SharePoint & Google Maps – Your Options

I’ve was asked recently about adding mapping information onto our intranet, making it easier for staff to locate company properties. Although there is a lot of information out there connected with using Google maps on SharePoint, there is a lot of variation in it’s use. Summarized below are really the 3 (free) options you have got.

Option 1 – Static map

Follow the step by step instructions here. This will display mapping information on the web page, but the location is fixed. For a slightly better option insert a content editor web part and copy across the code from here. This can be made a little more dynamic if you apply for a Google API key – which is fairly easy to do! and follow some of the instructions.

You will have to manually insert the location (lat/long) in the code, but it only requires modify access to the web page not MOSS server.

Option 2 – Map displayed by selecting location from a list.

But what if you want to display a map by clicking on an address in a SharePoint list. This requires a more complex solution than option 1. There may be other examples of this, but the best solution I found was here at AMREIN ENGINEERING AG. Screenshot of my solution below. Check out their other free web parts – some of which are particularly awesome.

 

The instructions are concise and (if your knowledge of MOSS is sufficient) relatively easy to implement. It will involve amending the web.config file and adding some dll’s – so access to the MOSS server is required.

The only downside I came up with was that you have to display the latitude and longitude columns in the list view on the web page.

If like in Option 1 you apply for the Google API code, the map is dynamic.

Option 3 – Like option 2 but with more bells and whistles

Option 2 might suffice, but you might want contact information to pop up when you click on the map pin, or for directions to the location to be an option.

In this instance, I found web parts/code at Codeplex to be a good place to start with examples such as adding a map to a contacts list. To display points and locations on a Google map and get directions to and from that point you might want to consider this. Although this solution requires a pretty good knowledge of installing wsp files and stsadm configuration commands.

Again these solutions require access to the MOSS server and my advice here is to try these out on development servers beforehand and know what each stsadm command does what.

Hope the info helps…