Accruent’s Next Generation Real Estate Management Tool

Posted By: Charles | Jul 11th, 2006 @ 4:19 PM

For real estate managers at large retail chains the expiration of a store lease triggers a complex evaluation of the store. How is that store performing relative to other locations? Are there competitors close by? Have the demographics of the neighborhood changed significantly since the store opened? Does the merchandise of the store fit the clientele? How many potential customers live within a five minute drive of the store? To answer these questions they need data from many different sources (census data, sales data, geographic data, etc.), but even more importantly they need a tool that helps them stitch together the data and visualize it in a way that makes it intuitive work to with and actionable. In this video we take a look at how the folks atAccruent are tackling this problem by overlaying WPF 3D visualizations on maps provided by Windows Live’s Virtual Earth Services. We also look at how their tool manages the evaluation process using Microsoft Office Sharepoint Services and Windows Workflow Foundation and integrates with Outlook and the other Office 2007 applications to provide a seamless experience.

Get more info about the technologies used in this video here.

Tags: MS Office, Sharepoint, Virtual Earth, Windows Workflow, WPF

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Steve-rr

Thanks Poobah!

It was great share this with the Channel 9 Team! If anyone wants more information about our solution or experiences, please drop us a line and we'd be happy to discuss it with you!

Cheers
Steve Cool

stevenw@<nospam>accruent.com

Rowan
Look, no errors.

Really good video, shows a lot of protential for future apps.

eagle

Thanks, I'm here at the WWPC and Sanjay just said in his Keynote this demo could be found on Channel9.

AlexFlint

Hi Steve,

thats' a really cool and amazing visualization solution based on WPF. I'm also experimenting with WPF and VirtualEarth to achieve some results like your application does it. But I'm still new in wpf.

In my application I build a map, that contains particular tiles from Virtual Earth. This map is placed in 3D space. For the moment it's only a plane and not a sphere.

Waht I'm really intersted in is what VisualTree (XAML) modell did you choosed to implement texturing with VirtualEarth tiles.
For the moment I do this on this way:

  ViewPort3D
         |
      MV3D ( ModelVisual3D my scene)
         |
      MV3D ... n (it's my map and other 3D Objects)
         |
      M3DG(Model3DGroup)
        /\
       / \
M3DG M3DG ... n (tiles of the map, for example 8x8 tiles)
   |          |
G3DM   G3DM      (GeometryModel3D - each of them consists
    |         |                            2Triangles => rectangle)
Material Material (ImageBrush with VirtualEarth image)

I hope you can understand my Visual Tree model Wink

.
After a VirtualEarth tile was downloaded, a GeometryModel3D will be textured with it -> Material with ImageBrush.

So, but this way seems to be a very inconvinient for the performance. You do this with a sphere and it seems to run very fast. I know it's very hardware dependend, but it would be very interessting for me to learn on which way you do this?

I'm impressed of your work with WPF!

stevo_
Casablanca != Manchester

This is all amazing technology, but as a application developer (web based mainly). How am I suposed to inform my client, to best administer their site or store or business, that they need to buy the latest version of windows, or switch from Mac to PC. How can we be expected to expect clients to switch to a 'Microsoft Vision', regardless of how good it looks, it isn't soo simple as 'Let's do it', generally speaking, the client wouldn't have the money to do that, and if they do, it's almost a sure bet their THAT big they can't afford to switch their internals around to completely new software systems.

In the end, this just ends up being more of a frustration of what I could have but could probably never use...

Poobah

This is the second video of my Channel9 show called "Windows Vista Show-and-Tell". Along with these videos I'm hoping to provide as much information as possible about the technologies that were used to build the apps and how those technologies were stitched together, thus the information below. Feel free to give me some comments on how this information is presented and if there is other information about the apps that you would like to see.

Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)

The Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation provides the foundation for building applications and high fidelity experiences in Windows Vista, blending together application UI, documents, and media content, while exploiting the full power of your computer. The functionality extends to the support for Tablet and other forms of input, a more modern imaging and printing pipeline, accessibility and UI automation infrastructure, data driven UI and visualization, as well as the integration points for weaving the application experience into the Windows shell.

MSDN
http://msdn.microsoft.com/winfx/technologies/presentation/default.aspx

Components for Developing .NET Framework 3.0 Applications http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsvista/downloads/products/getthebeta/#developWinFXApps

Blogs
http://blogs.msdn.com/tims/articles/475132.aspx

Community Sites
http://www.xamlshare.com/
http://www.longhornblogs.com/

Channel 9 Videos
http://channel9.msdn.com/Showforum.aspx?forumid=14&tagid=2

Screencasts
http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowForum.aspx?ForumID=38&TagID=2

Top 10 UI Advances in WPF
http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/06/01/WindowsPresentationFoundation/default.aspx

Windows Workflow Foundation (WF)

Windows Workflow Foundation is the programming model, engine and tools for quickly building workflow enabled applications on Windows. It consists of a Microsoft .NET Framework version 3.0 (formerly WinFX) namespace, an in-process workflow engine, and designers for Visual Studio 2005. Windows Workflow Foundation is available (currently in beta) for both client and server versions of Windows. Windows Workflow Foundation includes support for both system workflow and human workflow across a wide range of scenarios including: workflow within line of business applications, user interface page-flow, document-centric workflow, human workflow, composite workflow for service oriented applications, business rule driven workflow and workflow for systems management.

MSDN
http://msdn.microsoft.com/winfx/technologies/workflow/default.aspx

Components for Developing .NET Framework 3.0 Applications http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsvista/downloads/products/getthebeta/#developWinFXApps

Go-Live License for .NET Framework 3.0 Runtime Components V3.0 Beta 2 http://msdn.microsoft.com/winfx/downloads/products/golive/

Blogs
http://wf.netfx3.com/roller/default.aspx

Communities
http://wf.netfx3.com/

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)

Windows Communication Foundation (formerly code-named "Indigo") is a set of .NET technologies for building and running connected systems. It is a new breed of communications infrastructure built around the Web services architecture. Advanced Web services support in Windows Communication Foundation provides secure, reliable, and transacted messaging along with interoperability. The service-oriented programming model of Windows Communication Foundation is built on the Microsoft .NET Framework and simplifies development of connected systems. Windows Communication Foundation unifies a broad array of distributed systems capabilities in a composable and extensible architecture, spanning transports, security systems, messaging patterns, encodings, network topologies, and hosting models.

MSDN
http://msdn.microsoft.com/winfx/technologies/communication/

Components for Developing .NET Framework 3.0 Applications http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsvista/downloads/products/getthebeta/#developWinFXApps

Blogs
https://blogs.msdn.com/craigmcmurtry/
http://www.gazitt.com/Blog/
http://blogs.msdn.com/richardt/default.aspx

Go-Live License for .NET Framework 3.0 Runtime Components V3.0 Beta 2 http://msdn.microsoft.com/winfx/downloads/products/golive/

Community Sites
http://wcf.netfx3.com/

Microsoft Office Sharepoint Services 2007 (MOSS)

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 builds upon the Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services (version 3) infrastructure to provide a true enterprise portal platform. MOSS 2007 features enhancements and new functionality in six major areas: Individual Impact, Enterprise Content Lifecycle, Collaboration, Knowledge Discovery and Insight, Information Worker Solutions, and Fundamentals. New technologies to support these areas include the Business Data Catalog, Document Management functionality, Web Content Management functionality, Excel Services, Infopath Forms Services, and enhancements to Search, User Profiles, Audience Targeting, and Single Sign-on. For more information see these resources:

MSDN
http://msdn.microsoft.com/office/server/moss/

SDK
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms550992.aspx

Team blog
http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/

Community
http://www.microsoft.com/sharepoint/community.mspx

2007 Microsoft Office System

The Microsoft Office system has evolved from a suite of personal productivity products to a more comprehensive and integrated system. Building on the familiar tools that many people already know, the Microsoft Office system includes programs, servers, services, and solutions designed to work together to help address a broad array of business problems. Developers can now more easily build robust business solutions to streamline processes and connect people to information and to one another.

MSDN
http://msdn.microsoft.com/office/

Beta 2
http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/beta/getthebeta.mspx

Blogs
http://msdn.microsoft.com/office/community/blog/

Community
http://msdn.microsoft.com/office/community/default.aspx

Visual Studio Tools for Office "Cyprus"

The next version of Visual Studio Tools for Office is designed to help developers take better advantage of those new capabilities in the 2007 Microsoft Office release, as well as to provide additional infrastructure to ensure that Microsoft .NET Framework-based solutions in Office run more reliably, efficiently and securely. Highlights of the June CTP include support for the new Office Open XML file formats, support for the new UI ( “ribbon”) extensibility model, support for the new application-level customizable task pane, and add-in projects for the 2007 Microsoft Office System clients: Access, Excel, SharePoint Designer, InfoPath, Outlook, PowerPoint, Project, Publisher, Visio, and Word. For more information, see these resources:

MSDN
http://msdn.microsoft.com/office/tool/vsto/default.aspx

June CTP
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=68978824-ca55-4208-a55e-5c4858183b31&displaylang=en

Team blog
http://blogs.msdn.com/vsto2/
http://blogs.msdn.com/andreww
http://blogs.msdn.com/johnrdurant

Community
http://msdn.microsoft.com/office/tool/vsto/community/

Microsoft Virtual Earth

Virtual Earth provides the power behind Windows Live Local, an online mapping service that enables users to search, discover, explore, plan, and share information about specific locations. By using traditional road maps, labeled aerial photo views, low-angle high-resolution aerial photos, and proximity searching capabilities, Virtual Earth provides unique opportunities for developers to incorporate both location and local search features into their Web applications.

MSDN
http://dev.live.com/virtualearth/default.aspx?app=virtual_earth

SDK
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=4334835
http://dev.live.com/virtualearth/sdk/

Blogs
http://blogs.msdn.com/cthota/
http://virtualearth.spaces.msn.com/PersonalSpace.aspx

Communities
http://www.viavirtualearth.com/VVE/Dashboard/Default.ashx