Platform Overview

Access all your records in one place.

Ginkgo is a map-based data platform designed to help you keep all your records accurately mapped and accessible in a single cloud database.

Your Ginkgo account will help you and your team stay organized, automate tedious workflows, and enable you to share information quickly with any of your local partners such as community members, shop owners, real estate professionals, government staff, etc.

To get started, let's go over some of the sections of the platform and the features of your Ginkgo account that will help you get the most out of your new database. 

 

Sections of the platform

  Tables 

Tables is a read-only interface for you to interact with all 11 of the different types of records in your account, including Properties, Buildings, Development Activity, Listings, Tenants (ie Businesses & Attractions), Units (ie Storefronts and other spaces), Events, Streetscape Assets, Issues, Contacts, and Organizations. Use the Tables section primarily to perform bulk actions, such as deleting, exporting and importing records into your account. 

To get started with the Tables section, try importing a spreadsheet of your records into your account. You can use the CSV file upload feature located on the Tables section. Take a look at this guide to learn more: Import your data

 

Map

The Map section is most likely where you will spend the most time working with your data in Ginkgo. Use the Map to create and update records, to duplicate and delete records one at a time, to perform geospatial analysis on your records using the Areas feature, and to access various Open/Public Datasets as Map Layers.

To get started with the Map section, try adding and updating records directly from the map interface. Here's a guide for this: Add and update your records

 

  Pages

We prioritize data accessibility with Ginkgo. Pages enable your team's records to be instantly accessible from a range of different devices. To accomplish this, Ginkgo automatically generates a unique webpage (URL) and QR code for each of your records. The Pages section is really just an interactive list of all your records where you can access any record in your account on-the-fly.

Each type of record in Ginkgo has a slightly unique design for its Pages. Pages help you manage, track and share the status of different neighborhood assets, events, issues, and programs in your community. Here are some examples of these different designs: 

• Showcase Businesses & Attractions by managing your Tenant records and provide an accurate understanding of the existing mix of retail businesses. Example of a Tenant/Business record.
• Share and track the status of Development Activity.
• Promote Listings for available commercial space for retail, office, industrial and other tenants that might move to a neighborhood. Example of a map of Listings - click "Open as new Page" to view each listing record's Page

 

  Account Settings 

You can access your account settings under your account name in the upper right hand corner of the screen. The following sub-sections can be found under your account settings:

• Edit Profile - Use this section to update your user profile information, such as your user name, email address and password
• Company - Use this section to update your company's information, such as the name of your organization, your organization's website, and your organization's logo you'd like to show on various Page designs to promote the brand. You will also find your account's API credentials here, which you can use to connect Ginkgo to other applications using automations tools like Zapier. Access to your Ginkgo account through Zapier is by invitation only, but just drop us a note to request an invitation link. 
• Users - if you are an account admin, you will see the Users section here as well. You can use this section to manage your team's access and roles by inviting other users to the account as "admins" or as "employees". 

 

 

Features of your Ginkgo account

 

Areas

Analyze your data instantly for any Areas of interest, such as special districts, street corridors, blocks, land use zones, property assemblages, etc.

When you manage busy places like downtowns and main streets, we understand that organizing your information on a map can be a big help, particularly when it comes to accessing it and analyzing it for specific geographic areas. 

The "Areas" feature does just that. It gives you a user friendly tool to define a custom boundary or polygon on the map and enables your team to apply this shape as a filter or analysis with any data that it intersects with. 

To get started and create your first Area, take a look at this guide:

Define your first Area and save it in your account

The "Areas" feature is used to look up metrics for custom map boundaries.

 

Editor Forms

Adding your data about a specific location and creating a new record page is easy. Ginkgo enables you and your team to add records to any precise location on the map by accessing easy-to-use forms that walk you through the fields available for each type of record.

There are two ways to add a record using Ginkgo's Editor Forms:

1. Add a record directly on the Map section by placing a pin down when you click the map and selecting the blue +Add a Record button from the Location Details panel. 
2. Add a record through the Pages section by clicking the yellow New Page button and selecting the type of record you would like to create.

To get started and create your first record on the map, take a look at this guide:

Create your first record through the Editor Forms