MapForums

Hello all –

New member here –

I’ve concentrated on Microsoft Streets and Trips for last 8 years, as the lower cost and feature set are a good fit for the average sales rep. I’m familiar with MapPoint – and remember you can create ‘com-add ins’ as I recall to automate mapping processes.

I’ve run into a prospect that has a requirement that can’t be accomplished elegantly with Streets and Trips, and I beg your indulgence here to let me describe to you the basic feature set of the request – and then get your input on some of the tools/skill sets required to accomplish the task .

Here goes: My prospect is looking to have a mapping program that is tied to his Goldmine CRM application. The mapping application would pull data from Goldmine – plotting customer and prospect locations on the map. The pushpin icon would be based on a status field in the Goldmine account record. So for instance, all prospects that were forecasted to close within 90 days would be a gold circle. Upon double clicking the pushpin, a balloon would open up with customer defined Goldmine field data showing pertinent account data.

MapPoint and Goldmine would reside on the same network, and I would envision choosing an add-in from the MapPoint menu bar that automatically went out to the Goldmine tables, extracted the data and populated the map as described. An additional nice feature might be to be able to click a link in the balloon to bring user directly to the GoldMine application record.

I’m not a programmer – but am a quick study. I’m trying to determine if this project is something I should tackle. So my questions to the forum are – does the functionality described here seem like it’s doable in MapPoint (I’m guessing yes – barring any difficulty accessing potential proprietary Goldmine tables)? And if so, what programming knowledge will I need to acquire – like – must I learn SQL, etc.?

Thanks very much in advance for any help on the subject!

Yes it sounds do-able, but I'm not sure about this

>>An additional nice feature might be to be able to click a link in the balloon to bring user directly to the GoldMine application record.<<

You can put a URL on the Pushpin, but I doubt a Goldmine application record can be reference by a URL? Maybe you can do it by monitoring the mouse click events and have the MapPoint com add-in automate Goldmine? I am not sure.

I would see if you can first just export the data from Goldmine to an Excel spreadsheet, and then map it in MapPoint using the data import wizard. i.e. before you spend any time in books or delving into the programming, first mock up the map and how you want the map designed in MapPoint. Then you already have the map you want, even though it took several steps and clicks to get there.

hope this helps,
Eric

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Thanks Eric - Yes, I agree accessing speciifc Goldmine record would be tough. In my work with Streets and Trips, I can include a URL in the pin to start the CRM app, but still need to navigate to the individual record once it's open.

Thanks very much for quick response!

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