Getting Started
This help topic is intended to provide new and prospective users with a 'quick start' introduction to using the website, and includes helpful links to the other online help topics.
If you are a new user please also refer to the Installation and Operations manuals provided with your system - you can also download these, and other resources, from the downloads help page.
 Contents
Your Satamatics Hardware
The Satamatics equipment which is installed on each monitored unit includes an intelligent satellite terminal and antenna, and depending on the individual product purchased, may also include application-specific components including backup battery, panic alarm button, switches, cables and connectors.
Please refer to the Installation Manual for a detailed description, and full details of how to install, test and maintain your system.
Your airtime package
Your airtime is purchased on a per-terminal basis, and depending on the product, may either be on a pre-paid fixed term airtime package, or on a monthly billed tariff.
Depending on the product purchased, available features may include:
- Regular reports from your unit at pre-defined intervals, which may (optionally) be programmed over-air
- Exception reports from your unit as and when exception conditions occur (eg. panic alarm, excess speed, etc)
- Email notification of position reports and other status reports to a number of email addresses, as they happen
- SMS notification of alert conditions direct to your mobile phone, as they happen
- User Messaging - requesting current unit position and status reports from the website, via satellite
- Map View - view unit position and tracking history on a map
Please ask your dealer, or contact Satamatics for further information.
Registering your user account
To register your user account online you should go to the main login page, and click on the "New Users - Please Register for a user account" link.
This will take you to the New User Registration page, where you should enter your personal contact details, together with your email address (which will subsequently be used as your username when logging on to the website), and at this point you should also enter and re-type a new password, which you will need to remember as you will be required to provide it each time you login.
An email will then be automatically sent to you at the email address which you supplied as your username, for security validation purposes. Clicking on the appropriate link provided within the email, or pasting it into your browser address window, will then activate your new user account so that you can then login to the website.
(For more information on user registration and lost passwords, please refer to the login problems and lost password help topics.)
Completing your user account setup
Once you have registered your user account, when you first login you will be taken to the user setup page to complete your user account setup.
If you been invited to join another user's fleet, you will first be given the option of accepting or declining your invitations on this page. (If this is the case, then you will have received an email from another Satamatics user.)
Alternatively, if you have purchased your own Satamatics terminals, you can add your first terminal to your user account by clicking the add terminal button on this page.
(Once you have added your first terminal, if you wish to add more terminals, you should use the terminals page - see registering your terminals.)
Registering your terminals
Adding your first terminal to your account from the user setup page will complete your user account setup.
To do this, you will need to type in the three unique identification codes provided with your Satamatics unit:
- Enclosure Serial Number
- Satamatics SAT-xxx Terminal Serial Number
- Inmarsat Serial Number (ISN)
This information is provided on a card inside the unit packaging. (You will need to keep this information in a safe place as you may need it in the future).
If your terminal is standalone (ie. not within an enclosure), you should enter the Satamatics terminal serial number in the Enclosure Serial Number field.
You can also optionally enter a unit name and fleet name - although if you leave the fields blank at this stage you can specify them later via the fleet setup page.
After you have successfully registered your first terminal, the rest of the website main menu will appear. From this point you can either continue to register further terminals via the terminals page, or proceed to the fleet setup page to provide any further information about your unit ot fleet, or you can go straight to the alert setup page to setup your alert condition contact notification details.
You will need to register each of your Satamatics terminals online before you can monitor and track it via the website. You can return to the terminals page at any time to add further terminals to your account.
Accepting invitations to join existing fleets
If you have been invited to join an existing fleet managed by another user, the user setup page will list your invitations and give you the option of accepting or declining each invitation.
After you have accepted your first fleet invitation, the rest of the website main menu will appear. (If this does not happen then there may not be any active terminals in the fleet, so please contact the person who invited you - you can do this by replying to their invitation email.)
On accepting any fleet invitation, you will initially become a Viewer user. If the person who invited you wishes to grant you extra access privileges for the fleet (eg. to poll units, reset alerts, manage fleets and alert contact details, or manage other user accounts), then they will be able to do this by logging on to the website themselves, and changing your access level for their fleet, from the user setup menu.
Setting up your fleet and unit details
Each added terminal should now be given the appropriate identification information, and assigned to a fleet (if you have not already done this), via the fleet setup page.
As well being given a "Unit Name", each terminal can optionally be assigned a unique "Callsign", "Unit Registration" and/or "Unit Type" as required.
As far as the website is concerned, a "fleet" is just a collection of terminals with the same alert condition contact details, and the same fleet name. You can have as many fleets as you need, and as many (or as few) units in each fleet.
At any point in time a unit can only be in one fleet, and a fleet cannot include another fleet.
A unit can be moved between fleets by users with User Manager access privileges to both fleets, via the fleet setup page.
Users with User Manager access privileges to a fleet, can also move units from the fleet into a new fleet - this is one of the ways that a new fleet can be created.
Setting up your alert condition contact details
Use the alert setup page to set up your required contact details for each fleet.
The alert setup page is only available for product configurations which support SMS and Email notification.
You can provide up to 5 email addresses per fleet, where each email address can be given a specific condition level as follows:
- urgent - alert activation (highest level)
- cancel - alert cancellation
- alert - ongoing alert
- normal - daily position reports (lowest level)
The condition level set up for an individual nominated contact specifies the minimum condition level which you want that person to receive - ie. they will receive messages relating to the level you specify, plus all higher levels.
Nominated contacts will therefore be automatically notified by email when any of the above conditions are reported by any of the units in the fleet, according to the following rule :
| Level |
Action |
| urgent |
notify this user of any alert activations |
| cancel |
notify this user of alert cancellations and alert activations |
| alert |
notify this user of ongoing alerts, alert cancellations (cancel) and alert activations (urgent) |
| normal |
notify this user of ALL message types (ie. normal, alert, cancel, urgent). |
Units for which the optional SMS package is purchased, can have their alert activations and cancellations (levels urgent and cancel in the table above) sent automatically to up to 3 SMS numbers setup via the 'alert setup' page.
You can update your nominated alert condition contact details at any time via the alert setup page - the changes will be effective immediately and apply to all alert conditions detected from that point onwards.
For more details on setting up alert condition contact details please see the alert setup help topic.
Tracking your units
You can track each unit in your fleet via the tracking page. This will give a summary of each unit's last reported position report, together with the date & time at which the report was received, and its speed and course. (Units for which you have purchased the optional Map View subscription, can also be tracked on a map - see Viewing your unit position on a map.)
The table will also show whether the position reported was a valid global positioning system (GPS) fix. In the unlikely event that the system could not obtain a valid GPS fix, the words 'no fix' will appear in the GPS column, and the last position at which the terminal did have a valid GPS fix will be provided. The last valid GPS fix position is stored and constantly updated by the terminal between transmissions, so this position will still be more up to date than the last recorded position provided by the previous position report from the unit.
To view the tracking history of any individual unit, click on the unit name link in the summary table.
If you have at least Operator access to the fleet, and a polling package has been purchased for a unit, then you can poll the unit by clicking on the 'poll' button in the tracking summary table.
For more details on tracking and polling units please refer to the tracking online help topic.
Viewing your unit positions on a map
On the tracking page, all units for which the optional Map View subscription has been purchased (see Your Airtime Package) will have a small 'globe' icon  displayed in the left hand margin, next to the unit name. Clicking on the globe icon will display the latest reported position of the selected unit on a map.
To view the unit's tracking history from the Map View page, select the History pulldown and select either 'Last Day', 'Last 7 Days', 'Last 30 Days' or 'Last 90 Days'. (Note: if the unit has not transmitted a position report for some time, then some or all of these options may not be available.)
The unit's tracking history can also be viewed by clicking on the globe icon from the top of the Unit Tracking History page.
Other units within the selected unit's fleet can be viewed on the map by selecting 'All Units' from the 'Units' pulldown, or by selecting another unit name.
The map scale can be changed by selecting a different value from the Scale pulldown menu at the top right hand side of the map display except when displaying 'all units' or 'tracking history' views, when the map scale is fixed.
Other fleets can be selected from the 'Fleet' pulldown.
You can return from the Map View page to the rest of the website user interface by selecting the appropriate menu link from along the top of the page.
You can jump back to the selected unit's tracking history page, by clicking on the Tracking History link at the bottom of the left hand panel of the Map View page.
For more details please refer to the Map View online help topic.
Monitoring alert and warning conditions
If the last reported position report from any of your units was showing an alert or warning condition, then this status information will be shown in the tracking summary table, but each affected unit will also appear in the alerts or warnings summary pages as appropriate.
For more details please refer to the warnings and alerts online help topics.
Setting up more user accounts and user privileges
If you have created your own fleet(s) by registering your own terminals, then you will automatically have User Manager access rights to those fleets.
If, on the other hand, you have accepted an invitation to join someone else's fleet, you will have whatever access level has been granted to you by the person who invited you. (Note that when you accept the invitation you will be automatically granted the lowest level of access - Viewer - but this can then be changed by the person who invited you.)
If you have User Manager access level to one or more fleets, you can allow other people to view your fleets, and manage the set of user accounts which can access each fleet, via the user setup page.
The user setup page allows User Managers to:
- invite other users to join the fleet
- delete other users from the fleet (this prevents them from accessing this fleet, but does not remove their login)
- change other users' access levels for this fleet
Inviting a user to join one of your fleets, involves you selecting the fleet and entering their email address, by clicking on the appropriate 'invite user' button on the user setup page.
Invited users will be automatically sent an email on your behalf (and you will also receive a copy). If they are not already a Satamatics website user, they are given instructions in the email on how to register their own Satamatics user account. If they are an existing user, they are provided with a link to the user setup page in order that they can accept your invitation.
Note that User Managers do not actually have any control over other user accounts, other than controlling (including removing) their access to fleets which the User Manager is responsible for. For example, the User Manager cannot reset another user's password, or inhibit their login - users who forget their password must follow the lost password instructions on the website login page (see lost password.
For more details on user management please see the user setup help topic.
Login problems
The 'login' page is the main entry point to the website.
Almost all of the pages of the website - and some of the online help pages - require a valid user login.
If you are following a link which you have bookmarked previously, or you are browsing the online help pages and have come across a restricted page - or, if your current browser session expires or 'times out' after four hours - you will be asked to login. The only exception to this is if you have already logged in previously during the current browser session, and have not logged out or closed all browser windows in the meantime. (It is therefore important to log out from the website by clicking the 'logout' button, if you will be leaving your computer unattended).
Existing users can login by entering their username and password in the login form, and clicking on the 'secure log in' button.
New users can register for their own user account by clicking the register link on the login page - note however that most pages (including the restricted online help pages) also require that you have at least one Satamatics terminal registered to your user account. If you have a new terminal and wish to register it, please refer to the terminals section.
If you are an existing user and have forgotten your password - or, if you are a new user and have had an 'account not activated' error message - please see the Lost Password section below.
If your browser is not set up to allow session cookies, you will not be able to log in, and the system will output an explanatory error message 'your browser is not allowing session cookies'. Note that session cookies are not stored on disk, they remain in memory for the duration of the browser session, and are destroyed when the user logs out, or when the browser exits.
Depending on your browser settings (and the type of browser you are using), you may be asked for confirmation that it is ok to enter and then leave a secure page, and/or that the site security certificate is issued by a company which you have not chosen to trust. This is ok. You may wish to examine the certificate and install it on your system in order to avoid being prompted each time you log in.
Lost password
Users who have forgotten their passwords should click on the lost password link on the main website login page. An email will be automatically sent to their registered email address (ie. the email address they provided on registration, and which they user as their Satamatics username) containing an encoded link. Clicking on the link will take the user to a 'set password' page, which will allow them to specify a new password.
Important: The encoded links provided in new account validation emails and lost password emails, can only be used once, and must be used within 7 days, or they will automatically expire. In addition, they will be automatically invalidated if you attempt to log in before clicking on the link.
The lost password procedure described above should be used if a newly registered user has attempted to log into the website before they have clicked on the encoded link contained within their new account validation email. (In such circumstances they will get an 'account not activated' error message when they attempt to login).
Following the lost password procedure will send them another email with another encoded link - they should click on this link before attempting to log in again, since attempting to login before this is done will once again invalidate this link, and the process will need to be repeated yet again.
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