SkieCan I request a fresh location from a device right now?
Yes. Press the locate action on a device and Skie asks that device for a new position straight away, instead of showing the last reported one. If the device is online, the new pin and its time appear on the dashboard. If it is offline, the request cannot reach it and you will see a reason.
Normally a device reports its position in the background on its own schedule. That is enough for daily oversight, but there are moments when the last pin is not good enough: a student has not come back to the hostel, a delivery tablet has gone quiet, or a device has just been reported missing.
The locate action on a device asks it for a fresh reading immediately. The device wakes its background service, gets a position and sends it up. The dashboard then replaces the old pin with the new one and updates the last-seen time, so you can tell at a glance that the reading is new.
The request depends on the device being reachable. A tablet that is switched off, out of battery, without Wi-Fi or mobile data, or far from any signal cannot answer. In that case the dashboard tells you the locate did not complete and gives a reason, covered in why a locate request fails. The older pin stays on the map with its original time, so you never mistake it for a live one.
Skie does not state an accuracy figure for locations. Readings tend to be better outdoors than deep inside a building, and that is true of any Android device.
Practical tip: if a locate fails, check the last-seen time first. A device seen a minute ago that does not answer is a different problem from one that has been silent since yesterday. For a device you believe is lost, move on to lost mode.