Create Navigation Button

Discover how to create a direction button and launch Waze or Google Maps from your application to guide your users to a destination from their current location.

Navigation Application Selection

First, you need to decide which navigation application you want to use for your direction button. Popular options include Waze and Google Maps. 

Each application has its own URL "scheme" to trigger navigation and open the application:

• Waze: Use the scheme provided in the Waze deeplinks documentation available at developers.google.com/waze/deeplinks.
• Google Maps: Refer to the Google Maps URL Scheme documentation at developers.google.com/maps/documentation/urls/ios-urlscheme for more details.

URL Configuration

After choosing the application, you need to configure the URL that will be used to open the navigation application with the specific coordinates (latitude and longitude) of your destination.

For Waze, the URL to use is as follows:

https://waze.com/ul?ll=%f,%f&navigate=yes

Here, %f and %f must be replaced by the latitude and longitude of your destination, respectively. These values can be dynamically bound (linked) from an external data source.

To dynamically bind the latitude and longitude of your destination from a data source to the URL, ensure your database contains a column for the latitude and another for the longitude of your destinations.

Use the action Open a URL to configure the navigation URL. Link the coordinate locations (%f, %f) in the URL with the corresponding columns of your database.

Testing and Deployment

Once you have configured the URL and bound the coordinates, test your direction button to ensure it correctly opens the navigation application and guides the user to the desired destination. After verifying correct operation, you can deploy your PandaSuite project with the integrated direction button.