How to Set Up a Speeding Rule and Email Alert in MyGeotab

To get a speeding email in MyGeotab, open the rules page from the main menu, add a rule, set a speed condition on the Conditions tab, then click Add email on the Notifications tab, choose a template and recipients, and save. From then on, every time a vehicle breaks the rule, MyGeotab records an event and sends the email.

MyGeotab already has a built-in Speeding rule in its Safety section. Geotab says the current version triggers when a vehicle exceeds the posted speed limit by 20% for more than 5 seconds, and that this threshold is not customizable. If your policy uses a different threshold, such as a set number of km/h over the limit or a hard ceiling for the whole fleet, build a custom rule. You can also add an email notification to the built-in rule through the envelope icon beside its name.

MyGeotab offers several speed conditions, and Geotab's advice is that a good custom rule usually has two or three conditions: a rule with one condition may trigger too many events, and one with five or six may never trigger. Geotab's rule conditions guide gives an example of a speeding violation as driving 10 km/h over the speed limit for more than 10 seconds, which combines a Speed limit condition with a Duration.

These steps follow Geotab's support articles on rule management, custom rules and rule notifications. Button names can differ slightly between MyGeotab versions, so each step describes the action rather than a button caption.

To email a whole group instead of one person, open the rule's Notifications tab and choose the option to email a group, then pick the group. Pick recipients from the dropdown list rather than typing addresses: Geotab warns that manually entered email addresses are treated as external and ignore data scope settings, so the recipient can receive events for vehicles outside their groups.

MyGeotab can also alert the driver in the cab. Driver feedback notifications include audio from the GO device, such as beeping three times, text messages to compatible devices, and spoken messages through an IOX-GOTALK where one is installed. Popup alerts inside MyGeotab and web requests to other systems are available too.

To control what the email says, open the notification templates from the rules page and add an email template. Write the subject, build the body from the available tokens (the vehicle, the speed, and the date and time of the event, for example), choose an event report to attach and click Save.

Start with the recipient's spam or junk folder, then reread the conditions. Geotab points out that an event only fires when every condition is met, so conditions that contradict each other, such as entering and leaving a zone at the same time, never trigger. If you expected alerts for last week's trips, remember that a new rule does not look back until you reprocess the data.

Watch for a warning on the Rules page. Geotab automatically archives rules that put too much load on the database after a set time if their conditions are not changed, and shows a banner when it does. Give each rule a distinct name too: MyGeotab allows duplicate names, but you cannot tell the rules apart on screen.

Any MyGeotab user with permission to edit rules can do it. High Point GPS, a Geotab partner, sets up rules and notifications as part of a MyGeotab deployment and adjusts them with your safety manager afterwards, so the right person gets the email for the right vehicles.