GMT microplan import

Some programmes prepare their Routine Immunization (RI) microplan in the Geospatial Microplanning Toolkit (GMT): fixed posts, outreach sites, their catchment areas and the planned frequency of visit. GTS can import this microplan as the Targeted Areas of a Tracking Round, so that the sessions planned in GMT are monitored with the GPS tracks of the teams.

Once imported, each fixed post and outreach site is a service location. GTS does not search for sites as in Stationary campaigns and fixed posts: it checks, day by day, whether a team stayed long enough at each planned site, and compares the visits achieved with the visits planned (Service cov. indicator).

This page is for the Organization or Field Activity Focal Point who sets up the Tracking Round, and for the supervisors who review the results. The MDG demo contains the MDG Demo - GMT Microplan Import Field Activity and its MDG GMT - Pilot Import Tracking Round (15 July to 15 August 2026), ready for an import: it has no Targeted Areas yet.

What GTS reads in the GMT package

GTS reads the File Geodatabase export of the microplan, as a .zip archive:

• The file name must start with Microplan and contain GDB (in capital letters), as in Microplan (1 ward) Kano - Dambatta - Gwarabjawa GDB.zip. This is how GTS recognises a GMT package; any other name is read as an ordinary shapefile and the upload fails. A name starting with gmt_ is also accepted.

• The .gdb folder must be at the root of the archive, not inside another folder.

• The geodatabase must contain the four layers below, with their GMT field names. The other layers of the package (settlements, wards, LGA, state…) are ignored.

Layers read by GTS

Layer	Content	Fields used by GTS
Fixed_Post	Points: the fixed posts (health facilities)	global_id_fixed_post, name, frequency
Fixed_Post_Catchment	Polygons: the catchment area of each fixed post	global_id_fixed_post
Outreach	Points: the outreach sites	global_id_outreach, name, frequency
Outreach_Catchment	Polygons: the catchment area of each outreach site	global_id_outreach

GTS creates one Targeted Area per fixed post or outreach site: its catchment polygon, linked to the site by the global identifier. A site without a catchment polygon (or a polygon without its site) is not imported. Each Targeted Area keeps all the fields of the GMT site and of its catchment (for example the ward name or the estimated population), and receives four fields used by GTS:

Label

Name of the site (GMT field name), shown on the map and used by the search.

Stationary type

Fixed Post or Outreach.

Frequency of visit

Planned frequency of visit (GMT field frequency), for example fivePerWeek or oncePerMonth.

Coordinates

Longitude and latitude of the site (the GMT point).

Two parts of the GMT microplan are not imported:

• the settlements of the mobile strategy: mobile teams cannot be monitored as service locations;

• the administrative boundaries of the package: to see the results by district or commune, upload the boundaries as base layers before the import (see Base Layers tab in the Administrator guide).

Before you start

• A Field Activity and a Tracking Round whose dates cover the period to monitor, for example one month or one quarter (see Routine Immunization monitoring for the choice of the period). The Tracking Round must not have Targeted Areas yet: a Targeted Areas layer cannot be replaced, only deleted.

• The base layers used to aggregate the results (for example District, Commune), uploaded in GTS.

• The GMT package of the area, exported from GMT (next section).

• The team codes of the health facility staff and outreach teams, and phones with GTS Tracker (see Mobile Apps Overview).

1. Export the microplan from GMT

In GMT, finalise the microplan of the area (fixed posts, outreach sites, catchment areas and frequency of visit), then export it as a File Geodatabase .zip archive. Keep the file name given by GMT.

Before the import, you can open the .gdb folder in QGIS to check that the four layers are present, that each site has a catchment polygon, and that every site has a frequency of visit.

2. Upload the package as Targeted Areas

1. In the administration, open the Organization, the Field Activity and the Tracking Round, then the Targeted Areas tab.

2. Drag and drop the GMT .zip archive on Drag & drop a shapefile (the same area as for a shapefile).

3. Wait until the tab shows Last status: uploaded (Layer uploaded successfully.), then click Continue. GTS adds the prefix gmt_ to the file name.

4. In the New Targeted Areas window, check the quality report, enter the Name (for example GMT microplan July-August 2026) and an optional Description, then click Next.

5. Label is already set to Label (the site names). Leave Unique ID empty: a GMT package has no field that is unique for every site (an outreach site carries the identifier of its fixed post). Click Save.

The upload itself is described in Upload the Targeted Areas in the Administrator guide.

3. Check the automatic configuration

When the import is finished, the configuration wizard opens. Because the file is a GMT package, GTS prepares the configuration for you:

• In 2. Strategy & Configuration, Stationary activity detection is already selected, in service-location mode. Door to door cannot be selected at the same time (For now, door to door cannot be configured in parallel with Stationary Activity).

• Click Configure on the Stationary activity detection card. In the Stationary activity and micro plan configuration window, Do targeted areas contain stationary locations ? is turned on, 1. Features previews the sites, and 2. Columns mapping is filled as below.

Columns mapping proposed for a GMT package

Setting	Proposed value	What to check
Select the column containing your stationary activity type	Stationary type (Fixed Post, Outreach)	Keep it. The column must have 2 to 5 different values.
Location of service (L)	Coordinates	Keep it: the position of the GMT site.
Track maximum distance from location of service (D)	Manually, 100 for each type	Distance in metres around the site within which the GPS points of a team count. Increase it if sessions are held some distance away from the GMT point. Always enter a value above 0.
Minimum duration (t)	Manually, 60 for each type	Time a team must stay within this distance on a day for the visit to count. See the warning below about the unit.
Objective of visit	Frequency of visit	The frequency planned in GMT. Choose Manually to set one frequency per type instead.
Map style	Blue cross for Fixed Post, green flag for Outreach	Icon and colour of the sites on the map.

Warning

Although labelled (min), the Minimum duration (t) is currently applied in seconds: the proposed value 60 means one minute. Enter 1800 to require 30 minutes, or 3600 for one hour.

Keep the other proposed values. In the current version, the options Catchment centroid (location) and Whole catchment (distance), and the choice of a layer column for the distance or the duration, do not work: no visit is detected or the computation fails.

When you choose Manually for the Objective of visit, the frequencies offered are Daily, 5 times per week to 2 times per week, Biweekly, Weekly, 3 times per month, Bimonthly and Monthly. Biweekly and Bimonthly are currently counted like Weekly and Monthly (one visit per week or per month): use another value.

Click Validate, then Next. In 3. Aggregations Layers, choose the base layers from the largest to the smallest area, then click Save. GTS computes the service coverage in the background. The Targeted Areas tab then shows Microplan in the Stationary activity detection summary.

Note

In this mode, custom indicators are not available: the Geocoverage Indicators tab shows Targeted Areas is configured to use microplan: custom indicators are not available.

4. Plan the teams

• In Team Codes, enter the codes of the health facility staff and outreach teams.

• In Teams Deployment, enter the number of teams expected per area and per day (or for the whole period), as described in Routine Immunization monitoring. GTS then shows the Teams report. indicator.

• Field teams only need to keep GTS Tracker running during their working hours, including the time spent at the fixed post or at the outreach site, and to upload their data.

5. Follow the service coverage

How GTS counts the visits

A visit is a day on which one team stayed at least the Minimum duration (t) within the Track maximum distance (D) of the site (100 m around the GMT point by default). Visits are computed after each data upload, as for door-to-door visits (see Last computed at at the right of the period bar of the map), not once a night as for stationary activity detection.

The expected visits come from the frequency of visit and the dates of the Tracking Round:

• Daily: every day of the round, weekends included;

• a number of visits per week (for example fivePerWeek or Weekly): per period of seven days starting on the first day of the round, not on Monday;

• a number of visits per month (for example oncePerMonth or Monthly): per calendar month. The first period runs from the first day of the round to the end of that month.

The last period is cut at the end date of the round. For example, in the MDG GMT - Pilot Import round (Wednesday 15 July to Saturday 15 August 2026), a fivePerWeek fixed post is expected 24 times (four full weeks starting on Wednesday, then four days) and a oncePerMonth outreach site twice (once from 15 to 31 July, once from 1 to 15 August).

Service cov. is the number of visits achieved compared with the number of visits expected. In each period, visits beyond the planned number are not counted: three visits in one week do not make up for a week without a visit. The visits expected in a period are counted from its first days, so early in a week or a month Service cov. can be lower than at the end of it.

Warning

A site whose frequency is empty or Unknown is expected once, on the last day of the round, but its visits are currently not counted: its Service cov. stays at 0 %. Complete the frequencies in GMT before the export, or set the Objective of visit manually.

Where to see the results

Open the map of the Tracking Round from the Tracking Round Selection page (see Map Overview).

• The header and the data panel summary show Service cov. instead of Geo. coverage (hover it to see the Number of objective reached and the Number of objective expected), the number of sites of each type with their icon, and Teams report. when a Teams Deployment is entered.

• On the map, each catchment area is coloured by its service coverage (0-25%, 25-50%, 50-75%, 75-100%), with the icon of its type on the site. The legend is in the Service Coverage section of the Settings panel.

• In the Areas tab, each area shows its Service cov. and its Visits (days with a visit). At the lowest level, the list shows the sites themselves, with Service cov., Visits and Objective (for example 5x/week or 1x/month). Expand a site to see its History: Visit date, Team and Duration.

• The Activity tab lists all the sites of the round in the same way.

• Use the Period selector: Cumulated for the progress since the first day, By day for a single day.

In the Geocoverage Indicators export (see Geocoverage indicators and Targeted Areas), the columns Visited and Targeted Areas are replaced by Service Coverage (visits achieved) and Service Coverage Objective (visits expected), for each area and each site.

Troubleshooting

The upload fails with No .shp file found in the zip archive

GTS did not recognise a GMT package. Check that the file name starts with Microplan and contains GDB, click Delete and upload the file again.

The upload fails with No .gdb folder found inside Zip file.

The .gdb folder is missing or inside another folder. Compress the .gdb folder itself, keeping a name that starts with Microplan and contains GDB.

The upload fails with an error naming a layer (for example Outreach_Catchment)

One of the four layers is missing or renamed. Export the package again from GMT.

Fewer Targeted Areas than sites in GMT

Sites without a catchment polygon with the same global identifier are skipped. Check the catchment areas in GMT or QGIS, then delete the Targeted Areas and import the corrected package.

A site stays at 0 %

Check, in this order: the teams’ uploads (Teams report.), the frequency of the site (Unknown), the position of the site (a site placed roughly in GMT can be more than 100 m from where the sessions take place: increase the distance) and the minimum duration.

Very short stops count as visits

The minimum duration is applied in seconds: 60 means one minute. Enter 1800 or 3600 (see 3. Check the automatic configuration).

The Objective column shows Unknown or N/A

The column shows the Frequency of visit field of the site, even when the objective is set manually, and shows Unknown for some values such as daily or twoPerWeek. Service cov. is still computed with the objective you configured.

No results by district or commune

No base layer was selected in 3. Aggregations Layers. Click Edit in the Targeted Areas tab and add them.

Related pages

• Targeted Areas as service locations — Targeted Areas used as service locations.

• Routine Immunization monitoring — the RI monitoring cycle and the Teams Deployment.

• Stationary campaigns and fixed posts — stationary activity detection when the sites are not planned in advance.

• Targeted Areas tab in the Administrator guide.