Geocoding

Geocoding is the process of converting addresses (like a street address) into geographic coordinates (like latitude and longitude). Reverse geocoding converts latitude and longitude into an address. You can use Woodford for geocoding user records according to their addresses – this means that the address information of the records can be translated into raw GPS data, which the mobile application needs to display records properly on the map.

Resco supports geocoding with multiple third-party map providers:

• Azure
• Bing (being deprecated by Microsoft)
• Google
• OpenStreetMap

Resco Mobile CRM needs GPS coordinates to display multiple locations on the map. If you only want to display a single location, you can use a street address.

Retrieving data

1. Select Geocoding from the Administration menu in Woodford.
2. Select your map provider and enter the map key.
3. Select an entity. Geocoding only makes sense for entities that include address information.
4. Select which fields of the entity should be used as street, city, state, postal code, and country. For example, choose Address1_city as CITY, Address1_zip as POSTAL CODE, etc.
5. Check Set additional street fields if the entity has multiple fields for street that you want to use. You can also set their order by adjusting the {1} {0} {2} string parameter (e.g. {2} {1} {0})
6. As Latitude and Longitude select the fields where geographic coordinates should be saved.
7. Click Fetch data to load data from the server.
8. Optionally, use filter to limit the amount of fetched data.
9. Check Find position by query if your data is incomplete, for example missing city. The map provider will use a different algorithm to find the location.

Working with records and saving changes

Do one of the following:

• Click Find Position to use the address data of the records to find latitude and longitude.
• Click Find Address to use latitude and longitude to find address data.

Once you have the records, you can filter them:

• All – shows all records
• New – shows records that received the GPS coordinates after geocoding and didn't have any prior GPS information (green color)
• Changed – shows records that had their GPS coordinates updated – they had GPS information before geocoding (blue color)
• Failed – records which have failed geocoding (red color)
• Empty Lat/Lon – records which had no GPS data before geocoding (red color)
• Modified – ?

To manually edit a record, use the detail view.

• Click the [i] button in a record to access the detail view.
• Here, you can type location information, drag the pin on the map to correct GPS coordinates or perform a manual search.
• If you want to keep your manual changes, select Location and/or Address and click Confirm.

When you are done with geocoding, click Save to save any changes.

Generating API keys

When setting up geocoding in Woodford, you need to enter the API key of a map provider. For your convenience, the following sections explain how to generate suitable API keys from different providers. Note that the user interfaces of third-party services may change without notice.

Google Maps

1. Go to the Google Cloud console and create a new key.
2. Optionally, choose the API Restriction "Geocoding API".
3. Optionally, restrict the API key to your CRM websites or generally to https://*.dynamics.com
4. Link the Google API project with your Billing Account (see APIs and billing).

Azure Maps

• Follow instructions in Microsoft documentation.

OpenStreetMap

• Before you can start using the OSM API, you need to sign up for an account and obtain an API key. You can do this by visiting the OpenStreetMap API website and following the instructions provided. Once you have your API key, you can begin making requests to the OSM API.

Bing Maps

• Bing Maps service is deprecated and it’s not possible to generate new API key.

See also

This article describes how admins can manage addresses/GPS coordinates in bulk. For information about how field users of Resco mobile apps can set the address and/or GPS coordinates of a record to their current position, see Different uses for Update Address command.