How to Use the Map Features in Flow 6.7

In Flow 6.6, we introduced the map portlet. The map portlet lets you view various data configurations in a map view—for example, a group of customers with open work orders in a given city, region, or country.

In Flow 6.7, we’re expanding the map portlet to give you more customization and functionality. Now you can customize the colors and icons on your map, apply custom overlays, track moving objects and even create workflows right from the map view.  

Why use a map portlet?

Some of our customers need to track the locations of things in real-time: technicians on service calls, buses in a city, work orders on an electricity grid, etc. This helps the back office schedule and track work orders, but it also helps them anticipate issues and respond to emergencies faster.

Setting up the map portlet

Want to set up a map portlet? Here’s how it works:

1. In Flow Studio, add a new portlet (“map”).
2. Fill in the basic data, like you do for other portlets.
3. Give the portlet a unique identifier.
4. Set up auto refresh if required – a promising idea if you’re tracking things that move.
5. Set up the commands you want to use.
6. Configure your data. Write a query or link to a workflow.
7. Customize the display. You can change the icon and the color. A good rule is to use icons to represent categories, and colors to represent status.
8. Set your tooltips and labels. You can add free text or fields from your database.

The map portlet can listen and talk to other portlets so you can see, for example, how many open work orders are associated with a specific location or ID.

Setting up the map portlet is easy: the difficult part is configuring your data. If you want to track service technicians, for example, you will need to create and configure identifiers for each technician or truck—and make sure you’re collecting their GPS information in real-time. 

New feature: overlay maps

Overlay maps are a new feature in Flow 6.7. You can add whatever overlay maps you want or need. For example, if you want to use color to isolate a geographic region, or show topographical details in the map portal, you can do that with an overlay.

Right now, Flow only supports one type of map file (geojson). We plan to add more types of map files in the future. If you want to use a specific type of map file for your overlay, let us know!

Try out the map portlet and let us know how it works for you! Any features you want us to add to the map portlet? Let us know!