Ron glanced over at Jo’s screen, curiosity piqued. “What’s got you so focused?” he asked. “The Maplytics team just released their latest update!” Jo replied, visibly excited. “This one integrates with Power Pages Portal, which is perfect for your Michaels Stores website!”
“Power Pages? Really?” Ron perked up. “I’m building their website right now! Tell me more!”
“Exactly!” Jo said. “Maplytics can now work with Power Pages. Let’s check it out, along with all the other cool features in the June 2024 release!”
Yes! Mapheads! Maplytics can now integrate with Power Pages. Let us have a look at it and a lot more upgrades from the Maplytics Spring 2024 Release!
PCF Control in Portal/Power Pages
Microsoft Power Pages (formerly Power Apps Portals) is a cloud-based service (SaaS) that lets you build secure websites for external audiences with minimal coding required. Think of it as a user-friendly tool for creating professional websites, even without a programming background.
Some key points about Power Pages are –
Easy to Make Your Own: Don’t be fooled by the low code – Power Pages lets you design and personalize your website using drag-and-drop tools and pre-built components. Style it with themes and add interactive elements to make it truly yours.
More Than Just a Website: Power Pages goes beyond static webpages. Embed forms, and data visualizations like charts and graphs, and even integrate with Power Apps to create custom applications that fit your needs seamlessly.
Team Up and Build: Power Pages is built for collaboration. Multiple users can work on your website at the same time, streamlining development and fostering teamwork.
For Everyone: Whether you’re a business user with limited coding experience or a seasoned developer looking to build complex functionalities, Power Pages caters to your needs. The low-code approach makes it accessible while offering room for customization.
Grows with You: Power Pages scales to your website’s size. From simple landing pages to intricate multi-page websites, Power Pages can handle it all.
Important Benefits of Power Pages
Faster to Finish: Power Pages’ low-code approach lets you build websites quicker than traditional coding methods, getting your ideas online faster.
Cost-Effective Choice: The low-code approach can potentially save you money on development. You won’t need a team of programmers to create a great website.
Adapts to Your Needs: Power Pages offers the perfect blend of ease of use and customization. Whether you’re a beginner or a pro, you can create a website that meets your specific needs.
Works with What You Use: Power Pages integrates seamlessly with other Microsoft services like Dynamics 365 and Power BI. This lets you easily use your existing data and functionalities to create a powerful website experience.
Integration of Maplytics with Power Pages
Maplytics seamlessly integrates with Power Pages, allowing users to visualize Microsoft Dynamics 365 records directly on a map embedded within the website. This empowers authorized users and even guests on the website to interact with the map and leverage its data visualization capabilities.
Consider you have a website Woody Barn which is a Furniture Store Locator available for all. Suppose our Ron has recently shifted to a new city. He is confused about shopping locally and needs to buy a few furniture pieces. With technology at his fingertips, Ron has a quick solution. He checks out your Website of a local furniture store chain, plots his current location, and finds out the store branches near his location.
Ron thus, seamlessly picks up the nearest branch and hops on his journey to buy the required furniture. Technology makes life easy without Ron being an existing client of the furniture brand or requiring a member sign-in.
Considering this Website of Woody Barn, which Ron referred to for his furniture purchase. Selecting the current location option, Ron’s GPS location will be set, and the outlets of the Company within the proximity of ‘x’ miles can be plotted on the map. A corresponding list of the plotted outlets will also be listed on the left.
Clicking the ‘Get Direction’ option, opens the navigation directions from the Current Location of the user to the Record Location. Clicking on individual records in the list opens a Tooltip Card to display more details of that record. Records can also be filtered out using the ‘Search by Keywords’ option. More on the functionality and the required configuration steps can be explored in Maplytics docs.
Here are the other upgrades from the June 2024 Release
Mass Frequency Update
The availability of a client and the required frequency of the appointment can now be updated in a go using ‘Mass Frequency Update’.
Characteristic Based SchedulingApart from planning the schedules based on the client availability and frequency of visits, the Auto Scheduling feature enables a user to schedule based on Resource Characteristics as well.
Suppose Percy is a field rep who works for an Air Conditioning Brand. He excels in diagnosing complex electrical and mechanical faults for HVAC systems. If a work order is generated for a persistent fan control problem, the Manager would want Percy, who is specialized in the diagnostic skill to be assigned to this work order rather than any other nearby field rep. The skills of all the reps are updated as ‘Characteristics’ within CRM and the same can be leveraged for efficient scheduling.
Incidents and characteristics can be added to a work order within Dynamics 365 Field Service.
To schedule work orders based on characteristics, users can go to Maplytics Settings >> Maplytics Configurations >> Auto Scheduling Tab and enable the ‘Enable Characteristic Based Scheduling’ checkbox.
Once enabled, the characteristics of the resources will also be considered while scheduling appointments. A field rep could have multiple characteristics and the work orders requiring one of those skills could be assigned to them. So, if Percy is skilled with diagnosis as well as Performance Evaluation, he could be assigned to those work orders as well.
Plot By Template
This option helps the user to plot the predefined search criteria in Detail Map. The user can save the search criteria as a template and use the ‘By Template’ search option to quickly plot the data with that search criteria. This helps the user to save a considerable amount of time.
With the June 2024 Release, the User can plot the required criteria on the map and use the button ‘Save template’ to save the search criteria along with the pushpins and their colors as a template. The same pushpins and color details will be plotted on the map when the saved template is opened again!
Plotting for 1: N, N:1 relationship for Multi-Address Plotting
In addition to the regular multi-address plotting process, the user can now select the 1: N or N:1 relationship in Link To, and accordingly, the data will be plotted.
Suppose a user selects the Customer Address (1: N) relationship within the Entity Map then, by selecting it in the Multiple Addresses window all the customer address pushpins for that plotted records can be visualized.
25000 records displayed in Plot Entity Record
The records of the entity dataset on which the PCF control has been added get plotted on the map by default. With the new release, up to 25,000 records will be plotted as clusters on the map with an information bar. Users can view the next batch of 25,000 records by clicking the ‘Load More’ option on the bar.
What’s More?
Maplytics is like water that can be moulded into any role. It makes map integration within Dynamics 365 look seamless. Radius Search, Route Mapping, and more have become super easy to use. To get more acquainted and experience it first-hand, one can write to crm@inogic.com To investigate the product further, with a personalized demo within Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM / Dataverse get in touch with the team.
For applied knowledge, do visit our Website or Microsoft AppSource. One can hop on to the detailed Blogs, Client Testimonials, Success Stories, Industry Applications, and Video Library for a quick query resolution. You can also leave us a review or write about your experience on AppSource or G2 Website.
