Upcoming Feature - Widgets

[Amol B]

The first time I heard the term "Widgets" - it sounded curious and fun and I couldn't wait to know more about it. Over the past few years Widgets have become increasingly popular and most of us have probably used Widgets directly or indirectly.

The iCarpool-RideshareOnline platform will be including Widgets capability - with some widgets coming soon. Notably, the Widgets coming soon are:
- Emission Savings Widget
- Vanpool Seat Finder Widget

For example, let's say a city jurisdiction Jacksonville has a website www.cityofjacksonville.gov and this website hosts information for an incentive program that is being run based off the trip calendar. To showcase achievements in terms of emission savings, monetary savings, trips reduced, etc. on the site, the network administrator could make use of Widgets.
1. The administrator would login to the administration application and generate the Widget code. The external site that would host the Widget needs to be specified. For example, cityofjacksonville.gov. The Widget is specific to a domain.
2. The administrator can copy the generated code and paste it in the appropriate web page that resides in the www.cityofjacksonville.gov site.

That's it - from now on, when users visit the site www.cityofjacksonville.gov, they will see automatically updated program statistics for that network.

In terms of generating the code and deploying, the Vanpool Seat Finder Widget is similar. The usage may vary.
Example – Many vanpool agencies generate monthly vanpool lists and place them on their website. The agency could consider replacing that process by instead placing the Widget on the website. When deploying, the agency could choose to (a) only show vanpools that are run by the agency OR (b) show all vanpools including those from partner agencies. The Widget will always generate most recent “live” data from the system, so there’s no need to keep updating. There are other advantages such as new vanpools starting will show on the list immediately.
Widgets are powerful and can open up new scenarios.
Example - A city jurisdiction that has online resources for vanpool could now place the Widget directly on its website. Now users can not just read about vanpools on the city's site but also find vanpools "live" from the system, get contact information and take the next step. In this case, the Widget can be deployed to display all vanpools from all vanpool agencies. Let's think about what happens without the widget. Without the Widget, the city has limited options:

• host multiple vanpool lists, one for each agency. The searching user would then have a challenging experience trying to find vanpools from among multiple documents.
• host multiple links to vanpool sites for different agencies. The searching user would have a challenging experience to navigate to different sites and find vanpools from these various sources.

For those interested in knowing more about Widgets, I found an interesting article : http://webtrends.about.com/od/widgets/a/what_is_widget.htm.

I've also attached an image showing a sample of how a widget on an external site will look like.

[Christopher Aiken]

Hi Amol,

Any thoughts on when the widgets mentioned will be available? I'm curious to see how folks end up using the widgets and if they're effective at driving participants to RSO from the websites they're posted on.  Thanks for your post.

Christopher

[Amol B]

Both widgets are available in the training environment at this time. You can access the Widget code generation via the "Widgets" link found in the Settings menu in the administration application.

- The emission savings widget will be deployed during the next update - which could be as early as this weekend.

- The vanpool seat finder widget will be available during a subsequent update - this could be as early as the next update.

I hope this helps.

[Tracy Ellis]

When poking around in this program, I see that we can now obtain the code to embed the widget on our website.

Is this ready to go then? Or is there more testing that needs to be done?

[Amol B]

The emission savings widget has been deployed in the training and production sites - so it is live and can be used now.

Here's an example of the widget deployed by the Totem Lake Green Trip program - http://totemlakegreentrip.com/?page_id=75 (right hand top corner).

The vanpool seat finder widget is only available in the training environment and is undergoing review - that will be available in production in a subsequent update.

[Lee Peterson]

Is there an easy way to test the vanpool widget?  The only way I can think of is to put it on an obscure page of our website and hope no one finds it.  Is there a webpage I can visit that already has the widget running?

 

 

[Lee Peterson]

I just found it!

You can test the widget at this site -

http://rsotraining.icarpool.us/vanpoolseatfinder.html

 

Happy widgeting!

[Amol B]

Yes - that link should work. In general to test widgets, you will need:

- A web page that is accessible using a domain (it could be any domain and the page could live anywhere inside the domain). So for example, if you are using "somedomain.com", the testing could be done from a link deep within like:  http://somedomain.com/temp/t1/widget1test.html

- Ability to edit the HTML page and insert the generated code inside the HTML page.

 

The current link from RSOTraining is configured to show all vanpools (irrespective of the agency). For example, a city jurisdiction might want that approach. The widget also has a setting to restrict to one agency (the widget code must be generated from the agency's network) and when inserting the code, the value for the attribute "showVanpoolsFromHostNetworkOnly" should be set to true.

Happy widgeting!

[Amol B]

I wanted to add one more clarification - by default, the widget code is programmed to show all vanpools in the system. So if the goal is to show all vanpools in the system, a network could use the code as is.

The widget code has a setting that can be turned on to restrict the vans to one agency  - in that case, the widget code must be generated from the appropriate agency's network. As discussed earlier, to restrict to one agency, when inserting the code, the value for the attribute
"showVanpoolsFromHostNetworkOnly" should be set to true.

[Julie Lloyd]

I've added the Ridematch Quick Search widget to our Find A Vanpool page on our website and reset the value to true as you've instructed for "showVanpoolsFromHostNetworkOnly". I entered the start and end locations but once I hit "search" it stays in a continual search mode. I've tried a variety of combinations of city, state and zip code, but no luck so far in getting out of search mode and finding a known vanpool. Any suggestions as to a fix?

[Amol B]

The Ridematch Quick Search widget shows all carpools and vanpools on a map interface as a quick check for a user before the user signs up on the site. It is different from the Vanpool Seat Finder widget which shows operating vanpools in a list view along with details. 

At this time, the Ridematch Quick Search widget has not been enabled in the tri-state RSO deployment due to funding. So I'm assuming we are talking about the Vanpool Seat Finder widget.

Usually, the reason why the widget stays in a continual search mode is because the domain name specified is not correct. I reviewed the domain name entered was www.islandtransit.org. The Find A Vanpool page on the Island Transit site is located at "http://islandtransit.org/vanpool_manager_roster/". So the domain name is not correct because it has additional characters "www". I removed those characters and now the widget is working.

[Julie Lloyd]

That makes sense and it's working now and you're right, it is the Vanpool Seat Finder, not the Quick match.

Is there a way to clear the words "city, state zip" automatically when the cursor is set in the Start and End fields?

Thanks for the help Amol!

[Amol B]

I reviewed the widget - the widget code pasted on the page has been modified and parts of it have been removed (it is not the same as the code generated from the site). That is not supported and the widget may show multiple problems such as City,State and Zip text remaining even if focus is brought in the text box. Another issue I found is when I checked the page from Internet Explorer version 9, the entire section for Quick Find did not show up.

I would have your HTML developer review and re-insert the widget code generated from RSO without modifications to the code.