We are putting the finishing touches on our next release and it should be a good one. Below is the release schedule:
- Monday, July 22: Push to all Sandbox systems
- Tuesday, July 23: Release Overview Webinar (Register here)
- Thursday, July 25: Available on AppExchange
- Saturday, July 27: Push to all Production systems
We have some great features coming out that will really enhance user productivity and provide greater insights.
Release Webinar
We will be holding a webinar (register) on Tuesday, July 23 at 9:00am (US Pacific) to review the new features and allow you to ask questions prior to the app hitting your Production system. The webinar will be recorded and available on our webinars page if you cannot make it.
New Features
Charting
We have customers ask us about how they can analyze the data once mapped. Coloring map pins certainly helps, but what about being able to slice and dice the data right there? Why export to Excel to do further analysis? To help customers analyze their data further, we added a charting component to the map page.
A chart can exist for each tab of data that you map. We currently support pie, bar and column charts. For the bar and column charts, we offer subgrouping and the ability to Group, Stack or Stack to 100%. It’s a fun addition to the map page.
Expect this component to be expanded upon in future releases.
KML / GeoRSS Layers
We added the ability to include external data layers to the Map page. External layers need to be in the KML, KMZ or GeoRSS file format. Where do you get or create a KML file? If you search, you will be surprised at what you find. One great source for published data is the Data Sets section of GeoCommons. Another option whereby you can create your own maps and publish them into Geopointe is Google Maps Engine Lite. In the example below, I used the KMZ file from the Drought Monitor website.
Actions
Geopointe Admins now have complete control over the links and buttons that appear on the Map page. We have created a framework for record-based and list-based Actions. An Action could be a simple link (e.g. a customized Log A Call link) or could be more advanced like a call into Apex code for further processing.
In addition to letting you create your own Action, we migrated all of the existing Actions in the app (Add to Route, Add to Campaign, Log a Call, etc.) and created configurable Action records for you. Suppose you like the Export CSV button, but only want to assign it to certain people. Now you can.
Actions are an area of tremendous opportunity. We will be publishing Actions you can add to your system and will work with other ISVs on helping you integrate their apps with Geopointe. Much more to come in this area.
Tabbed Setup Page
We’ve been adding a lot of Setup items, so we did a bit of re-organizing on the Setup page. The Setup page now has an easy to use tabbed interface.
We are very excited about what this release has to offer and look forward to detail this functionality out in future posts.
