GPS Manager Client is designed to run behind the scenes. It's not supposed to need any user interaction or use that much of your computer's resources. However, sometimes the bits and bytes just don't match up and it runs into a problem that it can't solve. If you think that GPS Manager Client has ran into a problem, give me a call, send me an email, or tell us more about your problem on the GPS Manager forum.
Here's a little more information about how Manager Client works. Your vehicles have a GPS unit that collects data as it travels during the day. Once your vehicle gets close enough to the office, the unit sends its data wirelessly to the base station connected to your computer. Every two hours, the base station processes the data and converts it to a .GPS file. From there, Manager Client picks up the data and converts it to a standard XML format that all of our GPS applications understand. It will connect to the VPN at the main office, make sure that it can actually see the remote network, and then send the XML file to the server. Behind the scenes, a lot more than that is actually going on, but conceptually, it's really pretty simple. During these data transmissions and conversions, sometimes bad things happen. When these bad things happen, Manager Client will try to "fix" itself. Sometimes it will start the whole process over, sometimes it will see that there is just too much bad data, and give up on the file. Either way, we report these problems back to our computers. We have an application called PPExceptionHandler that will collect detailed information about any errors that are encountered and report that information back to us. We can then see what happened and make the application better.
Ideally, Manager Client will run so smoothly that you won't even know it is there :) If not, now you know a little bit more about how it works. Feel free to share your thoughts here on this blog, or on the GPS Manager forum.