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Trailer devices with TmpTrailerID set to null

mdevol
Original Poster

I have 35 Trailer devices that were created on 7/27/26, but the TmpTrailerID property was not set to an Id value (i.e. null). TmpTrailerID has been marked a deprecated for a long time, but has still been assigned Id values. So has GeoTab started moving away from the TmpTrailerId field or is there another reason these 35 trailers weren't assigned a TmpTrailerID?

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6 Replies

EishiFUN
Community Administrator

Hi @mdevol , great question thank you for asking it here in our community!

You're picking up on a real shift. Geotab has been moving away from the legacy Trailer model — including the TmpTrailerId field — toward the newer shared Asset model. Going forward, the recommended approach is to work with shared assets via Get<Device> rather than relying on the legacy Trailer/TmpTrailerId concept, which is being phased out and won't be receiving further development.

That said, seeing TmpTrailerId come back null on 35 trailers created the same day may also point to something specific about how those trailers were set up. There are some known scenarios where TmpTrailerId may not populate as expected depending on how the trailer and its group structure are configured.

To help me narrow down what happened in your case, could you share a bit more detail:
- How were these 35 trailers created (via the API with Add<Device>, an import, or the UI)?
- What does the trailer group structure look like — specifically, were these trailers placed directly in your main trailer group, or in a sub-group nested underneath it?
With that context I can give you a clearer answer on whether this is expected behavior tied to the move toward shared assets, or something about the group setup that's worth a closer look.

Feel free to reach out if you have any other questions. We are here to help.

Have a great day!
Eishi FUN

mdevol
Original Poster

@EishiFUN I have no direct knowledge how these trailers were created, I've reached to see if someone can find out for me. I'll let you know when I have more information.

@EishiFUN Thanks for the response here. Has the official guidance changed since this question was asked 9 months ago? In that response we were told that there would be plenty of notice before `tmpTrailerId` was phased out.

https://support.geotab.com/community/post/2415/trailer-deprecation-and-tmptrailerid

Brent_McInnis
Geotabber

Hi @DarenPorter-1148 and @mdevol
I double checked to make sure and there hasn't been any changes to the tmpTrailerId recently, so it should still be populated and usable. We still intend to provide a long lead time before any deprecation of that property since it is relied upon at the moment for some integrations. If you are not seeing the tmpTrailerId or it's not functioning as you've experienced with other assets, I suggest reaching out to our support team to report the issue for further investigation by the relevant teams.

While we're on the topic, we have just recently documented a new API that may be useful (depending on the integration and purpose): https://developers.geotab.com/myGeotab/apiReference/objects/DeviceLink/index.html

The DeviceLink API allows integrators to more easily get access to assets that are linked (i.e. a vehicle and a trailer in Geotab Drive, etc.). I'll still highlight that there is still no timeline to share on deprecating the tmpTrailerId property and it can still be used. We'll make sure the notice of it's future deprecation is both difficult to miss and gives a long lead time for integrators to make adjustments as necessary.

mdevol
Original Poster

@EishiFUN I got a reply back that the trailers were added using the UI.

EishiFUN
Community Administrator

@mdevol I think its probably best to make a support ticket here and dig into it a little more so we can see whats going on.

Still have questions?