360° panoramas from Dropbox

Place 360-degree photos from a Dropbox App Folder on the map and view them in the app without copying the files.

A 360-degree photo taken from the stage, the entrance or the roof tells a supervisor more than a page of description. With the Dropbox panorama integration, photos you keep in a Dropbox folder appear on the map as small 360° markers. Tap one and the photo opens in a viewer where you can look around in every direction.

Why Dropbox#

Panorama images are large, often several tens of megabytes. Instead of uploading them into SCAD Maps, the photos stay in Dropbox where your photographers already put them. SCAD Maps saves only where each photo belongs on the map and who may see it, and streams the image to the viewer on demand. The photo is not copied into SCAD Maps storage, and the person viewing it needs no Dropbox account.

SCAD Maps can only read one dedicated folder, the Dropbox App Folder. Dropbox itself enforces this boundary, so the rest of the Dropbox account is out of reach whatever an administrator does.

View a 360 photo#

1. Open the layer list and make sure 360 photos is switched on.
2. Tap a 360° marker. Its title appears as a tip on the marker.
3. Wait for the full-resolution photo to load. Big images take a moment on a mobile connection.
4. Drag to look around. Scroll, or use the + and − buttons, to zoom in and out.
5. Close the viewer with × or the Esc key.

The photo opens facing the direction the administrator chose when placing it, which is normally the way the camera was pointing at the moment of shooting.

• Who can see it. Signed-in accounts, but not guests. A photo can be limited to certain custom roles. Without a role limit, every signed-in non-guest account sees it.
• Offline. 360 photos are streamed when opened and are not part of the offline venue maps. Look at the important ones before you lose signal.

Connect Dropbox#

Only a full Admin can connect or disconnect the folder. Set it up under Integrations in the dashboard, in the Dropbox tab.

1. In the Dropbox developer console, create an app. Choose Scoped access and App folder, never full Dropbox.
2. Enable only the three read permissions the setup screen lists: reading the account name, file metadata and file content. Nothing needs write access.
3. Add the redirect address shown on the setup screen as an allowed redirect in the Dropbox app. It has to match exactly.
4. Back in SCAD Maps, enter the app key and secret, confirm that the app uses App folder access, and choose Save app credentials.
5. Choose Authorize Dropbox and approve the request on the Dropbox page.

The screen then shows connected. Test connection checks that the authorisation still works, and Disconnect removes it. Existing placements stay saved, but their photos cannot open until Dropbox is connected again. The credentials and the authorisation are stored encrypted; the browser never receives them.

Place a photo on the map#

Placing photos is open to Admins and User Admins.

1. Copy 360 photos into the App Folder. JPEG, PNG and WebP files are listed, and they should be 2:1 equirectangular images, for example 8000 × 4000 pixels, or the viewer will look stretched. Use Refresh folder if the list is stale.
2. Next to a photo, choose Add to map.
3. A map opens with a purple pin. If the photo carries a GPS position, the pin starts there. If not, drag the pin to where the camera stood. Drag it to correct the position at any time.
4. Set the title, the initial direction in degrees, and which roles may see the photo. Leave the roles empty for everyone who is signed in and not a guest.
5. Keep Show this panorama on the map ticked and choose Add to map.

Placed photos are listed under Map placements with their coordinates and whether they are visible. Edit changes any of these settings, Use photo GPS moves the pin back to the photo's own GPS position, and Remove takes the marker off the map. Removing a placement does not delete the photo in Dropbox.

Limits#

• Photos larger than 160 MB by default are listed as too large to view and cannot be placed. The limit can be changed per instance; see Instance configuration.
• Titles can be up to 160 characters.
• The viewer is a web viewer. It supports dragging and zooming, but not gyroscope steering.