Geotrek, updates on new features
September 2023
Since 2020, numerous developments have been made on various aspects of the application, funded by several stakeholders and largely by the community of Geotrek user structures. In this article, we offer you an update on the new features and other improvements.
Geotrek’s modules
Geotrek is an online application allowing you to manage and promote hiking trails and the ecosystem around this practice (infrastructure, signage, interventions, touristic content and events, etc.). It is structured in 3 parts:
- Geotrek-admin allows content management
- Geotrek-rando allows the promotion of certain content via a website
- Geotrek-mobile allows the promotion of content via a mobile application
The available modules are, for the management part: paths, treks, infrastructures, signage, interventions and projects, as well as Outdoor sites and courses.
The modules whose objects will be displayed on Geotrek-rando are: treks, points of interest, touristic content, touristic events, as well as outdoor sites and courses. You can discover an example on the escapade62 site created for the Pas-De-Calais department
All Geotrek-admin valuation modules now have an API, which exposes published content for retrieval on Geotrek-rando and also makes this data accessible for any other use.
A specific reporting module allows visitors to the recovery site to report problems encountered during their journey (pollution deposits, usage conflicts, etc.).
New features
Outdoor sites and courses
It is now possible to manage outdoor sports such as white water activities, climbing sports, diving, etc. thanks to the sites and outdoor sites and courses.
Unlike treks which can only be linear, the associated geometries are free for the sites and routes. The data is more specific to outdoor sports than tourist content, which makes it possible to manage climbing sites, kayaking or rafting courses, or even paragliding in greater detail.
Future developments will aim to integrate the notion of verticality into Geotrek through the use of HD photos.
Ratings by practice
The management of quotes has been refined in the Itinerary module based on what existed in the Outdoor modules. It is now possible to define different rating scales specific to each sporting practice, in addition to the level of difficulty. For example, in mountain biking, we can define the level of technicality and the type of route.
Equipment
In addition to the “Recommendation” field for a route, it is now possible to enter the necessary equipment to bring, for example ropes and crampons in the case of crossing a firn.
Accessibility
Work has also been carried out to refine information on the accessibility of routes and tourist content.
In addition to the type of accessibility (armchair, joelette, etc.), it is now possible to enter the level (beginner, intermediate) in an itinerary. In Geotrek-rando, the accessibility type appears as a filter. These lists are of course editable. You can also add information on slope, width, signage, exposure and link photos for slope, width and signage.
An example with the Saut du Laire hike on the Écrins NP.
For tourist content, an information field on accessibility is available, and it is possible to add the accessibility label, based on the Tourism Accessibility labels.
Management of treks labels
The trail module is rarely used by the community, but still has interesting uses. The Department of Pyrénées Orientales uses it to manage labeling at trail level, and has requested the addition of dedicated fields accordingly. The same trail can benefit from several labels.
APIs
More interconnections between Suricate and Geotrek
Célia Prat spoke about it previously in two articles, Geotrek is now able to make the link with Meerkat, in two possible ways:
- the Meerkat Signaling mode, first developments described in this article
- the Suricate Workflow mode, described in this article
In the first mode Geotrek only sends the reports created via its dedicated API to the Suricate platform.
The second mode creates interoperability with Suricate and makes it possible to define a report processing process, with regular retrieval of updated data on the Suricate side to Geotrek, and sending immediate updates of a report modified in Geotrek to Meerkat. The configuration of this operating mode takes into account the complex process of processing a report on the Suricate side, and can be adapted depending on the territory.
Of course, a minimalist mode in which the report remains only in Geotrek is available if you do not need to make a link with Meerkat.
For more details about Geotrek-Suricate gateway, you can refer to Geotrek-admin documentation .
UI improvements
Responsive
The development of Georivière, a river and aquatic environment management tool based on the same software building blocks as Geotrek-admin, enabled the switch to Bootstrap 4, as well as the possibility of consulting the site responsively.
Rich text editing
The text entry component has been updated: it is more ergonomic and the text is much more readable.
Texts copied/pasted from another source are now automatically cleaned by default so as not to include any styles of the copied text, which could clutter and degrade the HTML content stored and displayed.
It is also possible to set a maximum number of characters for the rich text fields as an indication, which will display a message if this number is exceeded.
Fields settings
It is possible to configure the attribute columns displayed in element lists, as well as in CSV and SHP exports.
In addition, in forms, it is now possible to hide certain non-obligatory fields. This can be useful for simplified use of a somewhat complex module, such as signage for example.
Map objects
On the cartographic part, all types of objects are now available in the list of layers, and therefore displayable. For example, you can display routes and interventions at the same time.
Advanced features
SQL views for Qgis visualization
Views have been added to the Geotrek database, and allow objects to be visualized via a tool such as QGIS. Marine Faucher and Timothée De Montety detail in this article the development and use of these SQL views.
Filter on invalid topologies
To facilitate the management of sections, a filter allows you to list only sections having a valid or invalid topology.
Widget
The development of the API also allowed the creation of an additional tool for promoting content: the Geotrek Widget.
This widget, which can be used and easily integrated into a third-party site, allows you to enhance the content (or part of it) without needing to deploy the Geotrek-rando tool. It can make it possible to share data on the websites of territorial partners (communities of municipalities, tourist offices, accommodation, etc.) because they will have the possibility of re-using the content already entered on their institutional site.
Performance and maintenance
Work on the performance of the application commissioned by the Écrins National Park made it possible to rethink certain software bricks to improve the response time of the Geotrek-admin application and its API.
Calculation or filtering operations on geographic data are now carried out on the server side, and no longer on the browser side.
The cache system has been greatly improved, which avoids having to do the same calculations or the same database queries several times.