More Data-Driven Sites

We now have a directory service that allows us to create marketing websites for any one of the nearly 2,000 buildings in our database. Clients have complete control of the content through our Tru-Measure application. At anytime they can edit the description, amenities, leasing contacts etc... in addition to all the availability data. Our clients can instantly update vacancies, rates and suite descriptions. The central app controls these sites as well as mobile sites and embedded data on the clients own corporate sites.

The appearance of each site is controlled separately as a 'skin' that is completely customizable. The arrangement and branding of the site is completely separate from the data.

Here are two examples of websites we've set up for GE in Ottawa:

• Here's a site for 1145 Hunt Club in Ottawa.
• And here's one for 1 Antares Dr. in Napean.

These sites are not a replacement for a corporate real estate site, but act as a complement. It allows landlords to cast a wider net in searching for new prospective tenants. It's one more place that your building data will show up. To get your building branded and set up, contact Greg Mounsey at 1-877-516-8920 ext 236 or by email at gmounsey[at]spacedatabase.com.

API: Get Building Details

In this post we'll take a closer look at one of the simplest Space Database API services: 'Get Building Details' API. This service will return a set of building details in response to a building ID. We have built an extensive API support section on our site that will allow developers to easily understand our API functions, data structure and get sample code. The interface provides 'previews' of what the data looks like.

The data returned is available in XML format as well as JSON. These are the two most popular methods for serving up data across the web.

We provide some simple code examples to let developers turn this:

Into this:

Or this:

Here's a list of the data fields and the information that you can retrieve from this service:

<BUILDINGID/>	Automatically generated integer to uniquely identify the building.
<BUILDINGNAME/>	The name of the building. Very often this is the same as the street address.
<DBLMAXFLOORAREA/>	The rentable floor area of the largest floor in the building.
<TOTALAREA/>	The total rentable area of the building.
<TOTALNUMOFFLOORS/>	Total number of floors in the building.
<STREET/>	The full street address of the building.
<CITY/>	The municipality where the building is located.
<PROVINCE/>	The province or state where the building is located.
<POSTALCODE/>	Postal code or zip coded of the building address.
<REGION/>	The region name is a grouping name selected by the client company
<COUNTRY/>	The name of the country where the building is located.
<LATITUDE/>	The latitude of the buildings location. Expressed as decimal degrees
<LONGITUDE/>	The longitude of the buildings location. Expressed as decimal degrees
<DESCRIPTION/>	A description of the the building. May contain simple html tags to format the text.
<AMENITIES/>	A description of the amenities in the building. May contain simple html tags to format the text.
<PHOTOS/>	Text for embedded photo widgets. This field can contain code - for embeded widgets etc. If this field is empty, output URL to picture - see below. If there is no code stored in the database, then this field will return a variable number of URLs for building photos.
<LEASINGCONTACTS/>	Contact information for leasing. A text field that may have simple html tags such as headings, email hrefs and list items.
<EXTERNALLINKS/>	Links related to the building such as websites for owners or brokers. A block of simple html code including list items and href links.
<SKINURL/>	A url to the location of the css and logo images for this building.

There's more to come. I'll cover other API services and functions in future posts!

121 King St. West Stacking Plan

Standard Life and Colliers have created a website for 121 King St. West called Life @ 121 King St. As we are hosting the drawing, area and availability data for this building, we are providing the content under the 'Availability' tab. In this case, we've created a graphic representation of the building and overlaid the availability information with semi-transparent rectangles. This info is completely data driven. Standard Life maintains the info in our application and it is automatically displayed here:

Standard Life wanted to indicate space that would be coming on the market in the future as well as space that was currently vacant. Blue is space that is available right now. Red indicates space that will be available soon. Scrolling over each space provides the actual availability date:

Clicking on a suite brings up the floor plan for the particular leasing opportunity:

This is one more example of the flexibility we have in displaying availability data on the web. With our new XML API we are now extending that power to third parties. Keep your eyes open for some nifty new integrations coming soon!