Quicklinks & Featured Locations for eXplorer Map

In this article, we will show you how to create and customise quicklinks & featured locations for eXplorer map.

Quicklinks and featured locations apply to Mobile, Desktop & Interactive Kiosk search layout in eXplorer map.

Depending on the settings configured, when a user clicks on the search section they will see the following:

Featured locations to highlight suggested locations or promoted/anchor tenants
Popular search results which will automatically appear based previous search history
Quick Link filters which are customisable and help users to quickly find common places (i.e. click on a Restrooms icon and all Restrooms in the venue appear)

This is how the search view might look like on Interactive Kiosk

You can adjust these configurations depending on what you want to display. The benefit for utilising these features ensures hot-spot locations are more accessible for customers as well as enjoying an increased positive user experience.

The information below includes more details on Search Enhancements, the sections have been divided for your convenience, if needed.

Quick Link Filters settings

Once you create a Quick Link filter successfully, you need to go into Digital Sign Manager and activate the final step to make it appear in the Mobile, Desktop & Interactive Kiosk search layout (more details below)

Steps

1. In the PAM navigation menu, click on Settings

2. Inside settings, click on Map Configuration

3. Click on the SEARCH tab

4. The disclaimer states the purpose of Quick Link Filters

5. The [+ ADD NEW FILTER] button lets you create another Quick Link Filter

6. Here you can see your current existing Quick Link Filters

Creating a Quick Link Filter

Steps

After clicking [+ADD NEW FILTER] the image below will appear.

We will be creating a FIRST AID Quick Link Filter in this example

7. Name your Quick Link using the Label field (i.e. First aid). This is the name that appears on the Mobile, Desktop & Interactive Kiosk search layout

8. Select a pre-filled search term for your Quick Link or type in your own (i.e. Emergency)

You need to ensure you enter the most accurate / correct search term to trigger the most results.

The search term entered will be searching through the selected search criteria to find a match

As an example, 'Parking' would return ALL Parking eg: VIP Parking, Event Parking and Free Parking.
You can choose to be more specific, by adding ‘VIP Parking’ which would only return VIP Parking.

9. Open the search criteria dropdown and select the options presented to generate results for your quick link. This means the search term you have inserted in step 8 will filter through the selected search criteria options

The search criteria options include:

Destination Dictionary / Tenant Display name: This will search through the ‘Destination Dictionary / Tenant Directory’ name assigned to a location

Destination Dictionary / Tenant Search tags: These are the search tags you may have included inside the Destination Dictionary / Tenant Directory. For First aid, this could be #first aid , #AED, or #emergency

Destination Dictionary Category: This will search through the ‘Dictionary Category’ of the Dictionary Item that is assigned to a location. eg: The Dictionary Item Kitchen may have a Dictionary Category labelled Back Of House.

Destination Dictionary IMDF category: These are the additional categories you have linked your destination dictionary items with. You will have a range of options to choose from and can select the category that relates the closest to your quick link filter

Tenant Directory Category: This will search through the ‘Tenant Category’ of the Tenant assigned to a location. eg: McDonalds is the tenant name and it’s category can be labelled Food & Beverage

Tenant Directory Sub Category: These are the sub-categories you have linked your tenants to. Sub category is helpful if you want to be more specific. (i.e. the category is Food & Beverage and sub category is Coffee)

The search term name searches through any of the search criteria options you have activated and if there is a match it will be counted as a result for that quick link filter.

For example, a search term name is EMERGENCY:

It will go through DISPLAY NAME for anything that contains EMERGENCY as it’s name

It will go through SEARCH TAGS for anything that contains #emergency

It will go through DICTIONARY CATEGORY for anything that contains EMERGENCY as a category

It will go through DICTIONARY IMDF CATEGORY for anything that contains EMERGENCY as a category

It will go through TENANT CATEGORY for anything that contains EMERGENCY as a category

It will go through TENANT SUB CATEGORY for anything that contains EMERGENCY as a category

If the search criteria is met in any of the selected options it will show results.

For example DISPLAY NAME is First aid but SEARCH TAGS is #emergency the result would be recognised if the search criteria SEARCH TAGS was selected regardless if DISPLAY NAME was chosen or not. Therefore to be specific you will have the option of including certain search criteria when required.

10. Select an icon from the dropdown

To learn how to upload more icons, click here

11. You can see a preview of the selected icon here

12. Save changes

13. In the Quick Link Filters home page, you can now see your newly created Quick Link Filter

14. The results are automatically generated, it will pop up as green with the total number of results the Quick Link contains and appear automatically in the Interactive Kiosk Global settings

15. You can click the settings icon to re run the results if you have linked it to more locations which will increase your result count

If no results are generated, the Quick Link filter will pop up as red and wouldn’t be available for selection in Digital Sign Manager as shown in the photo below.

Activating your Quick Link Filters

To activate Quick Link filters in the global settings, ensure you have done these two things correctly.

You have created your Quick Link filter
The created Quick Link filter contains results

If these two aspects are not met, you need to do them first before proceeding with the article.

Steps

1. In the PAM navigation menu, go to 360 Planner > Digital Signs

2. Click on [SIGN CONFIGURATION] tab

3. Click on Interactive Kiosk

4. The right-hand side will pop up with its properties, select the SEARCH tab and then scroll down to the Quick Link Filters section

5. There is a disclaimer that tells you where to manage Quick Link Filters and only 8 filters can be live at the same time

6. We can see our newly made Quick Link ‘First Aid’ appear here because it contains results

7. Each quick link will contain results of how many locations are linked to them. (i.e. First aid has 2 results).
Quick links with no results will not appear here, you will need to go back and edit it within Settings

8. Activate the toggle to make a Quick Link live in the Interactive Kiosk. We will activate ‘First aid'

9. Save changes

Creating a Specialised Quick Link Filter

You can also use the Quick Link Filter feature to support promotional branding at your location. We will use the example of the ‘NFL’. When a user sees the NFL icon as part of the Quick Link Filter, it will show them all locations related to the NFL.

Steps - Uploading your own NFL icon

1. In the PAM navigation menu, go to Library > Icons

2. Select [+ADD ICON]

3. Upload SVG file of your icon

4. Upload PNG file of your icon for dark mode

5. Upload PNG file of your icon for light mode

6. Type in a name for the icon (e.g. NFL)

7. Fill in print code (e.g. NFL)

8. Fill in Text to speech (e.g. NFL)

9. Assign the logo to a category (e.g. Logos)

10. Save changes

11. Now you can see the logo has successfully been uploaded.

For more in-depth articles on icons, please click here

Steps - Creating your own NFL Quick Link Filter

1. In the PAM navigation menu, go to Settings

2. Click on Map Configuration

3. Click on Search

4. Select [+ADD NEW FILTER]

5. Name your Quick Link using the Label field (i.e. NFL). This is the name that appears on the Mobile, Desktop & Interactive Kiosk search layout

6. Select a pre-filled search term for your Quick Link or type in your own (i.e. Emergency)

7. Open the search criteria dropdown and select the options presented to generate results for your quick link. This means the search term you have inserted in step 8 will filter through the selected search criteria options

For the detailed explanation, please go back to the section above on creating filters. You can click here

8. Select the dropdown and your NFL icon should appear for selection

9. You will see a preview of the icon you selected

10. Save changes

11. You will notice that NFL has been successfully created but there are no results appearing.

To have results appear, you need to link your Destination Dictionary items to a location you have created in Map Editor.

For more detail on adding map features and putting dictionary items in Map Editor, please click here

We will show you a quick example on how to link a dictionary item in Map Editor

12. In the PAM navigation menu, go to Map Editor

13. Select a drawn building on the map (If you have nothing drawn, refer to the link before step 12 for assistance)

14. The right-hand side will pop up and you will click on the dropdown to select a Dictionary item.
Since we are NFL-themed, we will select NFL Building to be linked to this building. This building is now effectively known as NFL Building when users view this on the Interactive Kiosk

15. Save changes

16. We will now go back to the Quick Link Filter area inside settings

17. Click on the settings icon for the NFL icon. This will go through the search criteria to look for results again

18. Now you should see 4 results appear. (We didn’t show you that we created three more locations in Map Editor for NFL that is why there is 4 instead of 1)

We need to activate our Quick Link Filter before viewing it on the Interactive Kiosk. To learn how to do this, you need to return to the Activating your Quick Link Filters section for more

We will proceed with showing you the end-result of having a specialised Quick Link Filter.

Steps - Viewing your NFL Quick Link Filter on the Mobile, Desktop & Interactive Kiosk search layout

1. In the PAM navigation menu, go to 360 Planner > Digital Signs

2. Select DIGITAL SIGN MAP tab

3. Select an Interactive Kiosk digital sign (make sure it says Interactive Kiosk when selecting the layout) and you will see the right-hand side column appear with all the individual settings

4. On the right-hand side pop out, click on SignID and go to the new tab

5. Click on the search icon

6. The NFL icon has now appeared. Click on it.

7. Now, every time a customer clicks on the NFL icon, they will see all places related to the NFL for their pleasure and convenience in accessing a brand’s locations quickly.

Global Configuration Settings - Search Enhancements

These settings apply globally to Mobile, Desktop and all Interactive Kiosks

Steps
1. In the PAM navigation menu, go to 360 Planner > Digital Signs

2. Select the SIGN CONFIGURATION tab

3. Select Interactive Kiosk from the list and you will see the right-hand side column appear with all the global settings

4. Select the SEARCH tab (or else you will not see the following steps)

Featured Locations

5. Click on the dropdown to add locations that will appear as featured locations for customers to instantly see when using the search feature

6. You can arrange the order of how the locations are ordered by dragging them around

7. These are the current locations that will appear in the Kiosk map underneath Featured. Locations can include tenants who occupy an area in the venue or popular spots

8. Click the 'X' button to remove the location from the suggested list

External Location

9. This entire section is covered in another article, please click on this link

10. Include in search results and routing: Activating this toggle will show search results and routes that are outside of your location (venue) perimeter. An example of this is if a customer searches for ‘airport’, they will see search results appear for airport. When activated, more options will appear which is covered in another article that is mentioned in step 9.

We have already covered Quick Link Filters in the section above, please refer to Activating your Quick Link Filters section for more.

Individual Configuration Settings - Search Enhancements

This section of the article shows you where to adjust and change INDIVIDUAL settings of a Kiosk so that on an Interactive Kiosk, you will see one sign with these changes only.
For example, if you make changes to Kiosk no.5, then only Kiosk no.5 will contain those new changes.

This is scene specific as well.
For e.g. Ingress scene for game day at stadium does not include Parking, however Egress scene does.

To learn about scenes, click here: Creating and activating scenes

Steps
1. In the PAM navigation menu, go to 360 Planner > Digital Signs

2. Select the DIGITAL SIGN MAP tab

3. Select an Interactive Kiosk digital sign. Make sure it says Interactive Kiosk when selecting the layout on the right-hand side column as it appears with all the individual settings

4. Click on the SEARCH tab

Featured Locations

5. Click on the dropdown to add a new location

6. You can rearrange the order of how the locations are presented by clicking the [=] icon to move them around in different order

7. [RESET THIS PROPERTY OVERRIDE] will make the locations reset to the global configuration settings.

8. Alternatively, you can also press the 'X' button to remove a location individually

External Locations

9. Include in search results and routing: Activating this toggle will show search results and routes that are outside of your location (venue) perimeter. An example of this is if a customer searches for ‘airport’, they will see search results appear for airport

Individual Configuration Settings - Quick Link Filters

Quick Link Filters

10. Your available quick link filters for activation will pop up here

11. These are the number of results that each quick link contains

12. Activating the toggle makes that quick link appear on the interactive kiosk

13. The activation status of a quick link filter in an individual kiosk will always override the global configuration settings. (i.e. If First aid was disabled globally but activated individually for Kiosk no.5 then no matter what happens globally, kiosk no.5 will always have the First aid quick link filter active)

14. Select the 'X' button to remove the quick link for this specific sign

Digital Sign Preview

15. Select the search icon to preview your current changes

16. You can see ‘McDonalds’ as a featured location in the preview

17. You can also see a popular search result (Lake Park) which had been searched before on the Interactive Kiosk

18. The quick link filters will always appear at the bottom. Since we have activated only five quick link filters, all five are visible in the Kiosk. The other three are deactivated.

19. You can see the search feature at the bottom. This is where the user can search for something that hasn’t been suggested

20. Save changes

Frequently asked questions: I created a Quick Link filter but I get zero results. How do I fix this?

After creating your own Quick Link Filter and following the steps in this article, your Quick Link might still have zero results as shown in the photo below.

Your problem may come from one or a combination of these two things:

Your search term is incorrect
You may have not selected any search criteria’s / the selected search criteria's doesn’t contain the correct search term inside them

We will cover each of these scenario’s in-depth to ensure you always get results for your Quick Link Filters.

Scenario 1: Search Term spelt incorrectly

Please be aware that the search term overrides search criteria content. This means that even if you have the correct search criteria options activated, having an incorrect search term will still give you zero results.

For example, a search term may have been listed as ParkingLot but it should be Parking Lot

We typed ParkingLot as our search term
This yielded zero results

The search term ParkingLot will go through the activated search criteria's as:

Display name: ParkingLot

Search tags: #parkinglot

Dictionary category: ParkingLot

Dictionary IMDF category: ParkingLot

Tenant category: ParkingLot

Tenant sub category: ParkingLot

Now, we will type in Parking Lot instead

We typed in Parking Lot as our search term
This yielded results this time around

The search term Parking Lot will go through the activated search criteria's as:

Display name: Parking Lot

Search tags: #parking lot

Dictionary category: Parking Lot

Dictionary IMDF category: Parking Lot

Tenant category: Parking Lot

Tenant sub category: Parking Lot

Since the search term label is correct and the search criteria's have been properly activated, we were able to see results appear as they should

Scenario 2: Search Term and Search Criteria don’t have the same name

In this context, we are unable to see anything pop up for entrances, we have spelt our search term label correctly this time around so we can check our search criteria metrics

This means that although our search criteria's have been properly configured, our search term isn’t picking any of it up and this is what we want to focus on.

It will be much easier to change the search term to match the name inscribed in the contents of the search criteria.

We will show you an example below:

1. The search term name is ‘entrance’

2. The search criteria options are set as ‘all’ which indicates that results are coming from all criteria options

3. We can see no results are coming back, this is further explained below.

The best explanation as to why this is the case is the search term ‘Entrance’ doesn’t exist inside Destination Dictionary and Tenant Directory.

We need to remember that Quick Link filters data is taken from what you have set in Destination Dictionary and Tenant Directory. We will need to change our search term so that it matches the contents of our search criteria.

An easy way to find out what search term we can use is to go to Destination Dictionary (as we are focusing on Entrances Quick Link filters) and see what name we have called entrances in Destination Dictionary

Steps

1. In the PAM navigation menu, go to Dictionary > Destination Dictionary

2. We will go to Secondary External on the top-left side of the screen. This is the category that we have linked Entrances into

3. We can see that instead of ‘Entrances', we have called them ‘Entry’ instead. You can also use search tags and put in #entry if the dictionary name was still ‘Entrance’

This shows us that we had to name our search term ‘Entry’ in order for results to be generated

This is only effective if ‘Entry’ is the label used for all destination dictionary items or tenant directory locations. It has to be consistent when new content is created. Keep this in mind as you review and edit search criteria’s to help support the search term label.

4. Go back to Settings

5. Click on Map Configuration

6. Click on SEARCH

7. Click on the edit icon of ‘Entrances’

8. We will rename it ‘Entry’

9. Save changes

10. Now we can see that ‘Entry’ gives out the results we have been looking for when we originally used ‘Entrances’

You can also apply this same process to find and review other search criteria’s.

(i.e. If DICTIONARY CATEGORY was a selected search criteria, all you need to do is open up dictionary category inside destination dictionary and see which items are inside a specific category)

Viewing Search Enhancements on Interactive Kiosk

Steps

1. In the PAM navigation menu, go to 360 Planner > Digital Signs

2. Select DIGITAL SIGN MAP tab

3. Select an Interactive Kiosk digital sign (make sure it says Interactive Kiosk when selecting the layout) and you will see the right-hand side column appear with all the individual settings

4. On the right-hand side pop out, click on SignID and go to the new tab

5. When Interactive Kiosk is loaded up, click the search icon

6. You can see which locations are configured to be ‘featured’ locations

7. You can see the search recommendations based on previous searches.

8. This is the quick links section. If you select a quick link (i.e. Parking icon), you will see all parking spots within the venue appear. You can set up to eight quick links icons to be shown at any given time.

9. You can see the search feature at the bottom. This is where the user wants to search for something that hasn’t been suggested

Related articles

Interactive Kiosk settings
Interactive Kiosk Configuration Settings

Tenant directory articles
Creating and updating a Tenant
Configuring Tenant Directory settings

Articles on icons / logos
/wiki/spaces/PAMHC/pages/2623308151
Preparing logos
Uploading icons and logos