diverse trail system managed by multiple Agencies. As a result, in order to focus on work for a single or small set of Trails there is a need to be able to specify what Reports will be shown on the Map or in the Review list. This is the function of the Settings menu. These entries facilitate the ability to select the set of trail Reports to show.

For a Report to show on the Map or Review scene it must meet all the criteria entered in Settings except for the "Not set" items. Settings is implemented as a logical AND condition of the entries. If you just want to see Reports for one trail, enter that trail name and you can leave everything else as "Not set". If you want to see all Reports for one Agency in a particular County, just set the Agency and County. If you enter a trail name and a trail group, but didn't know that the trail was not part of the group, those are disjoint sets and nothing will show.

• Trail Group - A tag for all trails related to each other as a group. For example, use "PCT" for all trail segments that are part of the Pacific Crest Trail, or "BART" for all trails that make up the Bay Area Ridge Trail.
• Trail Area - A tag for all trails in a specific area, typically a single park or open space district. For example, use "Windy Hill OSP" for all trails located in the Windy Hill Open Space Preserve or "Klamath" for all trails located in the Klamath National Forest.
• Trail County - The county in which the trail is located.
• Trail State - The state in which the trail is located.
• Trail Country - The country in which the trail is located.
• Agency Name - the Agency managing this trail.

Additional Notes

As the trail work is done a Report can be updated with new information (completed, deferred, hours taken, etc.). A final set of Reports can be exported as a CSV file and sent to the Agency or Contact as needed. Exported Report CSV files can be imported for use by the Trail Boss, Crew Leaders or Crew members.

This app does not require an internet connection to function (cellular coverage on many trails is often very poor). Google Maps for an area may be cached ahead of time for your work.

All files can be emailed from your phone (as attachments) to your email account. Clicking on the exported GPX file may launch some other GPS app you might have on our mobile (e.g. Gaia GPS). The GeoJSON file is perfect for input into CalTopo (https://caltopo.com) where you can make a Topo map of your work. Moving the CSV files to the iCloud Drive will allow you to work on the Reports with Numbers or LibreOffice.

Each item (Agency, Trail, Contact, Report, Image) has a unique UUID (a bit like a serial number) and is tagged with the UserId of the person who created it. The Identifier is a human readable version of the UUID. The time of creation and last modification is kept.

Technical Support and Feature Requests

Please send feature requests or report bugs to "trailproapp@gmail.com"