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Location Software


Swan Jnr

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Hello,

 

my wife volunteers at a charity, helping to man the national helpline.

They have people calling from all over the country trying to find where their local support office is.

At the moment all they have to do this is a map. Easy if its a big city, tricky when its a remote village that they have never heard of. (and also hard to work out at times which office out of two is nearest or easiest to get to.

 

I just wondered if there was a piece of software (freely available; this is a charity) that they could load the postcodes of all their offices, and then query this with the callers postcode (or town/city) to give them the nearest office? or maybe nearest two?

 

it might save the charity lots of staffing costs and give distressed callers a better service

 

it almost seems like something you should be able to do on a database but i cant think how you could put geographjical data into a table!

 

Paul

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Guest Dan_Beeston

I think it can be done online with Google maps?

 

If you start a group (there's a RHOCaR one on there somewhere) you can load in all the locations, then I think you can ask driving directions between a known postcode & one of your centres, will give you directions, distance and time?............

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Guest Toejam

The problem with the online maps is that they only work for a known location.

 

Software does exist for what your after 'Find your nearest branch' style from most big websites, but knowing the kind of details they hold I wouldn't expect to find a free one online.

 

I'd advise contacting someone like.... Hyperia / Allies or CGI Interactive and asking very nicely !!!

 

Either that or you could take the lower tech aproach.

 

Assuming the branches don't change on a regular basis using a postcode map you'd have to manually set boundaries for each branch, kind of like catchment areas ! That info could easily be put into a spreadsheet / database to identify the nearest branch. (Would be very low tech though & take a few days work to setup + maintain)

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