January 2026: trails and replay, and what a day's route can tell you
January 2026 added trails to the live map and a way to replay a device's day. What a route can settle, and why it is worth having.
Part 31 of 39 of Building TradeYoke, the story of how the platform was built, from January 2024 to today. Previous: December 2025: consent first, and tracking a team fairly. Next: February 2026: working with no signal, offline-first in practice. See every part on the build timeline.
Quick answer
Quick answer: Live monitoring in TradeYoke shows a trail behind each person sharing their location, and you can replay a device's trail to see the route it took. It helps settle questions such as when someone arrived, and it works for people, vehicles, jobs and customers shown on the same map. Live monitoring is part of the Ultimate plan.
Key takeaways
- A trail shows where a device has been, not just where it is now.
- Replay lets you watch a day's route back.
- It settles arrival-time questions with facts rather than memory.
- It is part of the Ultimate plan and only covers people who are sharing.
A dot is not enough
A live dot answers where someone is now. A day on a round raises other questions: when did they get to the second job, did they come by the main road, how long was the stop? January 2026 added trails to answer those.
What trails and replay do
- A trail behind each dot shows where the device has been.
- Replay lets you pick a device and watch its route back, in order.
- Everything on one map: people, plus vehicles, jobs and customers as places, so a route can be read against the stops it was meant to reach.
What it is for
The honest uses are mostly mundane. A customer says nobody came at ten; the trail shows the van was on the next street at five past. A job overran; the replay shows where the time went. Two jobs were swapped and the invoice needs to say which was done first. It turns an argument about memory into a look at the map, which is calmer for everyone.
What it is not for
It is not a way to micromanage. The consent and sharing rules from December still apply: trails exist only for people who have agreed to share, and who can switch it off. If you use trails, say so to your team and say what you use them for.
How long things are kept
The privacy policy sets out the retention periods for technical data. If you need to know exactly what is kept for how long, read the privacy policy rather than a blog post, because the policy is the document we are accountable for.
Next
February: the other side of the phone, working with no signal.
Questions people ask
Can I replay where a vehicle or person has been in TradeYoke?
Yes. Live monitoring shows trails and lets you replay a device's trail. It covers people who are sharing their location.
Which plan includes live monitoring?
Live monitoring is part of the Ultimate plan. See the pricing page for current details.
Try it on your own week
30 days of Essentials free, no card. Bring your customers and see it against a real week.
