Setting up locations

BMC Digital Workplace  provides an intuitive experience for users to search for locations and assets such as conference rooms, offices, printers, and other resources that they need. BMC Digital Workplace  is context- and location-aware, enabling users to find nearby resources, "follow" resource status updates, and "update" resource status to help other users.

To set up a location, you first add a location to BMC Digital Workplace , and then add floor maps to the location and assets to the floor maps. Locations added to the BMC Digital Workplace  Admin console appear as choices in the user application's Settings > Home location selector, which determines the location-aware broadcasts users receive by default. When you delete a location, you can choose to delete all associated floor maps and assets.

Example

John, a member of the the professional services group, receives a request to attend a session the next day in an unfamiliar city. Given the short notice, John wants to find the campus from the airport without having to search the internet for the specific address. Upon arrival, John starts BMC Digital Workplace  from his mobile device. BMC Digital Workplace  retrieves the geographical coordinates of John's current location and displays the closest campus location. BMC Digital Workplace  uses Apple Maps to provide a route to the location John chooses.

After successfully locating the campus with BMC Digital Workplace , John enters Building 4. He checks his watch—the session starts in a few minutes, and no one is behind the information desk to help him locate his room. Using BMC Digital Workplace , John accesses the campus floor maps. Looking at the assets marked on his current floor, he sees the location of the elevators. With a few more taps, John sees a label pinpointing the location of the conference room, and he also sees a lavatory on the way. John confidently makes his way to the conference room (with a short stop along the way) and arrives on time.

Video demonstration: Setting up locations

The following video (4:40) provides an overview and demonstration how you can enable a Google Maps license, add locations, create floor maps, and add assets to the floor maps in BMC Digital Workplace .

https://youtu.be/QIIuHNMMADI

Before you begin

Read the use case for finding places and assets.

You must enable a maps license, as described in Enabling a maps license. Users select their location from a map. The map is displayed only if you enable a maps license.

To add locations manually  

After you save a location with an address, BMC Digital Workplace  automatically adds a map. The Name, Phone, Address, and Profile Image values are displayed in the location's profile. The profile image also appears in the list of locations and in the map pin for the location. Images must be 320x200 pixels, 640x400 pixels, or another size with the same aspect ratio. The profile image supports .gif, .jpg, .png, and .bmp file types.

To add locations automatically as a bulk import

Import locations into BMC Digital Workplace  by using a comma-separated values (CSV) file in the following format:

# ExternalId*,name*,address*,phone,desc,siteName*,longitude,latitude,timeZone*,type
999,BMC Houston,"2101 City W Blvd Houston, TX 77042",713-918-8800,http://www.bmc.com,BMCHQ,,,America/Chicago,0

Example: Locations CSV file in Microsoft Excel

The locations CSV file must meet the following requirements:

• The file must be in MS-DOS, comma-delimited format.
• Fields with asterisks (for example, siteName*) must contain an entry.
• The ExternalId field (used for API integration and location updates) cannot be duplicated in the database.
• The field names in the file must match the field names in BMC Digital Workplace .
• The phone number cannot contain spaces.
• If an entry in a field contains spaces, the entry must be enclosed in quotation marks.

• The entry in the desc field must contain fewer than 255 characters.

• The time zone in the file must be correct, because you cannot change it in the BMC Digital Workplace  Admin console.

  Important

  The desktop Universal Client, Admin console, and Android mobile client will not show location maps unless a valid maps API license is installed. For more information, see Enabling a maps license.

Floor maps

After you create a location, you can create floor maps. When you delete a floor map, assets on the map are not deleted; they are listed as unused assets.

To create a new floor map  

Floor maps in BMC Digital Workplace  have the following specifications:

• Supported file types: .jpg, .gif, and .png 
• Optimum file size: 300 KB
• Optimum resolution: 2475x1900 pixels (although it is not required)

To modify a floor map

If you replace an existing floor map with a new floor map image, the original asset pin markers remain. You might have to adjust the locations of the pins to correspond with the locations on the new floor map, especially if the size of the new image is different from that of the original.

Where to go from here

Adding assets