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MSPortal can estimate where a device connects to the internet by looking up the external IP address reported by its integration. This is useful for confirming that a device appears to be at an expected office or identifying a connection that deserves further investigation.
IP location is an estimate of the internet exit point. It is not the device’s GPS position, street address, or proof of where a person is located.

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Prerequisites

Before looking up a device location, ensure that:
  • You can access the Devices module and the device’s company
  • The device was synced from an integration that reports an external IP address
  • The IP location service is available in your MSPortal environment
  • Your portal has active billing for new lookups
You do not need to enter a geolocation API key as a portal user. The lookup service is configured centrally for your MSPortal environment.

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Find an approximate location

1

Open Devices

Select Devices from the sidebar.
2

Open the device details

Select the device you want to investigate, then open its Overview tab.
3

Review the external IP

Find the IP location section. Review External IP and IP observed to confirm which address will be checked and when the integration last reported it.
4

Run the lookup

Select Find approximate location. MSPortal displays the available city, region, country, and accuracy radius. Some fields may be unavailable. If a cached result is already shown, you can open the map immediately.
5

Open the map

Select Open map to view this device’s approximate coordinates in a new OpenStreetMap tab. This opens a single location, not a grouped map of your device fleet.
Compare IP observed with Last checked. The first tells you when the integration reported the address; the second tells you when that address was geolocated.

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Check a location again

MSPortal reuses recent results to avoid unnecessary external lookups. If you have permission to manage devices, Check again requests a fresh lookup, subject to a short cooldown that prevents repeated requests for the same IP. Users without device-management permission can also select Check again, but their check reuses the cached result until it becomes eligible for refresh. It does not force a new provider lookup. If another lookup is already running for the same IP, wait briefly and select Check again to retrieve its result.

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When no external IP is available

The IP location section displays a message when no external IP has been reported. In that case:
  1. Confirm the device’s integration is connected and syncing successfully.
  2. Check whether the source platform reports an external or public IP for that device.
  3. Allow the next device sync to complete, then reopen the device details.
MSPortal ignores private, reserved, malformed, and network-range addresses because they cannot provide a meaningful public location.

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Troubleshooting

The connected source has not supplied a usable public IP. Check the integration sync and the device record in the source platform.
The external IP is valid, but the location provider has no coordinate result for it. This can occur with new address ranges, privacy-managed ranges, or some network providers. Try again later.
Wait a few minutes and try again. MSPortal temporarily delays retries after provider or network errors so one failure does not create repeated requests.
IP geolocation can identify an ISP gateway, VPN endpoint, mobile carrier exit, or nearby network hub instead of the device’s physical location. Use the accuracy radius and corroborate the result with other device information.