Admin: Places

The Places tab manages the physical geography of your facility: the buildings that house your staff, the floors within those buildings, the zone types used to categorise areas on floorplans, and top-level campus location records.

Navigate to Admin > Places.

The Places tab contains three sub-tabs:

Sub-tab	What you manage
Buildings	Buildings and their floors (hierarchical view)
Zone Types	Named zone categories with colour coding
Locations	Campus-level address and coordinate records

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Buildings and Floors

The Buildings sub-tab shows your facility as a hierarchy: each building expands to reveal its floors. From here you can add, edit, and delete both buildings and floors, and upload floor plan images.

Screenshot placeholder: [Buildings list with expanded building showing its floors, floor plan thumbnail, and dimensions]

Viewing Buildings

Each building row shows:

• Building name and short code
• Address
• Number of floors
• Expand arrow to reveal its floors

Click the arrow or the building row to expand and see the floors beneath it.

Creating a Building

1. Click Add Building.
2. In the dialog, fill in:
   • Building Name (required) — e.g. Main Campus Building A
   • Building Code (optional) — short reference code, e.g. BLD-A
   • Address (optional) — street address of the building
   • Latitude / Longitude (optional) — decimal coordinates for map placement
   • Timezone (optional) — the local timezone for this building (important for correct alarm timestamps). Select from the dropdown (US timezones are pre-populated).
3. Click Add Building.

Tip: Setting the correct timezone ensures that muster event timestamps and alert notifications show the local time for that building rather than UTC.

Editing a Building

1. Find the building and click the pencil (Edit) icon on its row.
2. Update the fields as needed.
3. Click Save Changes.

Deleting a Building

1. Click the Delete (trash) icon on the building row.
2. Confirm the deletion.

Warning: Deleting a building also removes all floors, zone data, and gateway assignments associated with it. Ensure you have reassigned or exported any important data before proceeding.

Adding a Floor to a Building

1. Expand the building by clicking its row.
2. Click Add Floor (the button appears in the building's expanded area).
3. In the dialog, provide:
   • Floor Name (required) — e.g. Ground Floor or Level 2
   • Floor Number (required) — a numeric level value (used for ordering, e.g. 0 for ground, 1 for first floor above)
   • Environment Profile (optional) — select a pre-defined BLE signal environment such as Office, Industrial, or Outdoors. This affects default path loss calculations.
   • Custom Path Loss Exponent (optional) — override the environment profile with a specific value if you have performed a path loss calibration for this floor.
   • Custom Tx Power (optional) — override the default transmitter power value.
   • Floor Dimensions — physical width and depth in metres. Used by the positioning algorithm to constrain calculated positions within the floor boundary.
4. Click Add Floor.

Uploading a Floor Plan Image

A floor plan image is required before beacons and gateways can be visually placed on the map.

1. Expand the building and locate the floor.
2. Click the Upload Floor Plan button (or the image placeholder) on the floor row.
3. Select a PNG or JPG image file. High-resolution images work best (minimum 800 x 600 pixels recommended).
4. After upload, the system stores the image URL and the pixel dimensions automatically.
5. The floor plan is now available in the Floorplan view and in the gateway/beacon placement tools.

Note: Floor plan images are stored in Azure Blob Storage. The URL is recorded in the floor record. If you need to replace an image, re-upload using the same button; the old image is replaced.

Editing a Floor

1. Expand the building and click the pencil (Edit) icon on the floor row.
2. Update name, number, dimensions, environment profile, or path loss overrides.
3. Click Save Changes.

Deleting a Floor

1. Click the Delete (trash) icon on the floor row.
2. Confirm the deletion.

Warning: Deleting a floor removes all zone records and gateway placement assignments for that floor. This action cannot be undone.

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Zone Types

Zone Types are the named categories you apply to areas drawn on floorplans — for example, "Assembly Point", "Stairwell", "Server Room", or "Reception". Each zone type has a display name, an optional description, and a colour used to render that zone on the floorplan.

Screenshot placeholder: [Zone types table with colour swatches, names, and descriptions]

Viewing Zone Types

The Zone Types table shows each type with:

• A colour swatch
• Type name
• Description (if provided)

The statistics cards show total types, types with descriptions, and the number of unique colours in use.

Creating a Zone Type

1. Click Add Zone Type.
2. In the dialog, fill in:
   • Type Name (required) — e.g. Assembly Point
   • Description (optional) — a brief explanation of when to use this type
   • Colour — click the colour picker to choose a colour, or click one of the suggested colour swatches below the picker for common palette options
3. Click Add Zone Type.

Editing a Zone Type

1. Click the pencil (Edit) icon on the zone type row.
2. Update the name, description, or colour.
3. Click Save Changes.

Note: Changing a zone type's colour immediately affects how that zone type is displayed on all floorplans throughout the system. There is no preview step.

Deleting a Zone Type

1. Click the Delete (trash) icon on the zone type row.
2. Confirm the deletion.

Warning: Deleting a zone type does not delete the zones drawn on floorplans, but those zones will lose their type classification. Review floorplans after deleting a zone type.

Colour Guidelines

• Choose colours that are clearly distinct from one another, especially for zone types that appear near each other on floorplans.
• Emergency-related zones (Assembly Points, Evacuation Routes) benefit from high-contrast colours such as bright green or orange.
• Avoid colours that are too similar to the gateway and personnel markers on the floorplan to prevent visual confusion.

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Locations

The Locations sub-tab manages campus-level address records. These are the top-level organisational entries for multi-site deployments — each "location" is effectively a site with a full mailing address, coordinates, and timezone.

Note: Locations and Buildings share the same underlying data structure. The Locations sub-tab provides a more address-focused form layout suitable for facility managers who think in terms of physical site addresses rather than building hierarchy.

Viewing Locations

The table shows each location with:

• Name and code
• Full address (street, city, state, postal code, country)
• Timezone

Creating a Location

1. Click Add Location.
2. Fill in:
   • Location Name (required)
   • Location Code (optional) — short reference code
   • Street Address (optional)
   • City (optional)
   • State (optional)
   • Postal Code (optional)
   • Country (optional, defaults to USA)
   • Latitude / Longitude (optional) — decimal coordinates
   • Timezone — select the correct US timezone from the dropdown (defaults to Central/Chicago)
3. Click Add Location.

Editing a Location

1. Click the pencil (Edit) icon.
2. Update the address details or timezone.
3. Click Save Changes.

Deleting a Location

1. Click the Delete (trash) icon.
2. Confirm the deletion.

Tip: If a location has associated floors or zones, delete or reassign those first. The system will warn you if related data exists.

Exporting Locations

Click Export above the table to download a CSV of all location records including address and coordinate fields.