FriendsBeta

Friends is where you ride with people you know, so a route, a Garmin map or your position goes to named riders rather than to everyone on INVIA.

It covers three screens: the Friends page, the Groups page behind it, and the Tracking tab on your own profile, which is where satellite feeds and location shares live.

Finding riders#

Find riders opens the search panel, and typing part of a name or username lists riders as you type, so you can add someone from the name they ride under. Your own profile is left out of the results. Pressing a result row opens that rider's public profile, and the control on the right of the row tells you where the two of you stand.

Requests you have received are gathered under Requests · {n} and the ones you sent under Sent · {n}, so you can work through a backlog without searching for each rider by name. Declining takes the row off the list and leaves the rest of the page as it was. The two of you go back to having no connection, so the row leaves your Requests list, it leaves that rider's Sent list, and their control on your row reads Add again. Either of you can ask again straight away, and a fresh request arrives like any other. Declining is not the same as blocking, which is its own action with its own list. Blocked · {n} lists the riders you have blocked, and pressing Unblock takes a row away, because the block is what put it there.

Until a request is accepted the crew area reads No friends yet and points you at Find riders, which means an empty page is nobody having accepted yet rather than something failing.

The Wall and the Map#

Two tabs sit over the crew area once you have at least one accepted friend, which is why a new account sees suggestions and no tabs.

Wall is the view you land on, and each friend gets a card carrying their name, their home town when they set one, their public ride count and their riding days this year. A friend who has not ridden this year reads a dash in place of the day count. A friend with nothing public reads No public rides yet, so a thin card is a quiet rider rather than a broken one. A friend out riding now carries a Riding badge. Press a card to open that rider's public profile.

Map draws every friend's public rides on one map with one color per rider, so you can see whose riding overlaps yours before you plan a day together. Click a name in the sidebar to focus that rider, which dims the other lines and fits the map to their rides, and click the name again to bring everyone back. Double-click a name to open that rider's profile instead. Layers switches the basemap between Hybrid, Streets, Satellite, Outdoors, Dark, Nav Night and USGS Topo, and the map opens on Outdoors.

Riders INVIA suggests#

Discover riders sits below the crew area in both views and groups its suggestions by where the connection comes from, so you can judge a stranger before you ask.

Press the add icon on a card to send that rider a request, and the card leaves all three lists for Sent, so a rider you have asked stops being suggested. An account with nothing to suggest reads No suggestions yet, and the lists fill in as your connections build.

Groups#

Groups opens your riding groups, and the button carries a count of the groups you belong to. A group is a shared board where members drop routes, rides, collections and built Garmin maps, so a riding group plans from one page instead of mailing files to each other.

1. Press Groups.
2. Press New group.
3. Type a name and press Create.

Creating a group makes you its admin and puts you in it as a member at the same time, which is why your own group card is badged Admin rather than Member. The admin controls are in place from the first open, so nothing else has to happen before you can rename the group, add a friend or copy the invite code.

To join a group somebody else made, paste their code into Join by invite code and press Join. A code that no longer works reads Invalid code and joins nothing, so ask that group's admin for the current link.

Each shared route card carries Send, Import and Collection, and the bar above the board adds Send all to device and Grab all, so a whole board moves in one press. Send, Send all to device and Send to Garmin stay dimmed until a Garmin is connected on the Device tab, because those files go over the cable rather than through the group. Connect the Garmin first and the buttons come back, and the rest of the board keeps working while no device is connected.

Import and Grab all copy shared items into your own library, and a card you have taken reads In library, so you can see what is already yours. Clear all for an admin and Remove mine for a member both ask you to confirm first. They un-share rather than delete, so every route stays in the library of the rider who shared it.

Share a route, ride, or collection opens your library filtered by All, Routes, Rides and Collections. Each type lists 40 items at most and says so when you have more, so type into Search your library to reach an item further down.

Share a Garmin map from your library puts one of your saved map designs on the board, and a design you have already built shares straight away because the built files exist. Building a new one needs the map builder, so a design that has never been built cannot be shared while the builder is offline, and the picker says so. A shared map card carries its size, its file count, Send to Garmin, and an IMG or GPX download for each built file.

Add friend adds only riders who are already your accepted friends, which is why the Invite code exists for everyone else. Anyone holding that code can join, so Regenerate is how you shut an old code out, and the riders already in the group stay in it. Press Copy link afterwards to send the new one.

Leave group takes you out on the spot without asking, so rejoin with the invite code if you press it by mistake. Delete group asks you to confirm, because it takes the group away from every member at once.

The Tracking tab#

Your own profile carries a Tracking tab, which opens Live Tracking: a map of everyone you can currently see, with a sidebar listing them.

1. Open the Profile tab.
2. Press Tracking.

On the web your own position reaches that map from a satellite tracker, a SPOT or a Garmin inReach. Sharing your position as you ride is part of the INVIA app rather than the browser, so on the web a tracker is how your dot reaches the map. Until you register a tracker the page reads Share your location and says friends cannot see you, and Share my location with… stays dimmed. Press Add a SPOT or Garmin inReach to reach the tracker section, and the rest of the tab keeps working, so you can watch the friends who share with you in the meantime.

1. Press Add beside My trackers.
2. Choose SPOT or inReach.
3. Paste the share link or feed id from that account.
4. Give it a name, then press Add tracker.

INVIA pulls the last 30 days of that feed as soon as it is added, so a trail is drawn before the next fix arrives. New fixes follow every few minutes, because that is how often SPOT and inReach publish them.

Sharing with you lists the friends sharing their position with you, and My trackers lists the feeds you watch. Every row reads how long ago the last fix landed and how fast that rider was moving, so you can tell a stopped rider from a moving one. A fix older than 20 minutes is marked stale in amber and its marker turns grey, so a quiet row is a tracker that has not reported. The last known position stays on the map, and Refresh pulls the providers again.

Clicking a marker or one of its breadcrumb dots opens that fix in full: the date and time, the speed, the altitude, the battery level and any message the tracker sent. Emergency, help and check-in messages are marked on the marker itself, so an SOS reads from the map rather than from a row you have to open.

The footer reads Live · updates every 60s while the range ends today, and the map re-polls at that rate on its own, so you can leave it open beside your other work. Setting To to an earlier date switches the footer to Historical view and draws the trail for the range you picked. The chips Today, 7 days and 30 days set that range in one press.

The eye on any row, and any name in the map legend, hides that rider or feed. Hiding takes the marker, the trail and the pings off the map and leaves the share itself running, so press the eye again when you want them drawn.

Sharing your location#

Share my location with… lists the friends you are not already sharing with, and your groups under Groups, so you can hand a whole riding group your position in one press. Set Share for to 24h, 1 week or Always before you start, because the duration chips apply to new shares rather than to the ones already running, and Always is the default.

Everyone you share with is listed under You’re sharing with, a timed share reading how long it has left. Stop on a row ends that one share and Stop all ends every share at once. Stopping takes your position off their map and changes nothing else, so your routes, your rides and the friendship itself are untouched.

A friend who shares with you while you are not sharing back has Share back on their row, which starts your share at the duration you have set, and the row then reads Mutual. A rider without a tracker cannot share back, so that button says to add a tracker first.

A tracker you own can go to friends without you handing out the link. Press the share icon on the feed row, then press Share beside each friend, and the label flips to Sharing. Press it again to take that feed back. The trash icon removes a tracker at once with no confirm step, so paste the link again if you remove one you wanted.