Mapify

Mapify

THIS PROJECT IS NOT READY FOR DISTRIBUTION. Contributions welcome, but there are a couple key features that aren't quite feasible yet.

Wondering which neighborhoods need a new Small Group? Or where your attendees actually come from? See people from any search (or org or any other scenario with a Blue Toolbar) on a highly-interactive globe of the world.

Features

This script does two things:

1. Geocode the addresses of people who have them, and
2. Display results of a search (or Involvement or anything with a Blue Toolbar) on a highly-interactive and engaging map.

Details

The globe is provided by Cesium, a really awesome geospatial visualization tool, because it handles large and dynamic datasets better than Google Maps. Each unique address will be represented by a dot on the map, and the size of the dot is proportional to the number of people within the set at that address.

To make this work well at scale, all records in your database will be geocoded and saved to Extra Values on each person's record. This process will happen gradually, probably over a few days. Your maps won't be very exciting until that process is complete.

Installation

1. You will need a free Access Token from Cesium Ion. Save it as a setting with the name "CesiumKey".
2. You will need a Google Geocoding API Key saved to a setting called "GoogleGeocodeAPIKey". This is the same setting used for TouchPoint's built-in Small Group Finder. You can find instructions for creating an API Key in the TouchPoint documentation.
3. To use the default imaging providers, you will need to sign up for a (free) Stadia Maps account. Once your account is created, use Domain authentication, and enter the domain for TouchPoint (e.g. mychurch.tpsdb.com).
4. Download the Mapify zip file from the releases and install it at mychurch.tpsdb.com/InstallPyScriptProject. This will install the script, and add the geocoding task to your morning batch. The geocoding task will work through your database around 1000 records per day, prioritizing those who have been active-ish recently. This should keep geocoding costs within Google's free tier. It will also add the report to your Blue Toolbar menu.
5. Optional: You may want to add the geocoding Extra Values as Standard Extra Values to prevent users from errantly modifying them. The three Extra Value names used by default are geoLat,geoLng, and geoHsh and all use the type "Text (single line)". At Tenth, we have them restricted to the Developer role, because none of our users really need this. You can still query them in SQL without direct access, if you're into that.

The 'Mapify' report probably won't be very useful until after a few days of geocoding. You can check how many people have been geocoded by creating a Search (Builder) searching for people who have an "Extra Value Text" Not Equal to "" (blank) with the name "GeoLat"

To-Do

• Report the number of records not shown. (Pending PR to TouchPoint.)
• Get >1000 results. (Pending PR to TouchPoint.)
• Move script to CDN.
• Make colors dynamic from a collection of standard fields.

Maybe someday

• Find people using geocoder search field
• Custom coloring criteria