Tag: How to configure Virtual Map View

Often the data that you want to map may fall into several categories and you want the marker for each location to represent the category. This is supported with the Virtual Map View Web Part.

As an example for these instructions, consider a SharePoint list that stores information about baseball fields in the USA.

You want to display National League parks with one marker type () and American League parks with another ().

Follow these steps to configure your map with multiple markers:

Step	Action
1.	In the tool pane of the Virtual Map View, check the Use Multiple Markers box to use multiple marker types to denote different types of data (i.e., one marker for American League baseball parks and another marker for National League parks). A selection list will appear next to the Use Multiple Markers box; it contains all the columns from the selected Data Source. Select the column from the data source that stores the value to determine the marker type to use. In our example using the Baseball Fields list, this column is League.
2.	Next, you need to specify which marker to user for each value of the Use Multiple Markers column selected in Step 1 above. If you want to use custom markers, create them first. NOTE: It doesn’t matter which Marker Type you select when planning to use multiple markers. Click the Edit button next to the Marker Type field. An edit window appears. For each Marker that you want to display on the map, edit the associated tag to update the MarkerType value. MarkerType should equal the value of the Use Multiple Markers column that is associated with that marker. In our Baseball Fields example, the Use Multiple Markers column is League. The League column is set to either American League or National League for each baseball park in the list. For this baseball field example, we created two custom markers, one called NL for National League and the other called AL, for American League. After updating the MarkerType value for each, the tags for those two markers look like this: <AL IconName = "Amarker.png" IconWidth = "45" IconHeight = "45" MarkerType = "American League" /> <NL IconName = "Nmarker.png" IconWidth = "45" IconHeight = "45" MarkerType = "National League" /> When edits are complete, click Save to save changes and close the edit window. Otherwise, click Cancel to close the window without saving any changes.
3.	After clicking Apply and then OK in the tool pane, a portion of the configured map will look like this:

The Marker Tabs appear when a marker on the map is clicked. An example with two tabs (General and Stats) configured is shown here.

NOTE: The Bing Map^TM display shows the pages of the popup slightly different than the Google Map^TM display. The one shown here is the Bing Map^TM display.

Another pop-up display, called Item Description, appears when the end user hovers over the list of items on the left side of the Virtual Map View display. An example is shown here.

To configure both displays, follow these steps:

Follow these steps to configure the left side display of the Virtual Map View:

Step	Action	Result
1.	Select a column to display in map. Select a column name from the drop-down list to be displayed in the Map View under the Select View option.	The column you select here shows up on the interface here.
2.	Records per page. You can specify the number of records to be displayed on the map. The additional records can be viewed by the Next and Previous buttons at display time. If this value is left blank, the web part default is to display 20 records at a time. Displaying icons in pages may speed you page load times since only the items in the first page are loaded initially.	If your list has more records than your limit, the web part displays numbers next to the navigation drop-down menu to help navigate to more records. To display all the icons, regardless fot he Records per Page, select View All from the selection list at the bottom of the list.

Configuring Virtual Map View offers a variety of options from the type of data source to the type of maps and markers to display.

Each of the sections within the configuration tool pane window is divided for ease of use when configuring the web part.

1. Data Source for Virtual Map View
2. Geocoding
3. Select the Map Provider and choose a marker type
4. Use Multiple or Custom Markers
5. Using Marker Tabs
6. Select a column to display and the number of items per page
7. Language
8. CSS for Virtual Map View

Select Google Maps^TM or Bing Maps^TM web services option to display your data source. Depending on the selected web services, you can choose a default view from the available options listed in the Default map view drop-down (such as road map, satellite imagery, or street map with terrain for Google Maps).

NOTE: Select Virtual Earth (the earlier name of Microsoft’s mapping platform) to use Bing Maps^TM.

Once you have selected a provider, use the table below to configure the available parameters specific to the provider.

	Google MapsTM	Bing MapsTM
Default Views Select the view to display as a default when users arrive at the page. Once on the page, users can choose other views.	Street Map example: Satellite Imagery example: Street Map with Terrain example:	Road View example: Aerial View example:
Display Options Choose the marker type for the displayed locations.	Default House Plus Point Sun Red Blue Yellow If none of these markers suit your situation, you can create your own marker. See Create your own marker for more information.

To show you the differences, we have included a few sample views below:

Default This is the default marker on a street map.	House Marker Notice when selecting the street map with terrain, you see buildings and trees within the view. Top
Point marker on street maps This view uses a Point symbol on a street map; this map is a Virtual Earth map or Bing map. Below is a Google map using the Point marker as well.	Point Marker on Satellite Views Using the Point marker on a satellite view may not be bad, but consider your end users zooming in on this map. A Point marker may not work best for a close-up view with buildings; it blends in and becomes less visible. Top
Sun Marker A Sun marker on a street map may be a good marker to use.	Red Marker on Satellite View Choosing satellite terrain, does not give as much detail in the view. Top
Blue Marker A Blue marker helps pinpoint a location on a street view.	Yellow Marker on Street View This view uses a Yellow indicator on a street view that is very close up. These are the choices made on the tool pane to get this view: Top

Geocoding is the process of finding associated geographic coordinates (i.e., latitude, longitude) from other geographic data, such as street addresses. In order to display data on a map, some geographic information is required. If your data contains address information only, the mapping service you select will perform the geocoding to convert the addresses to geographic coordinates. Sometimes geocoding results vary, depending on the service used.

If you have latitude and longitude information for your data points, your map may display more quickly since no geocoding is required. Geocoding is performed to generate the latitude and longitude for the addresses provided.

Regardless of your data source, select the columns for Address, City, State/Province, and Country/Region. If your data already contains geographic coordinates, select the columns that contain Latitude, Longitude, and optionally, Altitude.

IMPORTANT: If you configure list columns for Longitude, Latitude, and optionally Altitude, these coordinates will be used for mapping and Address, City, State, and Country information will NOT be used. It is not necessary to configure Address/City/State/Country if you have configured Longitude/Latitude/Altitude. If a location has address information but no values for Lat/Long and the Longitude/Latitude/Altitude was configured in the web part tool pane, the location will not be plotted. In other words, it is not currently possible to map some locations using Lat/Long and others using address information.

If you map using geographic coordinates (i.e., latitude, longitude) you may consider displaying address information on the map using marker tabs.

Longitude is Eastward: Indicates whether the coordinates for longitude are east (selected check box) or westward facing (unselected check box). The default is westward facing.

Select whether you would like to display data from:

• SharePoint List
• SQL Server Table or View
• MashPoint/BDC

See the configuration details of each option below.

SharePoint List

Select this option to access the available SharePoint lists/libraries on the current site.

NOTE: You can pick only lists from the site where the web part resides.

Fill in the following fields in the Select List to Display in Map option:

• List: Select a SharePoint list or library where the data to be displayed resides.

• Default View: Select the default list view that includes the data users see when the web part is first accessed.

  Specifying a list view with a filter is a way to display a subset of all the items in the list/library.

The displayed data can be filtered by end users on-the-fly using one or more views in the Runtime Filtering Views drop-down list by checking in the Allow Runtime Filtering box. When this box is checked, additional configuration parameters appear:

• Available Views: Shows all the views for the selected list or library. Select the view(s) from this column and click the right arrow button to move it to the Runtime Filtering Views column.
• Runtime Filtering Views: The Select View drop-down in the web part user interface shows the list views selected in this box. End users can click the views displayed to control the data that is displayed on the map.

Typically, the views made available for runtime filtering are those that filter the display. Using runtime filtering is a way to reduce the number of items displayed in each view to potentially increase performance if there are lots of points to be mapped.

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SQL Server Table or View

Select this option to indicate whether or not to use a SQL Server Table or View

• Use Trusted Connection: Select this check box if you are connecting to a database that resides on the same SharePoint Server. If you select this option, you only need to provide the name of the Server, click Show Databases, and then select the database from the Database drop-down list.
  • Server: Type the name of the server you want to connect to.
  • Show Databases: Click this button to populate the Database drop-down list.
  • Database: Select the database you want from the drop-down list.
    

If you want to use a database located on another server, and thus, will not use a trusted connection, additional configuration parameters will appear:

• User Name: Type the user name of the access account who has read permission to the database specified in the Server field.
• Password: Type the password for the access account who has access to the database specified in the Server field.

In the Select Table or View to Display in Map section of the tool pane, choose the Table or View that contains the data to be displayed on the map.

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MashPoint/BDC

Select this option to access databases, web services or Custom Providers through Bamboo MashPoint or with a source configured via Microsoft Business Data Catalog (BDC).

Once MashPoint/BDC is selected, the Select Entity to display in map box appears in the tool pane.

To select the entity from the available content types, click on the Select External Content Type icon () to open the External Content Type Picker window where you can find the external data source with the data to display on the map. Select the appropriate one and click OK to close the window.

Alternatively, enter the name of the source in the Select Entity to display in map box and click the Check External Content Type icon () to make sure you entered it correctly.

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When configuring the web part, the bottom of the configuration tool pane contains a button to customize the style sheet. With a few minor updates to the style sheet, you can change the user interface to match elements of your corporate brand. The style sheet for the Virtual Map View allows you to control how the map is displayed to users. This section shows each of the main Map View sections and lists the corresponding style sheet parameters that control the section’s presentation in the web part.

To access the style sheet editing option in the tool pane, select Custom CSS from the Select a Style Sheet drop-down button, and then click Edit. The style sheet editor opens.

Class Name	Sample
VirtualMapViewBackground	This is the background for the web part; use hexadecimal color codes to update the color.
VirtualMapViewToolTipBody	Tool tips appear when a user hovers over a selection on the left navigation. In our example we changed the background color to green and the font to red; use colors that are relevant to your corporate brand.
VirtualMapViewWPHeader
VirtualMapViewEditItemName
VirtualMapViewTD
VirtualMapViewInfoWindowTabs (for Google Map)
VirtualMapViewNoWrap (for Google Map)
VirtualMapViewInfoBox (for Bing, which was previously called Virtual Earth)
VirtualMapViewTitle (for Bing, which was previously called Virtual Earth)
Virtual Earth Limitation	You cannot change the font size of text in these tabs.
Google Map Limitation	You cannot change the font size of text in these Tabs.

If the markers provided out-of-the-box with the Virtual Map View Web Part aren’t sufficient for your situation, you can create your own markers. See an example of a map with customer markers here.

Follow these steps to add a custom marker:

c:Program FilesCommon FilesMicrosoft SharedWeb Server Extensions
   wpresourcesBamboo.VirtualMapViewxxx

Where xxx is a code for the version of the product you have installed.

<House IconName = "house.png" IconWidth = "32" IconHeight = "32" MarkerType = "1" />

<AL IconName = "Amarker.png" IconWidth = "45" IconHeight = "45" MarkerType = "1" />