Frequently asked questions

Yes. Sentinel saves your data locally and syncs automatically when you're back online.

From 2 volunteers to 50 employees. The offering adapts to your needs.

Absolutely. Hosted in Canada, end-to-end encryption, and compliant with Canadian standards.

Yes, in PDF or Excel, with timestamped and geolocated photos.

Organizations that maintain trails: network managers, outdoor centers, bike centers, resorts, sport clubs and municipalities. Among them, Stowe Trails Partnership and Slate Valley Trails in Vermont, Copper Harbor Trails in Michigan, Sentiers du Moulin, Mont-Sainte-Anne and Contact Nature in Quebec, and Val d'Isère in France. The full list is on the customers page.

Trails are the core of the product, but the model — geolocated tasks, inspected structures, projects, checklists — applies to any outdoor territory that needs upkeep. Contact Nature, a conservation organization in Quebec, uses it for its hiking, snowshoeing and cross-country ski trails, but also for its ice fishing villages and the 92 fishing pools of a salmon river. Same tasks, same infrastructure inspections, same quality controls, on different objects.

Yes. Trail Sentinel is used in Canada, in the United States — including Vermont and Michigan — and in Europe, with Val d'Isère in France. The interface is available in English and French.

Yes. ATV (quad) and snowmobile are two of Trail Sentinel's eleven activities, alongside mountain bike, hiking and cross-country skiing. A motorized club tracks its ruts, culverts, drainage and signage the same way a bike club tracks its trails — on the same map, with the same field app that works without coverage. Off-highway vehicle (OHV) networks are managed the same way.

Yes. Sentinel shows your whole network on one interactive map, with every task and structure geolocated. The map works on web, iOS and Android, and stays usable offline in the field.

A map of the full network, geolocation of tasks and structures, an offline mode for the field, and exportable reports for partners and grants. Sentinel brings these together in a single web and mobile platform.

A point marker (a fallen tree, a broken sign) or a segment over a distance (eroded zone, drainage to redo). Both formats cover the vast majority of maintenance issues.

Yes. A task can be assigned to an individual or a group, depending on your organization.

It stays in the trail's history, viewable at any time. Useful for proving maintenance was done, or for detecting a recurring problem at the same spot.

Yes. You can create tasks, take photos and document without any cellular network. Everything syncs automatically as soon as signal returns.

Any permanent physical infrastructure on your network: bridges, walkways, stairs, lookouts, signs, tables, benches, shelters. You choose the types that apply to you and can add more.

Yes. You build your questionnaires from the web dashboard: free text, multiple choice, checkboxes, photos, severity levels. You can have a different form per structure type, or a universal form.

No. You can also do a free-form inspection: a few notes, a few photos, and it's in the file. The form provides structure when useful, the free-form inspection gets the job done when it's not.

Yes. Your logo appears on the PDF produced. It's ready to use for your partners, insurers, grant applications — no rework in Word needed.

No limit. You can have one project per worksite, one per season, one per grant — all at the same time.

No. Each task belongs to one project at a time, to keep progress clear. You can move it from one project to another if needed.

For now, Sentinel focuses on progress (tasks done versus total tasks) and time invested. Dollar-based budget tracking is not yet integrated — we're working on the next version.

No. The discussion stays attached to the task, even closed. You can still browse it from history — photos, audio and text included. Perfect for audits or lessons learned.

Yes, if their role allows it. You stay in control: a volunteer can take part in the discussions of tasks assigned to them, but not in projects they're not attached to.

Because an external chat isn't tied to anything. Six months later, finding a specific message about a fallen tree takes an hour. In Sentinel, you open the task and the whole conversation is there, with photos and context.

Yes. You create as many boards as activities — mountain biking, hiking, cross-country skiing, fatbike. Within each board, you group your trails by type or level using folders (enduro, cross-country, flow trail, for example). It's your network, your structure.

Three simple statuses: Open (trail rideable), Work in progress (active maintenance, with optional location) and Closed (inaccessible). You can also apply a status to an entire folder in one move — handy at season start and end.

When a crew member sets a task to "In progress" on a trail, the app offers to flip the trail condition to "Work in progress". One tap, and your visitors see the update, with the work location pinpointed on the trail. When the task is completed, the app can also suggest reopening the trail. You stay in control, the app handles the reminders.

You copy two HTML tags generated by Sentinel and paste them on any page of your site — WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, custom code. The widget shows up, updates automatically, and you can customize it: header colors, language (French or English), map display, shadows, rounded corners. No API to manage. And on platforms that block external scripts (SharePoint, strict-security intranets), an iframe version embeds with a single link.

To run the same series of checks across several trails at once: season opening, periodic inspection, brush clearing, grooming, closing. You write the list once, pick the trails, and Sentinel creates one checklist per trail. You then follow the whole network's progress on a single screen, instead of a shared file nobody opens in the field.

No. A template is a convenience, not a requirement: it saves you retyping the same list every season. If you don't have one yet, you type the items straight into the creation wizard. You can keep several named templates side by side — one per kind of operation.

Yes. You set a frequency — weekly, monthly or yearly — and the next copy is created on the scheduled date, with the same items and the same trails. You decide when the repetition stops: never, on a date, or after a number of occurrences. It is built for recurring rounds: culvert checks, signage verification, weekly network sweeps.

Yes, and that is the normal setup. Each activity is a watertight partition: its trails, tasks, structures, types and condition board belong to it alone. A club that maintains bike trails in summer and snowmobile trails in winter switches on both activities and moves between them — the summer map never shows the winter routes, and the analytics never mix the two seasons.

As many as you want. There's no limit on the number of members in Sentinel — invite your entire team, your volunteers, your partners and your contractors with no extra per-user fees.

Yes. A technician can work for two different clubs with the same Sentinel account. They switch between networks directly from the app, without having to log in again.

Invite them with a limited role for the season. At the end, you simply disable their access. Their contribution stays in the network history — photos, reports, time invested.

Give them a Viewer role on the activities that concern them. They see what they need to see, nothing more. Perfect for transparency without risk of error.

Yes. The "Checklists" role has four levels: no access, view, view with the right to tick, and full management. A seasonal volunteer can tick their round without being able to create, duplicate or delete a checklist. Managing templates is a separate permission, kept for administrators.

Yes, and it is a common setup. Roles and permissions decide what each person sees and can change: a seasonal volunteer can view and complete their tasks without reaching network administration. Stowe Trails Partnership, in Vermont, uses it for exactly that — easing communication between volunteers and staff around trail projects. Contact Nature goes one step further and shares access with certain active users who work directly alongside its teams in the field, on top of its employees and volunteers.

Modern smartphones provide GPS accuracy within 3-5 meters under open sky conditions. In dense forest, accuracy may decrease to 10-15 meters, but that's still precise enough to locate any trail feature. Sentinel also lets you fine-tune the pin location manually if needed.

Sentinel uses smart GPS management. Location is only captured when you create or view a task, not continuously. This means minimal battery impact — you can work a full day in the field without worrying about your phone dying.

Absolutely. GPS works independently of cell service. You can create GPS-tagged tasks anywhere, and they'll sync to your team when you're back in coverage. Pre-load your trail maps before heading out for the best experience.

Yes. Sentinel supports GPX file imports, so you can bring in your existing trail network data. You can also export your task data for use in GIS applications or reports.

Days, even weeks. As long as you don't reinstall the app, the data stays on your phone and syncs on the next connection.

No. The app is optimized to use GPS only when needed — when creating a task or viewing a specific point, never continuously in the background. Battery consumption stays very low, even during a full day in the field.

Yes, both. Same features, same performance. Download from the App Store and the Google Play Store.

Yes. The mobile app keeps campaigns, trails and items readable offline. A tick made without coverage shows up immediately and goes into the sync queue; it is replayed as soon as the connection is back. Nobody has to jot anything on paper to re-enter it later.

The corridor is wider, damage shows up as ruts and surface erosion rather than exposed roots, and built works — culverts, bridges, gates, regulatory signage — take a bigger share of the budget. In Trail Sentinel that means segment tasks rather than point markers for drainage and grading, a structure inventory with its inspection history, and exportable reports for landowners and grant applications.

PDF (formatted reports), Excel (raw data), CSV (for external analysis). Photos can also be exported as an archive for your presentations.

Yes. You choose the period, the trails, the task types, the team members. The report adapts to what you want to demonstrate.

As long as your account is active, everything is kept. If you cancel, we keep your data for 90 days to allow a reactivation or a complete export.