Category: Add markers

Garage sales are easy with map marker features

Posted on | by Rebecca | 3 Comments on Garage sales are easy with map marker features

There are some ZeeMaps features that are particularly useful for people organising garage sales, yard sales or even estate sales. One such feature allows you to copy or move a marker from your map to others that you own. And if you are a paid user, you can also add a marker to all your maps at once.
To access the copy/move feature, click on a marker on one of your maps. An information box with details of your marker will appear and you’ll see five icons in the bottom right corner. If you hover over the third icon which looks like two pages, it says ‘Copy/Move’.
Copy/move a marker to plan garage sales
When you click on this icon, you’ll be taken to a ‘Select a Map’ window. Choose the one or more you want from the dropdown list of all your maps and select ‘Copy’ or ‘Move’. Your marker will be copied or moved to the map or maps you requested.
To add a marker to all your maps at once, you must be a paid user. To enable this feature, go to your sign-in information on the top right of the page. Select ‘Account’ from the dropdown and then the ‘Settings’ tab. Tick the box that says ‘Enable marker additions to all maps at once.’ Click on the Save button at the top of the page to save these settings.
Enable marker additions to plan a garage sale
Open one of your maps, and select ‘Additions.’ Whether you choose ‘Add Marker – Simple’ or ‘Add Marker – Detailed’, the ‘Add Entry’ information box will appear. At the bottom there is a checkbox where you can choose ‘Add to all my maps.’

Add to all my maps to plan a garage sale

Planning garage sales more effectively 

The copy/move feature and the ability to add a marker to all your maps at once make it easier to organise community garage sales or yard sales. A customer had this to say on our testimonials page: “Thank you sooo much! I love this software! I am so glad I found you! I am telling all my friends who have to map garage sales for their communities. What a time saver!”
We’ve heard that the copy/move feature is also really useful for sales teams. Each salesperson is given a map with their own leads and customers, but when customers need to be assigned to a different team member, this feature allows that to happen easily.
Similarly, we have many people using ZeeMaps to plot locations for each staff member on a daily basis – to mark where roofs need repair or broken glass needs fixing, for example. If a staff member is running late or gets sick, their locations can quickly be transferred to another map.

OneDrive Spreadsheets: Map Location Data

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ZeeMaps allows you to create interactive maps from location data stored in Microsoft’s OneDrive spreadsheets. ZeeMaps can periodically update the map as the spreadsheet changes.
You upload and attach your OneDrive spreadsheet to a map only once, then the map can be automatically kept updated as your spreadsheet changes. This way, you do not have to worry about making changes to both your spreadsheet and your map.
In order for this to work, make sure that you do not:

  1. Change the name or location of the spreadsheet
  2. Change the columns of your spreadsheet.

If you make any of the above two changes to your spreadsheet, then you must delete all data from your map and re-upload and attach your spreadsheet.

Attach a OneDrive Spreadsheet to a map

To attach a OneDrive spreadsheet to a map, first create a map on ZeeMaps. Use the Additions -> Upload (Copy-Paste) Spreadsheet menu item on your map, and then select the Cloud Drive Spreadsheet Option.

In the Cloud Drives drop-down, select the Microsoft OneDrive option for the Provider control, and hit the Fetch My Spreadsheets button.

Periodically Update Map from OneDrive Spreadsheet changes
Periodically Update Map from OneDrive Spreadsheet changes

At this point, a window should be activated that asks you to sign-in to your Microsoft OneDrive account and give ZeeMaps access. Once you’ve granted access, you should see a list of your spreadsheets and be able to select the spreadsheet that you want to upload to the map. From here on, follow the steps for uploading a spreadsheet to a map.
If you want your spreadsheet changes to be automatically reflected on your map, make sure that you check the option for “Regularly update from Cloud Spreadsheet” in Step 2 of the confirmation process for the upload:


From then on, the map should be automatically updated when your spreadsheet changes.
To see what spreadsheets are attached to your map, use the View -> Cloud Drive Sheets menu item on your map.

Las Vegas Zip Codes Spreadsheet Uploaded to a Map

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ZeeMaps now allows you to highlight US Zip Code areas on a map by uploading a spreadsheet with address and color information. Previously we supported highlighting regions only few at a time. As an example, in this blog post, we’ll show you how to highlight all the Las Vegas zip codes on a map.

Las Vegas Zip Codes Spreadsheet

We collected all the the las vegas zip codes and put them in a spreadsheet. A small sample of the spreadsheet is shown below:
City, State, Zip Code, Color
Las Vegas, NV, 89101, red
Las Vegas, NV, 89111, blue
Las Vegas, NV, 89102, green
Las Vegas, NV, 89103, red
Las Vegas, NV, 89106, blue
Las Vegas, NV, 89107, green
Las Vegas, NV, 89109, red
Las Vegas, NV, 89128, blue
The complete spreadsheet of the Las Vegas zip codes can be downloaded from: Las Vegas Zip Codes.
We’ve added the “color” column to our table to indicate which color we’d like to use to highlight a specific zip code. You can modify the color later once the map has been created. ZeeMaps supports 31 different colors that can be used for spreadsheet uploads. For a complete list of supported colors, see the menu item Map -> Legend on your map.

Upload Las Vegas Zip Codes Spreadsheet to a Map

Create a map and then use the menu item Additions -> Add (Upload) Multiple Markers. This will result in a dialog that asks for the spreadsheet file:

Upload Spreadsheet to Map for Las Vegas Zip Codes
Upload Spreadsheet to Map for Las Vegas Zip Codes

In this dialog, as shown in the figure above, you can select the option to upload the data as pins or as highlighted areas for the zip codes. Since we want to create a map with zip codes highlighted, we’ll chose the option of “US Zip Code Regions”.
The spreadsheet can be in Excel file format or a CSV file. You can also copy-and-paste data from a table, or attach a spreadsheet maintained on a Google Drive. The advantage of using a spreadsheet on a Google Drive is that you can have the map be automatically updated based on changes to the spreadsheet.
Once you submit the data, a dialog will ask for confirmation of the column mappings to the field values. Make sure your columns are assigned to the appropriate fields, otherwise the data may not be mapped correctly.
Confirm column mappings for Las Vegas zip codes upload
Confirm column mappings for Las Vegas zip codes upload

Las Vegas Zip Codes Map

After you confirm the column mappings, the highlighting of zip code areas will start. It may take a few minutes for large files. You’ll get an email report when the upload is finished. Refresh your map and it should show you the highlighted areas. Our interactive map of Las Vegas zip codes is embedded below.

Click on a highlighted zip code to see more information determined from the additional columns of your spreadsheet. In the information bubble, you can click on the title or name to get an edit dialog to make changes to that specific entry, including the ability to change the color.
When highlighting regions through spreadsheet uploads, the normal region limits apply: 5 for Basic (free) plan, 10 for Professional, 25 for Professional Publisher. In addition, the Enterprise plan is restricted to 5,000 highlighted regions through spreadsheet uploads. If you need more, please contact us for special provisioning.
 
 

Geo Maps Auto-Refresh Updated Display

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Geo Maps Overview

Often, it is useful to show continuously updated geo maps. For example, geo maps updated by a large number of field operators. In the field, operators can indicate status change for job sites by changing the color of markers on the geo map. Similarly, crowdsourced geo maps would show updates from the field as new locations are added. For such geo maps, it is often desirable to display the geo map on a large screen, visible to several users and employees to monitor progress. This can also be useful in conferences, e.g., where each attendee marks their location of origin or interest. In classrooms, you can use such geo maps for students to mark their locations.
Manually refreshing the geo map screen every so often becomes tedious quickly. It is much better if the geo map can refresh itself every few minutes.
ZeeMaps allows you to set up your geo map for auto-refresh. Once set up for auto-refresh, you can leave the geo map visible on a browser window and it will automatically refresh itself every five minutes.

Enabling Auto-Refresh for Geo Maps in ZeeMaps

To enable auto-refresh of your geo maps, use the Map -> Settings menu to go the settings page. Click on the Map Display tab in the settings page. Check the box for “Auto-Refresh map markers every 5 minutes”. Hit Save Changes.

Map Settings menu
Map Settings Menu item

Setting for Auto Refreshing Geo Maps
Auto-Refresh your Geo Maps

To recap, ZeeMaps provides many ways of making changes to geo map markers concurrently by many users. Users can add more locations to a geo map. They change the status of a geo map marker by changing its color. Manually refreshing the geo map on a continuous basis is tedious. ZeeMaps’ capability auto-refreshed every few minutes makes it much easier to setup overview geo maps for a groups of users.

Heat Map Visualization in ZeeMaps

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Heat Map Overview

Heat map, a density visualization technique, shows areas of high and low concentration on a map. While, a point map with 10’s of thousands of locations can become cluttered, a heat map visualization of the same data can quickly show areas of dense population.

For example, if you plot the locations of all your customers as a heat map, you can quickly see where there are pockets of low or high number of customers.

ZeeMaps provides support for a these maps in both the interactive and print versions. Currently, we look at the frequency, or number of points at a given location, to determine the density. Over time we’ll extend this to allow for the density value to be determined through one of the the marker fields.
Notice, you can combine this feature with the Zip Code Finder tool in ZeeMaps.  Finally, a great way to quickly determine the zip codes with high density of points on a map!

Example Map

Here’s an example of a heat map of locations of all the Used Computer Stores in the US. First, with the map, one can quickly see that Boston and New York are the most dense areas. While, other major cities like San Francisco, Dallas, etc., have some notable presence as well.

Now, click on the icon at the top right of the map. Notice, the display will change to the regular clustered point map.

We can also get an image of the same map, using the menu item Print or Share -> PDF/PNG Image. In the resulting dialog, we check the option for “Heat Map” for the pin style.

Heat Map of Used Computer Stores in the US
Map of Used Computer Stores in the US

Setting a Heat Map in ZeeMaps

Turn on the this feature for your map. First, go to the settings page (menu Map -> Settings). Second, click on the Map Display tab. Third, check the box for “Enable Heat Map” and hit Save Changes. Last, go back to the map to view the change. Finally, there will be a small icon at the top right of the map (see interactive map above). You can click on that icon to toggle the display from a heat to a regular point map.

Enable Heat Map in ZeeMaps
Enable in ZeeMaps