IndoorAtlas Dwell Time — Getting Started Guide

1. What Is Dwell Time in Indoor Positioning?

In indoor positioning, dwell time means the amount of time a person spends in a defined location.
IndoorAtlas Dwell Time analyzes your positioning data to calculate how long visitors stay in specific areas (geofences) inside your venue.

This insight can help you:

• Identify high-traffic areas and bottlenecks

• Measure engagement with specific zones or exhibits

• Support operational decisions such as staffing and layout changes
  
  

Dwell Time works entirely on IndoorAtlas’ backend, using positioning data generated by your application’s end-users or your own devices—no extra tracking hardware or app modifications are needed beyond an existing IndoorAtlas positioning deployment. DwellTime generates more accurate data when end-users' positioning sessions are long and continuous, either collected in foreground or background.

2. Prerequisites

To enable Dwell Time, you must:

• Have IndoorAtlas positioning active in your venue (SDK integrated and mapping completed).

• Be subscribed to a plan that includes Dwell Time.

• Coordinate with IndoorAtlas support to activate the service for your deployment.

3. Defining Geofences

Use the IndoorAtlas web portal to create geofences—these geofences are deployed alongside your signal map and the SDK monitors them natively, even offline. Steps include:

1. Navigate to the Geofences tab.

2. Click the “+” icon.

3. Draw your geofence area on the map.

4. Name it and save.

You can read more from Geofence guide

4. Activating Dwell Time with Support

Once geofences are defined in the web portal, get in touch with IndoorAtlas support to:

• Activate Dwell Time for your venue.

• If you have different types of geofences defined, confirm which geofences should be included in dwell time calculations.

5. Receiving Dwell Time Results (Currently Manual)

Dwell Time results are not yet accessible through an automated API or DASHBOARD. You'll need to:

1. Coordinate closely with IndoorAtlas support.

2. Agree on:

   • Format: The default and currently supported format is CSV. Other formats may be provided upon agreement with the customer. The default format can be used to calculate average dwell times and other interesting information. 
     The CSV file will typically include:

     • Geofence name or ID

     • Dwell time of the tracked device

     • Number of visits within the reporting period

   • Delivery Method: Email, shared drive, etc.

   • Frequency: One-off report, daily, weekly, monthly, as per your needs.

3. IndoorAtlas support will then retrieve and deliver the processed dwell time data for your defined geofences based on your agreement.

6. Quick Reference Table