The Map server control displays a map that flags locations of interest. Each location is an Ektron content item to which map information was added. For example, if your site hosts a school district, each location could represent one school. For information about Map server control properties, see Map Properties.
You can zoom the map in and out, get directions to a location, and narrow the list of locations using a text search. For example, if your map initially flags all schools in a geographic area, you can redraw the map to show only schools with a gym.
If you want the map to show events, you can apply dates to Ektron content, which allows searching by date or location.
IMPORTANT: As a map’s boundaries change, only locations within boundaries appear. Likewise, if a date is assigned to content, only content within the selected date range appears.
If a map has at least one flagged location, a box can appear to its right with information about each location, which are sorted by distance to starting location. From this box, you can:
- view content to which the location is assigned
- find the distance to a location
- center the map on a location
- get directions to a location
- No.—Map item number. The lowest numbered item is closest to the map’s center.
- Title—The content that corresponds to the numbered map location. Click the title to access that content on your website. The text below the title is the Metadata Map Address field, followed by the Metadata Description field (see illustration below).
- Distance—Distance from the map’s center to this content location.
Map—Click icon to recenter map on this content’s location.
Directions—Click icon to select the Directions tab and paste this content location’s address into the end location box. You could then enter a starting location to get directions to this location.
When you hover the cursor over a numbered map location, a text “bubble” appears.
Bubble information:
- Title—Content that corresponds to the numbered map location. Click the title to proceed to that content on your website.
- Summary—Value of the content’s Summary tab.
- Metadata description—Value of the content’s Metadata Description field.
- Get Directions—Click To Here or From Here to select the Directions tab and paste this location’s address into the To or From location box. Then, supply the missing location to get directions between locations.
Ektron supports 2 map providers: Google maps and Bing maps.
Configuring Google Maps
Ektron provides a Google map key that you can use for testing on localhost. If you want to use Google map with your production server, you must install a license key.
Before your production server can use Google’s map feature, follow these steps to obtain and install a license key. For Google Map’s terms and conditions, see Google Maps/Google Earth APIs Terms of Service.
- Go to Google APIs.
- Log into (or create) a Google account.
- Click Services from the left navigation panel.
- Enable Google Maps API v3.
- Click API Access from the left navigation panel.
- Click Create new Server key...—Image—
- Enter 1 or more server IP addresses and click Create. A key is created for server apps and browser apps (such as
AIzaSyBcN7RJzxr4f-iOOfdMwUq9op-5xrtOh2M). - Without closing that page, open the
site root/web.configfile. - Go to the line that begins
<add key="GoogleMap". - Within that line, replace the following
localhostkey with the key you obtained in Step 7.key="AQWESyCAtPrvLE6I2RTS7xK1-3btrrTO0eO6543"/>
Controlling the Map Experience
NOTE: Within Visual Studio, you cannot see the map in design mode. But, you can right click the mouse and select View in Browser to see the effect of changing properties in a browser.
To learn about customizing the display using the Ektron Markup Language, see map.ekml.
Recentering the Map
The Search tab lets you recenter the map on a location. You can enter a combination of street address, city, state and zip code and click Search. Only content within that geographic area which satisfies other search criteria appears.
Finding Locations with a Search Term
You can use the Find What tab to find only locations that include a search term. For example, if a map flags hotels, you can click the Find What tab then insert pool in the text box above to view only hotels with a pool. The Find What tab uses the same logic used in the Web Search to find content on your site.
Getting Directions
Use the Directions tab to get directions between 2 locations. Enter a combination of street address, city, state, and zip code into both text boxes above the tabs and click Get Directions. The screen displays text directions on the left, and a map of the directions on the right.
Restricting Locations to Taxonomy Categories
If you use Ektron’s taxonomya content-level categorization system that uses one-to-many relationships (such as Ronald Reagan is to Actor, Governor, and President) to create a scalable organization of content. A taxonomy lets your site visitors navigate content independent of the folder structure. feature to classify mapped content, you can click Display on Map to restrict the map’s locations to content in your categories. The popup window also prompts you to select one or a range of dates, and only retrieves content to which one of the selected dates is assigned.
For example, the category Restaurant has 5 subcategories in Ektron’s sample site.
When you use the map, you can click Display on Map, see your content’s categories, and select those of interest. The map updates to show content in selected categories only. To learn about assigning taxonomy categories to content, see Organizing Content with Taxonomies .
NOTE: While an OR logical relationship among selected categories is the most intuitive and common, you can set up AND or NOT relationships among categories.
Setting a Map’s Initial Boundaries
Because the map only displays content whose address lies within the map’s boundaries, focus the initial display on your businesses/locations. Map properties let you specify a beginning address (or longitude/latitude) and a starting zoom level. All content with address data within that area is flagged on the map.
If your locations are too spread out to appear on a single map, create several regional maps. Each map server control must appear on a separate Web form.
IMPORTANT: You cannot place more than one map server control on a Web form.
Setting Content Found on a Map
Whether you use Google or Bing Maps for Enterprise maps, content must have latitude and longitude values to appear on a map.
Google maps take a content item's address and return its latitude and longitude. You don’t need to use Google’s automatic retrieval of latitude and longitude. Instead, you can enter the values manually. To do so, open the content item, go to its metadata, and enter the latitude and longitude values under Search Data.
To automatically obtain latitude and longitude information for a content item:
IMPORTANT: The following procedure assumes you are using Ektron’s sample site. If you are using the Min site, you must create searchable metadata definitions for Map Address, Map Latitude and Map Longitude. When defining Map Latitude and Map Longitude, set their Style to Double. If you are using dates with metadata, set MapDate’s style to Date.
- Obtain a Google maps license key. See Configuring Google Maps
- Create the content if necessary. On the content’s Metadata tab, under Search Data, enter a MapAddress (that is, any combination of street, city, state, and zip code).—Image—
If you enter only a zip code, the latitude and longitude are set to that post office.
- Publish the content.
This action creates the Web Service call to Google maps, which retrieves the latitude and longitude for each address. If Google maps cannot find a latitude and longitude (usually due to insufficient or conflicting information), it writes failure information to your server. You can view this under Windows Event Viewer > EktronLog. Any event’s properties explain why the retrieval of latitude and longitude failed.
Restricting Content for a Particular Map
You may want a map to show a subset of all content with a latitude and longitude. For example, your business includes restaurants and bakeries, and you want a map to show only bakeries.
To accomplish this, place content for restaurants in one folder, and bakeries in another. Then, in the map server control that shows bakeries only, at the FolderID property, identify the bakeries folder.
If you want another map to show both restaurants and bakeries, create the restaurant and bakery folders under a parent folder. Then, in that map server control’s FolderID property, identify the parent folder, and set the Recursive property to true.