Integrating Mappoint into the Customer form...

At today's webinar, I demonstrated how managed code can be called from a form, to get a bitmap showing the customer's address. The bitmap is found on the address pane, and is updated as the user steps from one record to another.

All the magic happens in the UpdateBitmap method on the form (it is called from the datasource when a new record is selected). It will instantiate a new instance of Mappoint.MappointInterface and call the Find method with the address. It returns a name of a temporary file containing the bitmap (OK, this is not ideal, but this is not production code) that is subsequently loaded into the control.

You'll find the code for the assembly I wrote for this in the enclosed solution. It relies on having a mappoint account, which is readily available from the mappoint site (start from https://www.microsoft.com/mappoint/products/webservice/default.mspx). My username and password were issued to me for a specific purpose, namely teaching. I cannot in good conscience distribute code containing this information, so I've just provided a placeholder in the code for you to put in your credentials. 

There are other vendors providing this sort of mapping through web services, but my affiliation with MS does not allow me to go into details about them...

You can pick up the bits at my personal FTP site  (for want of a better place to put it). Point your browser to ftp://ftp.villadsen.dk/MappointInCustTable.zip, and you should be good to go.

Comments

• Anonymous
  August 16, 2010
   Can you assist ? I am trying to embed the MapPoint ActiveX control in a Dynamics AX 2009 form. I can see the controls first level of methods and objects cannot access anything beyond that.ie, cannot access the ActiveMap, Toolbars, Locations. What am I missing? Mel   msumrell@priefert.com