In short
Drawing a zone takes about a minute. Testing it properly takes about twenty, and skipping that is how sites go live rejecting the visitors they were built for.
This page covers both, with a testing routine you can actually follow on site rather than a vague instruction to try it and see.
On this page
Decide the shape before you draw
Two decisions made before you touch the map save most of the trouble later.
How many zones? An item can carry several, each tested in turn until one admits the visitor. So the answer to an awkward site is usually more simple shapes, not one elaborate one. A conference with a main hall, two breakout rooms across a courtyard and a rooftop terrace is four rectangles, not one polygon threaded around the courtyard.
How tight? Ask what the failure you fear actually is. If it is somebody at home using content meant for the venue, a generous zone covering the whole building and its forecourt does the job and rejects nobody. If it is a person at the next stand along using your content, you need a point with a small radius and you should expect to fight accuracy for it.
Drawing a zone
Zones live on the item they gate. Open the item in the Linxy Designer, go to its geofence panel, and draw there.
- Name it for the place, not the campaign.Zones are reusable across items and outlive campaigns. "Hall 2, east entrance" will still make sense next year; "Spring launch zone" will not.
- Place at least three corners.Three is the minimum a polygon can have. Four to six is right for most buildings. Do not trace every architectural detail — the buffer makes that precision meaningless.
- Set the buffer.Leave the GPS Buffer at its default of about 80 feet unless you have a reason. This is the tolerance added outside your drawn edge, and it is what absorbs the wander in a phone's reported position.
- Write the deny message.Do this now rather than later. Someone will see it today if you get the shape wrong.
- Set a fallback destination.Where should a person outside the area go instead? A dead end here is a self-inflicted support ticket.
- Save.The zone is created, attached to the item you were working on, and the item is switched to geofenced in the same step. It is live from that moment — so draw generously first and tighten after testing, rather than the other way round.
Every setting on a zone
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Name | — | Required. How the zone appears in your library and in the presence view |
| Shape | — | Required, three corners minimum. Overlapping zones are fine |
| GPS Buffer | About 80 feet | Tolerance added outside the drawn edge before the inside/outside test runs |
| Deny message | Generic | Shown to anyone the gate turns away, including people who refused the location prompt |
| Fallback destination | Empty | Optional. Offered to a rejected visitor instead of leaving them stranded |
| Require GPS | On | Insists on a device position rather than accepting a coarser estimate. Leave on for anything where the area is small |
| Allow recheck | On | Lets a rejected visitor try again without starting over — the right behavior for someone who tapped "Don't allow" by reflex and then thought better of it |
| Active | On | Switches the zone off without deleting it. An inactive zone is skipped entirely during testing |
Attaching, detaching and the library
Zones belong to your account, not to a single item. Once a zone exists, you can attach it to any other item without redrawing it — which is the whole reason to name them after places.
- Attach an existing zone to an item and that item starts gating on it. One zone can gate a hundred items.
- Detach and the item stops using that zone. The zone itself is untouched and still in use elsewhere.
- Delete and it is gone from every item that used it. Check what else is attached before you delete a zone that is a year old.
The practical pattern for a venue you use repeatedly: draw the zones once, name them properly, and thereafter attach rather than draw. Your zone library becomes an asset.
When a point is the better answer
A point is a coordinate and a Proximity Radius, defaulting to about 30 feet, kept in a separate point library where it can carry a category. Reach for one when the thing you are gating is an object rather than a space — a plaque, a stand, a piece in a collection, a door.
Points are attached and detached exactly like zones, and an item can mix both. The trade-off is honest: a point is tighter, and tighter means more sensitive to the accuracy problems that geofencing already has. A 30-foot radius indoors will reject people who are standing right in front of the object.
Testing it properly
This is the section worth the time. A zone that has only been tested once, outdoors, on a good phone, by the person who drew it, has not been tested.
Run the five positions above, and then repeat the important ones under these variations:
| Variation | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Indoors, away from windows | Accuracy degrades badly and this is where your visitors will be standing |
| A cheaper Android handset | Position accuracy varies enormously across devices; your own phone is not representative |
| Browser as well as the Linxy App | Two different permission flows, and a visitor without the App is the common case |
| A signed-out visitor | As the owner you may never meet the gate the way a stranger does |
| Permission previously denied | Once a person has refused, some browsers will not ask again — check that recheck behaves as you expect |
| Left the area with content open | Confirms the session behaves as you want when somebody walks out mid-visit |
Watching who is inside
Each geofenced item has a live presence view: the visitors currently inside a zone, rather than everyone who has ever opened it. Presence is maintained by a quiet heartbeat while content is open, and someone stops counting as present roughly two minutes after those heartbeats stop.
Two things this is good for. During an event it tells you whether the touchpoint is being used where you thought it would be. During testing it is the fastest confirmation that a pass really was a pass — you should see yourself appear.
Feeding location from your own system
Each geofenced item can issue API keys, which let your own software ask about zones and report positions instead of relying on a visitor's browser. This is the route for kiosks, fixed installations, and hardware that knows where it is.
Keys are generated and revoked per item. Revoke rather than delete an integration you are unsure about, and remember that a key is a credential — anything holding one can assert a position, so treat it accordingly.
Symptoms, causes and fixes
| Symptom | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Anyone can open it, even far outside the area | Every zone on the item is switched off or detached, so it is no longer fenced | Switch a zone back on or attach one. The gate returns at once |
| Rejected while clearly inside | Buffer too tight for the accuracy the device is reporting | Raise the buffer, or convert a small point into a zone |
| Works outdoors at the entrance, fails inside | Indoor accuracy — the classic failure | Widen the zone to cover the whole footprint plus surroundings, and raise the buffer |
| Works on your phone, fails on a colleague's | Device-to-device accuracy variation | Test on the worst handset you can find and size the zone for that |
| Some visitors never see a location prompt at all | They previously refused, and the browser is not asking again | Ensure recheck is on, and say so in your deny message |
| Deny message is generic, not the one you wrote | Several zones attached and the matching one has no message set | Set the same message and fallback on every zone attached to an item |
| Rejections start suddenly during an event | Rate limit from repeated attempts, or a zone was edited | Check the zone's edit history against the time the reports started |
| Presence view is empty although people are scanning | They are opening and leaving quickly, so heartbeats stop | Expected — presence shows current, not cumulative. Use interaction data for totals |
Things people commonly get wrong
Related reading: Geofencing: making a touchpoint work only in one place, Why it says you are outside the area, Mark settings, and Redirection controls.