GoMaps

How It Works

An overview of GoMaps

GoMaps is a FileMaker Go app for iPad and iPhone that lets you visualize your data on an interactive Google map. Customers use GoMaps as the basis for their own mobile solutions, adding new fields and new tables to the unlocked GoMaps file. Such files are ideal for...

Inspecting Properties Visiting Customers Making Deliveries Any Service-based mobile business.

Watch an overview of GoMaps in action.

GoMaps works offline and can sync data with your hosted FileMaker database. GoMaps ships with a sample hosted file, and instructions for pointing the sync at *your* hosted file instead. The sync in GoMaps is done using GoZync which is already wired into GoMaps.

GoZync Licenses

You will need GoZync licenses in order to sync.You can purchase these here. If you'd like to know why we use GoMaps offline, instead of live, check this out.

Files

The purchased GoMaps download is comprised of the following files:

The Host folder - Files for your Host or Server

GoMapsHosted - a placeholder for your hosted database

GoZyncHosted - the sync controller file (part of GoZync)

The Local folder: Files for your iPad

GoMaps - the GoMaps interface your mobile users will work with

GoZyncMobile - the local sync controller file (part of GoZync)

(For more on how this setup works to sync your files, see this map of sync.)

Getting Started: on the desktop

You can open GoMaps.fmp12 on your desktop or laptop and play with "most" of GoMap's features. Navigate to the map, filter the list of properties, and click on a point on the map to see details.

If you open all the files (every file in the Host and Local folders) you can even see how the sync works: change a few properties in GoMapsHosted and then navigate to the home screen in GoMaps and click the "pull" icon to bring those changes down to the GoMaps file (that would normally be on your iPad).

The make some changes to a property in GoMaps and use the "push" icon to send those changes to GoMapsHosted. You can customize this sync later, creating "round trip" syncs or syncing just individual records, but by default, GoMaps pushes or pulls anything changed since the last sync.

Getting Started: on your iPad

You can also play with GoMaps on your iPad. Email the file to yourself or drag it to your iPad using iTunes. (Eventually, you'll use GoZync to distribute new mobile files to your users.)

To play with the sync you'll want to put GoZyncMobile on your iPad also, but before you do you'll need to tell it where the hosted copy of GoZyncHosted lives.

If you're familiar with FileMaker, host all the files in the folder "host" and the exit the External Data Source reference in GoZyncMobile, replacing the "your server.com" reference for GoZyncHosted with the address of your host or server.

If you're new to all this, read this article on how GoZync uses External Data Sources and how to change them.

Once the "host" files are hosted, and the "local" files are on your iPad, you can play with all the GoMaps features and start to think about how your mobile users will want their data set up.