Guide to Recording and Logging Journeys

One-Time Baseline Setup

The Immutable Team Selection

To preserve competitive integrity under our privacy rules, you are automatically locked to your assigned team. The team selection dropdown menu on the form is locked and set automatically, ensuring your journey entries are correctly logged to your own roster.

Minimum Required for an AI Lookup

To successfully trigger an automated timetable lookup, your journey entry must include these baseline selections before you format your description:

• Transit Mode: Select the exact category matching your travel (train, bus, flight, ferry, car, or other).
• Journey Date: Pick the correct calendar day for the departure.
• Time Focus: When entering date and time fields, the form will automatically default inputs to your selected Journey Date when focused to help speed up manual adjustments.

Transport Modes and System Behaviour

The application handles a variety of transit modes across the core logging forms. The platform automatically adapts how it finds your journey based on the transport type selected:

• Rail (train, subway, metro, tram): The app searches national transit databases to find your exact train. It handles local accents seamlessly. For journeys within Great Britain or Austria, it connects directly to live national rail systems to fetch exact timetables and platform stops.
• Road Transit (bus, coach, taxi, car): The app checks regional timetables like Flixbus or local bus networks. If an exact match isn't found locally, it uses a global transit database to map your journey between stops.
• Aviation (flight) & Maritime (ferry): The app uses smart web searches to map airport and ferry terminal locations and extract flight or ferry schedules automatically.
• Pedestrian (walk): Walking routes don't require timetables or tickets. Instead, just specify a time window, and the app will automatically trace your walking path by using the GPS locations saved inside the photos your team took during that time.

Optimising Descriptions for Best AI Performance

The AI transit discovery engine matches your human-readable descriptions against millions of official schedule pairs and European transit networks. Providing vague or ambiguous descriptions causes lookups to fail or drop down to basic straight-line map vectors.

To achieve high-fidelity tracking, structure your journey descriptions using the following three performance-boosting rules:

Rule 1: Specify the Official Operator

Always include the name of the operating transit company (e.g., write "SNCF", "Deutsche Bahn", "Eurostar", "FlixBus", or "ÖBB").

Why this helps: Specifying the operator allows the search engine to bypass global lookups and query localised national rail and coach data directly, vastly speeding up execution times and ensuring precise timetable correlation.

Rule 2: Name the Exact Departure and Arrival Stations

If a town has multiple transport hubs or terminal stations, do not simply write the city name. State the precise station names clearly (e.g., write "London St Pancras International" instead of just "London", or "Paris Gare de Lyon" instead of "Paris").

Why this helps: The mapping system converts station text into physical coordinates. Clear station names prevent the system from accidentally dropping coordinates into generic city centres or selecting the wrong platform layout.

Rule 3: Provide Exact Times and Service Numbers

Include your official scheduled departure time and your train or bus service number if it is printed on your ticket (e.g., "Train 9022 departing at 09:28").

Why this helps: If your logged time closely matches an official schedule, the index engine aggressively short-circuits evaluation loops to return a perfect match instantly. It also helps the system anchor regional timezones accurately across international borders.

Locking Intermediate Stops

You have the option to manually "lock" intermediate stations or stops on your journey.

What Happens When a Stop is Locked

When you lock a stop, it prevents the automated systems from moving, renaming, or overriding the exact location you have set.

Why You Might Use It

• Protecting Manual Map Pins: If you manually drop a pin on an exact address or train platform, locking it ensures the system won't accidentally reset it to the middle of the city.
• Securing International Station Names: When dealing with tricky local accents or international station names, locking the stop ensures it stays correctly matched.
• Keeping Important Photo Stops: For walking routes, the map sometimes simplifies the path. Locking a stop ensures a specific point of interest or photo location is always kept visible on the map.