Location-based Service: Tracking Business with SharePlus

"Even in a bad market, location, location, location is a way to still buy and sell property."
                                                                                                                   - Vanilla Ice 

Location is everything. Day by day location-based services and applications are becoming popular with consumers.

Introduction

Imagine you have clients spreading across different parts of cities or for that matter of fact resides anywhere. You are told to keep track of their whereabouts. It would be nice if somebody could create a report and share it with top management. Thankfully your mobile device is configured with SharePlus(Version 3.9.x) & ReportPlus (optional).

Once you go through this entire topic it becomes much simpler by using “Location Services” feature of SharePlus.

Before we start don’t forget to turn on the Location Services feature in your IOS device by following the instruction below.

Turning Location Services on or off

You can turn Location Services on or off at Settings > Privacy > Location Services. You can turn Location Services on either during the Setup Assistant process or later through the Location Services setting. You can turn it off if you don't want to use this feature or to conserve battery life.

 

 

Part 1: Getting Started

Start SharePlus and browse to the file location where you want to capture “location information”. Just tap and hold on it so that it pops up a dialog (Ref Figure 1). Tap Properties -> Edit Properties which takes you to next screen.

 

 

In the next screen press “location Services” icon (Ref Figure 2) available on bottom right corner of the screen followed by “Copy to Clipboard”. Now select the item which you want to copy. Cancel on top to go back to previous screen.

 

 

Once again tap and hold over your file (Ref Figure 3) but this time select “Document” tab. Before you start editing it is always advisable to “Check out” the document for proper versioning and comments.

Tap “Edit” so that it pops up the “Open In” dialog (Ref Figure 3) for editor selection. Select your desired editor for updating document with location information (Available in clipboard).

       [“When editing documents with QuickOffice through the “Open In” protocol, you have

        the “Save Back” feature available. This feature, developed in collaboration between

        QuickOffice and SharePlus, makes the User Interface (UI) simpler and also avoids leaving

        traces of your documents on the editor.”]

 

Update your spreadsheet with location coordinates (Ref Figure 4) and press “Close” button.

(Note - According to this illustration location coordinates are entered along with name & address of the customer.)

 

 

Now tap on “Save Back” and select “Open in SharePlus” (Ref Figure 5) from next dialog.

 

 

In the subsequent “Open In” dialog (Ref Figure 6) select “Update Item”.

 

 

Pressing “Save” button pops up a Check in confirmation dialog (Ref Figure 7) with two options to select from.

• Ok – Keeps the edited version in Local Files and skips subsequent “check in” process.
• Check In – Proceed to check in.

 

 

Final step would be to fill in the comments box and press “Done” (Ref Figure 8) which completes the process.

 

 

So far so good.

 

Part 2: Generate Report

 

Skip the next section if ReportPlus is not available in your device.

Once the updated spreadsheet is available in SharePlus (As per earlier steps), it becomes very easy to create dashboard using ReportPlus.

To recap what we require to plot in the dashboard refer the spreadsheet as below. It was prepared earlier in this topic.

 

 

We will render this information in a grid and use the location to plot in the map.

Just browse to the location where you want to add the ReportPlus dashboard and tap Add button (Ref Figure 9).

 

 

Select “Add ReportPlus Dashboard” menu item which pops up dashboard templates (Ref Figure 10).

 

 

Afterwards select the spreadsheet by navigating through SharePoint sites available on the left hand site. Simply drag & drop the spreadsheet over the blank dashboard which will provide the option to visualize grid, chart, graph, map etc.

(Note- Only SharePoint sites & Local Files are available in ReportPlus Data Source option when opened within SharePlus. ReportPlus standalone application can connect to almost all widely used data sources. Click here)

Watch this video to understand more about ReportPlus mapping functionality. (Click here)

Map setting will look similar to below (Ref Figure 11).

 

 

Finally your dashboard is ready, just save it.

 

 

Summary

Congratulation!! you have successfully prepared a report using location service. Any changes to the original spreadsheet will be automatically reflected in ReportPlus dashboard. Sharing this report is just one baby-step away.