MapStore Release 2020.01.00

Dear Reader,

We are pleased to announce the release 2020.01.00 of MapStore, our flagship Open Source WebGIS product. The full list of changes for this release can be found here, but the most interesting ones are listed below:

• Background selector: now users with write permissions to the map can edit background layers from the user interface
• Drag and drop improved on TOC: now drag and drop works also between different groups
• Edit map permission directly from the map viewer: now you can edit map permission when creating a new map, not only from home
• Additional map viewer query parameters: you can now load MapStore by dynamically dispatching actions like Zoom to extent or triggering the Identify tool for a specific layer in map
• Improvements to the Custom Search Services tool: now you are able to configure MapStore to automatically trigger the Identify tool as soon a search is performed
• Improved documentation: we obviously keep the online documentation updated according to new features and new changes. In this release we did an extensive review of the User Guide
• Other minor enhancements: the complete list of enhancements is available here
• Migration to React 16
• Hardening: various bug fixes have been provided, the complete list is available here

Let us now go into more details about the first two functionalities.

Background Selector

The ability to edit or add new background layers through the user interface  is finally landed in MapStore. If the user has the right permissions to edit a map, now he is also able to edit the background layer list.

Background Selector

The Background Selector is a new component in MapStore that allows you to interact along with the Catalog tool in order to configure your backgrounds list and edit properties of WMS background layers such as Title, Format and Style.

Configuring a WMS background layer in MapStore

TOC Drag and drop improvement

The Table of Content has been improved with the aim to provide a better user experience in managing layers and groups of layers. That’s what was missing for the TOC in MapStore! moving items across different layers and groups.

TOC’s Drag & Drop

We have also some interesting changes that we are currently planning for the TOC, those changes are however related to an entire L&F’s review of MapStore. Yes, you are right we plan to renew the MapStore layout to make it more current and appealing and improve the user experience. Stay tuned, below you have a preview of the work we are doing.

Draft of the new MapStore’s layout

Further ongoing and future work

For the next releases we have plans to work on the following:

• Further improvements to charts and dashboards (we have in plan to add some interesting capabilities like the possibility to define quick filters in dashboard, stay tuned! we have in plan to release it in the next release 2020.01.01)

New dashboard filtering capabilities

• Application Contexts and Viewer Composer: an additional interesting feature will make MapStore even more powerful than now. The first quarter of this year will bring the Application Context tool for MapStore that will allow administrators to define multiple viewer contexts in a three steps wizard (expected in next major release 2020.02.00 of MapStore)

Step 1

Application Context Wizard – Context name and title

Step 2

Application Context Wizard – Plugins Configuration

Step 3

Application Context Wizard – Configuring map contents

• Storytelling tool: you will be able to use MapStore to do geospatial storytelling; we named this new tool GeoStory (expected in next major release 2020.02.00 of MapStore

GeoStory – Story Editor

GeoStory – Shared Story

Stay tuned for additional news on the next features! If you want to play with the current release, you can access the live demo here and login with username demo and password 123456.

If you are interested in learning about how we can help you achieving your goals with open source products like GeoServer, MapStore, GeoNode and GeoNetwork through our Enterprise Support Services and GeoServer Deployment Warranty offerings, feel free to contact us!

The GeoSolutions team,