Updated: Mar 13, 2019
When working with MicroStrategy, things can get complicated quick. Sometimes we (as developers) over complicate things unnecessarily though. In a recent project I needed to allow for real-time locations based directions to customer accounts. The account address information was easily accessible contained within a MicroStrategy attribute. Getting Direction? No Problem.
Initially I thought I needed to tie into the Google maps API, but there is an easier way. We’re going to use the URL API for out of the box driving directions. It’s really very simple and we only need the users device to allow access to their current location.
I’m going to start with a simple dossier which has 5 tech companies in Silicon Valley. Ideally I will have an attribute which has the complete address for the location but if it isn’t available we can concatenate the address elements to get the complete address.
In this case I have an attribute which has the complete address information (Address, City, State, Zip). I’m going to use this attribute. Now, I’m going to create a derived attribute (element) within the dossier by right clicking the address attribute and selecting the “Create links..” option.
In the “Url Display Text” I’m going to input “Go” as a placeholder but you can input anything you’d like. In my real use case I used the account name as the URL Display Text and used this attribute instead of the account attribute.
Continuing with our example, within the “Navigate to this URL” input text below followed by the address attribute.
https://www.google.com/maps?saddr=My+Location&daddr=
Now save the attribute and add it to the grid. You should now be able to click the “Go” link and get directions to the location.
In this example I covered the steps in a dossier but you might need to place this into a document. Not a problem. Just follow these same steps in a dossier and import the dossier into the document as a new layout. You can then copy and paste the grid anywhere you need in the document
There are other methods of getting directions, but this is a quick and direct method of getting directions.
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