Site-wide Wayfinding¶

We now offer true site-wide wayfinding capabilities that enable navigation between any two points (either indoors or outdoors) in a site. In addition to the “indoor wayfinding network” that can be added to a building/level, we now support “outdoor wayfinding network” which can be added to a site through Pointr Cloud Dashboard. The indoor and outdoor networks could be connected via special transitions with “Building Entrance-Exit” type, which typically represent the entry points to a building from outdoors. These elements together form a fully connected site-wide network.

Outdoor spaces require different considerations especially for the safety of the users. For instance, prompting the user to pass through a car road without a pedestrian crossing, even if such a passage is physically possible, would be dangerous. Therefore, the outdoor routes produced by the wayfinding engine are never simplified or smoothed, i.e. they will completely respect the outdoor wayfinding network. This also means that there can be a gap between the blue dot and the first wayfinding network edge the route connects to. The same also goes for the destination, which may seem unconnected to the produced route.

This is a deliberate design choice to avoid displaying route segments that are not explicitly defined by the outdoor wayfinding network. If you think there is a pedestrian path that could be taken in the place of such a gap, it is recommended to add that path to the wayfinding network. This way the engine can use that path as part of the produced route and avoid a gap around that spot.

For indoor spaces with similar outdoor-like characteristics, such as indoor car parks, a similar behavior can be achieved via pathManagerConfiguration_isRouteSmoothingEnabled configuration parameter (type: Boolean, default: true, can be set at either Client, Site or Building scope). Disabling this parameter will force the route to fully adhere to the wayfinding network for that building, so that any smoothing/simplification which may take the route through a potentially dangerous path is avoided. This setting may also be useful for retail spaces where routes that closely follow the wayfinding network are preferred. For example, in an open space department store, this would prevent the route to pass through departments and force it to follow the designated walkways between the departments.

Limitations¶

• If the user is attempting to navigate from an indoor area with poor beacon coverage, it is possible that the positioning engine determines the user is outdoors, causing the produced route to prompt the user to enter the building through the nearest entrance even though he/she is already in that building. Moving to a higher coverage area would enable the route to automatically update and show the correct indoor journey.