Business Central Live Delivery Tracking

What Business Central shows about a delivery today

Business Central covers the order and shipment-status view well, including the parcel-carrier handoff. The gap shows up when delivery is on your own fleet and the end customer wants to see where the truck is right now.

• Business Central customer self-service portal. Business Central’s standard customer portal. End customers log in to see open orders, shipment status (created, picked, packed, shipped, delivered), invoice history, and support cases.
• Business Central shipping agent setup carrier tracking. Once a shipment is handed to a parcel carrier and a label is generated, the tracking number flows into Business Central and the customer can click through to UPS, FedEx, DHL or USPS to see the parcel’s status.
• Storefront order tracking. Storefront shows the order’s shipment status and any carrier tracking number.
• Shipment status update vian BC extension. Operations teams can fire BC event subscribers when a fulfillment record updates, including sending an email or SMS to the customer.

All of that is shipment-status visibility, driven by warehouse milestones or parcel-carrier feeds. It is not live own-fleet driver GPS.

What live delivery tracking actually means

For own-fleet operations, the customer-facing tracking experience that drives repeat orders and reduces support load looks like this:

• Live driver GPS on a map. The customer sees where the truck is right now and what stop number they are on the route.
• Real-time ETA. Recalculated as the driver moves and as the plan changes; not a static morning estimate that’s out of date by lunchtime.
• Driver name and contact. Customer knows who’s coming and can call if access changes.
• Branded. The page carries the operator’s branding (logo, colors, layout), not a generic delivery widget. Multi-brand support for operators running multiple consumer brands.
• Embedded content. NPS micro-survey at the end. Safety briefings before a hazmat delivery. Access codes for a gated community. Care instructions for a piece of equipment.
• Self-service rescheduling. If the customer can’t take the delivery, the page offers a route-aware reschedule that already fits the optimized plan.

This is a separate surface from the warehouse-driven shipment-status view Business Central ships natively. The two complement each other.

Where Business Central users land today

Three patterns are common before a live-tracking layer is added.

• Customer support absorbs the “where’s my order” calls. The customer phones in. The CSR opens Business Central, sees a shipment status from yesterday, calls the driver, calls back the customer. Cycle time per call: 4 to 8 minutes. Aggregate cost at scale: significant.
• Generic SMS templates. Driver sends a manual SMS at start of day with an estimated window. No live tracking, no map, no self-reschedule. Works until a customer asks a follow-up.
• Third-party tracking widget, no eLogii. A basic tracking widget is bolted onto the storefront, but it has no real connection to the live driver position or to the optimized plan. The ETA is a guess.

The fix is a tracking page driven by the same live GPS and route data the dispatcher is looking at, branded to match the operator, surfaced wherever the customer expects to find it.

How eLogii’s live tracking works

The driver app streams GPS as the driver moves. eLogii recalculates ETAs continuously as drivers progress and as the plan changes. The customer-facing tracking page shows the live state.

• Live driver GPS stream. From the driver app to eLogii in real time.
• Real-time ETA. Recalculated against the current plan and current driver position.
• Branded tracking pages. Configurable logo, colors and layout per brand. Multi-brand support for operators running several consumer brands from one fleet.
• Embedded content. NPS, safety briefings, access codes, care instructions, treatment notes – configured per task type or per customer segment.
• Self-service rescheduling. Customer can pick a route-aware slot if they can’t take the delivery. Around 70% of reschedule requests get handled without coordinator involvement.
• Notification triggers. SMS or email when the driver is N minutes out, when arrival is imminent, when the delivery is complete.

How live tracking fits with Business Central

The customer-facing tracking page is served by eLogii. Business Central remains the system of record. Three integration shapes are common, and the choice depends on where you want the customer to land.

1. SMS / email link. Customer gets a link via SMS or email at key moments (booked, driver en route, N minutes out). Link opens the eLogii tracking page directly. Simplest integration; no Business Central customer self-service portal work required.
2. Embedded in Business Central customer self-service portal. The eLogii tracking page embeds via iframe in the standard Business Central customer self-service portal, so customers logging in to check an order see the live tracking inside their familiar portal.
3. Embedded in your storefront. Same iframe pattern but inside the your e-commerce storefront on the order details page.
4. Webhooks into Business Central. If you want Business Central to record key milestones (driver dispatched, arrival imminent, delivered) on a custom record or on Posted Sales Shipment, the eLogii Driver/Task Tracking Update webhook feeds the integration layer and an BC event subscriber writes the state to Business Central.

The first three are display-side: where the customer sees the page. The fourth is data-side: where the live state lands in Business Central. They are independent; pick the combination that matches your workflow.

Frequently asked questions

Does Business Central have live delivery tracking?

Business Central customer self-service portal shows order and shipment status (created, picked, packed, shipped) and surfaces parcel-carrier tracking from the Business Central shipping agent setup (UPS, FedEx, DHL, USPS). That works for parcel handoff. It does not surface live driver GPS for own-fleet deliveries, real-time route ETAs based on the current route plan, or branded customer-facing tracking pages with embedded content like NPS, safety briefings or access codes.

Why doesn’t Business Central show live ETAs for own-fleet deliveries?

Because Business Central was not built to be a routing or telematics layer. The shipment status in Business Central comes from the carrier (for parcel) or from a manual shipment confirmation (for own fleet). There is no real-time driver-location feed feeding the customer-facing surface, because the routing layer that would generate that feed lives outside core Business Central.

How does eLogii’s live tracking work?

The eLogii driver app streams live GPS coordinates as the driver moves. eLogii recalculates route ETAs in real time as drivers progress and as the plan changes. Customer-facing tracking pages, branded per customer, show the live map, the next-stop ETA, the driver name and contact, and any embedded content the operator configured (NPS, access codes, safety briefings, treatment notes). Pages can be embedded in Business Central customer self-service portal or your e-commerce storefront via iframe, or sent to end customers via SMS / email links.

How is live driver GPS streamed to Business Central?

Via webhooks. eLogii’s Driver/Task Tracking Update webhook fires with live driver coordinates and updated ETAs; the integration layer can route those events to Business Central (typically as a custom record write or an BC event subscriber), to your own dispatch screens, or directly to a customer-facing endpoint. No polling, no cron jobs, no manual sync.

Can the tracking page be branded per customer?

Yes. Multi-brand tracking is supported. Run three brands from one dispatch desk, each with its own logo, colors, layout and embedded content. Useful for operators running multiple consumer brands off a single Business Central tenant and a single own fleet.