Indoor maps wayfinding service (preview)

Article
07/17/2024

Note

Azure Maps Creator retirement

The Azure Maps Creator indoor map service is now deprecated and will be retired on 9/30/25. For more information, see End of Life Announcement of Azure Maps Creator.

The Azure Maps Creator wayfinding service allows you to navigate from place to place anywhere within your indoor map. The service utilizes stairs and elevators to navigate between floors and provides guidance to help you navigate around physical obstructions. This article describes how to generate a path from a starting point to a destination point in a sample indoor map.

Prerequisites

Understanding of Creator concepts.
An Azure Maps Creator dataset and tileset.

Important

This article uses the us.atlas.microsoft.com geographical URL. If your Creator service wasn't created in the United States, you must use a different geographical URL. For more information, see Access to Creator services.
In the URL examples in this article you will need to:
- Replace {Your-Azure-Maps-Subscription-key} with your Azure Maps subscription key.
- Replace {datasetId} with your datasetId.

Create a routeset

A routeset is a collection of indoor map data that is used by the wayfinding service.

A routeset is created from a dataset. The routeset is independent from the dataset, meaning if the dataset is deleted, the routeset continues to exist.

Once you've created a routeset, you can then use the wayfinding API to get a path from the starting point to the destination point within the facility.

To create a routeset:

Execute the following HTTP POST request:

https://us.atlas.microsoft.com/routesets?api-version=2023-03-01-preview&datasetID={datasetId}&subscription-key={Your-Azure-Maps-Subscription-key}

Copy the value of the Operation-Location key from the response header.

The Operation-Location key is the status URL used to check the status of the routeset creation as demonstrated in the next section.

Check the routeset creation status and retrieve the routesetId

To check the status of the routeset creation process and retrieve the routesetId:

Execute the following HTTP GET request:

https://us.atlas.microsoft.com/routesets/operations/{operationId}?api-version=2023-03-01-preview&subscription-key={Your-Azure-Maps-Subscription-key}

Note

Get the operationId from the Operation-Location key in the response header when creating a new routeset.

Copy the value of the Resource-Location key from the responses header. It's the resource location URL and contains the routesetId:

https://us.atlas.microsoft.com/routesets/**675ce646-f405-03be-302e-0d22bcfe17e8**?api-version=2023-03-01-preview

Make a note of the routesetId. It's required in all wayfinding requests and when you Get the facility ID.

Get the facility ID

The facilityId, a property of the routeset, is a required parameter when searching for a wayfinding path. Get the facilityId by querying the routeset.

Execute the following HTTP GET request:

https://us.atlas.microsoft.com/routesets/{routesetId}?api-version=2023-03-01-preview&subscription-key={Your-Azure-Maps-Subscription-key}

The facilityId is a property of the facilityDetails object, which you can find in the response body of the routeset request, which is FCL43 in the following example:

{
    "routeSetId": "675ce646-f405-03be-302e-0d22bcfe17e8",
    "dataSetId": "eec3825c-620f-13e1-b469-85d2767c8a41",
    "created": "10/10/2022 6:58:32 PM +00:00",
    "facilityDetails": [
        {
            "facilityId": "FCL43",
            "levelOrdinals": [
                0,
                1
            ]
        }
    ],
    "creationMode": "Wall",
    "ontology": "facility-2.0"
}

Get a wayfinding path

Use the wayfinding API to generate a path from the routeset you created in the previous section. The wayfinding API requires a query that contains start and end points in an indoor map, along with floor level ordinal numbers. For more information about Creator wayfinding, see wayfinding in the concepts article.

To create a wayfinding query:

Execute the following HTTP GET request (replace {routesetId} with the routesetId obtained in the Check the routeset creation status section and the {facilityId} with the facilityId obtained in the Get the facility ID section):
```
https://us.atlas.microsoft.com/wayfinding/path?api-version=2023-03-01-preview&subscription-key={Your-Azure-Maps-Subscription-key}&routesetid={routeset-ID}&facilityid={facility-ID}&fromPoint={lat,lon}&fromLevel={from-level}&toPoint={lat,lon}&toLevel={to-level}&minWidth={minimun-width}
```
Tip

The AvoidFeatures parameter can be used to specify something for the wayfinding service to avoid when determining the path, such as elevators or stairs.
The details of the path and legs are displayed in the Body of the response.

The summary displays the estimated travel time in seconds for the total journey. In addition, the estimated time for each section of the journey is displayed at the beginning of each leg.

The wayfinding service calculates the path through specific intervening points. Each point is displayed, along with its latitude and longitude details.

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