HERE Drive+ - can I automatically route a remote phone?

[Eric Baines]

I hope you might be able to help me?

We want to get some of our staff to be routed to a particular location. We are considering using Windows 8.1 Phones (eg Nokia Lumia 635). These come with Here Drive+ which seems to provide the opportunity for providing a suitable Sat Nav type facility. However, we want to communicate the location (and preferably the type/description) of the location to the user's phones and for the Sat Nav function to automatically recognize this and undertake the necessary routing, preferably without the users doing anything

As an example, I was considering the possibility that we could send an automatic SMS text message to the phones and for a local app on the phone to recognize this as a message to route to, pass the location to the Here Drive+ application and for it to route.

There seemed to be several possibilities of the way this might work:-
1. It could be that there already is a mechanism to do this that I don't know about, but someone could advise me how to do it.
2. It could be that there is an API that would allow an app to be produced - either we could do it, or someone else could - could you advise if there is set of APIs to fire up Here Drive+, to achieve what I want to achieve?
3. As a possibility, I have seen that a URL can be produced to 'share' a route, which when accessed on a text message or email, Here maps is started on the phone to display the route. This is close to the requirement, although it would be better if it was automatic, it didn't require internet access and it used Here Drive+ to provide Sat Nav, rather than Here Maps.

I wonder if there is anything in my initial ramblings that makes you think you might be able to help me?

 

[Eric Baines]

At the risk of providing a very basic answer to my own question, I found a fairly rubbish approach:-

I sent the phone a text message. I think the coordinates and postcode is reasonably self explanatory, and it is not too difficult to imagine sending a text message with a URL in (sorry - can't post a URL as I haven't made 10 posts).

I don?t really know and understand the syntax of the Here URLs ? it is possible that understanding that a bit more might make it more automatic, intuitive, reliable and suitable.

When the phone receives the message, the recipient clicks on the link. This then fires up Here Maps, showing the route from the GPS location to the location specified in the link (at this point, sometimes an additional ?refresh? is needed).

They then have to scroll down and press Start Navigation. This fires up Here Drive+, which shows the route and offers 'Start'. The user clicks on that and the device routes, as required.

Hard work for the user, but it is conceivable that we have sent a basic text message (including a map reference) and the recipient phone has routed there, albeit with quite a lot of user intervention!