Updates of Note - May 2020

Hello Map Fam.

Yeah, we know, it has been a while since our last update. Our team has been hard at work over the last few months streamlining things on the back-end - if all went to plan, you were not the wiser. At your leisure, track updates big and small here.

We have also spent time creating video tutorials that walk through common workflows like creating your first map, starting from excel files, editing and syncing maps, and using custom pin images.

From a capability perspective, we added delights to make your experience that much more streamlined.

You can now create heat maps based on pin weight, as well as set icon size based on pin weight. Previously “the heat” on a heat map was based solely on pin count. A new video tutorial that walks you through it can be found here.

COVID-19 Cases as of 5/12/2020

Rather than being presented with our landing page when you log in, we are now routing you to a customized dashboard where you can sync, print, view, and see when each of your maps was last publicly viewed.
You can now sign in with one click if your username is the same as your Gmail/G Suite address. One click sign-up has also been enabled via OAuth2, though since you’re not a new user you probably don’t care.

On a far less exciting note, turns out subscriptions to mapalist are considered taxable digital goods by “the man” per D.C. Code § 47-2001(d-1). As a result, we will be implementing a 6% sales tax starting this week. The incremental 6% will apply to all future charges/invoices issued.

Do let us know if there is a pain point you are experiencing that we need to focus on. We seek that squeaky wheel.

Stay healthy, and try to cook something different this weekend?

Cheers,

Benjy and Brian

Taking your Maps to the Next Level

As our user count has steadily grown, the MapAList support team has received an increasing number of calls and e-mails from users looking to do more with our solution. Over 80% of the feature requests we’ve received are, well, features that already exist within the base MapAList solution. What does that tell us? What it tells me is that we need to do a better job articulating the feature set MapAList has to offer out of the box...and that’s exactly what we’re going to do. For the next several weeks we will be publishing installments of Taking Your Maps to the Next Level – a series of short tutorials meant to enable you, the user, to get more out of MapAList. Each installment will focus on a single feature, show examples of both spreadsheets and maps, and provide step by step instructions to make it work. Here’s the current plan… 01/02/09 – Basic Grouping to Show Differentiation 01/09/09 – Advanced Grouping to Show Differentiation 01/16/09 – Adding Hyperlinks to Your Map Points 01/23/0...

New Video Tutorials (Updated)

We decided to experiment and create some video tutorials in the hope they might be more effective instruction and better at getting the word out about what features exist in mapalist and how to utilize them. We hope you find value in the first few we put out. Creating your First Map Using Custom Icons Starting from an Excel Sheet Editing your Maps, Post-Creation Syncing your Map and Google Sheet

Allow your Member/User Base to Add Pins to your Map Using Google Forms

As the MapAList user base has grown over the past couple of years, one of the things we’ve noticed is that we have a ton of organizations leveraging our toolset to map their member/user bases. Religious organizations use MapAList to track their congregations; alumni associations use MapAList to track their members; campaigns and non-profits use MapAList to track their supporters/donors…you get the point. The reason I bring this up is because a few of these organizations have gotten smart and realized that they could push the work of updating their maps out to the user based directly using Google Forms. It’s like self check-out at the grocery store – the users love it because they are empowered (and because it’s a novelty to scan those barcodes) and so does the store because it reduces labor. Sounds cool – right? Well, implementing such a solution on your site with MapAList is not terribly difficult. Those folks at Google have made Google Forms easy to design and feed to a G...

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