In this short post I will describe the workflow for creating a fully functional WalkInto tour with a menu navigation and Tour Cards and share on social feeds.  It should not take more than 15 minutes.


I am going to make this tour on some interesting places to visit in Japan.  I have some idea of the places I want to show.  I definitely want to show Shibuya train station, A busy street in Tokyo and then some peacefulness of Mt. Fuji.  Now, let us get started.  


Step 1: 


Log into your dashboard and click on CREATE TOUR button.  This will open up the editor with a world map view inviting me to pick my scenes.




Blank Editor Screen



To keep it fun I'm going to pick the first scene with WalkInto search for Shibuya Station.


Step 2: Locating a Scene.


Typing on the top left search box auto populates matching entries.



When I pick the Shibuya Station from the list, WalkInto will take you to the map and if it finds an scene in that area will show it in a popup.  Keep in mind that this scene might not be exactly what you are looking for since there are a LOT of matching photospheres in any given location.  Thanks to the mighty popularity and all  smart phones.



To see the other matching Photo Spheres and see insides near by, WalkInto has a nifty tool on the toolbar - the Pegman tool.  This tool toggles the visibility of streetview layer.




Activating the Street View layer clearly shows all virtual tours available on the map in the area you are in.  You can pan and zoom to different areas or click on any point on the overlay to inspect the imagery.



After some looking around I made my pick and I have a choice of either opening it directly in the editor then or I could just shortlist it and use it later.  Shortlisting is a very handy tool when you are working on a large story with a lot of possible scenes.  Everyone likes a tight story.  So make it a point to shortlist as much as you like but use as few a scenes as you need to effectively tell a story.  Verbose is bad!



Shortlisting a scene saves your selection also to the server.  So, even when you come back later the scenes you picked will always be available in the shortlist carousel on the upper right.



Step 3: Adding the first menu item.


Clicking on open on the scene popup will directly open the scene in the editor.  Once the scene is open on the editor you can add a navigation point for it on the menu.


I just noticed I have not names my tour yet!  Let us fix it right away by clicking on the Pencil icon next to the tour name ('Untitled').  I am going to call this tour Glimpses of Japan.


Clicking the save button next to the name will make the name stick!



You are still reading! So far so good!  Let us get started with the menu.  The menu has two modes.  Edit mode and viewer mode.  To activate the edit mode you click the small blue pencil on top right of the menu structure.  To add the very first menu item you just click on 'Add New'



A newly added menu comes up in the edit mode.  Here you can edit the name as well as the corresponding scene.  The scene is exactly what you just see on the editor screen.  Angles as well as the zoom level.  Once created you can always go back and adjust the scene or even change the scene to a totally different location. It is quite flexible and standardized.


I adjusted the scene, entered the name I wanted and clicked on save to save the first menu item.


When saved  the menu item appears like this.  Note that it is still in an overall edit mode.  On the right you have a + for adding sub menus and on left you have edit and delete buttons.  All in line to the entry.


You can turn off the edit mode by clicking the blue pencil on upper left of the menu.  Once out of edit mode the menu looks just the way it will on the viewer.


At this point you have created a pretty decent tour and you can check it out on the viewer by clicking on the preview button on the tool bar.  Preview button is the 'Eye' icon.  Preview will open on next tab.




Step 4 : Add A Tourcard



Click on the circled toolbar button to activate the TourCard Panel at the center of your screen.





By default a 360 degree card is selected.  360 degree card is a tourcard (info panel) that shows up only on the scene you are adding to.  There is a lot of customizations possible to to this behavior. But for the discussion sake we'll keep it simple.  Click on the 'Select Template' button to proceed to selecting the structure of your tourcard.



Choose the highlighted template and click OK. On the right bottom of your current scene a default Tourcard will be added.





Preview for mobile devices


On Google chrome there is a nifty tool to preview the tour on mobile.  It is in the developer tools.  You activate it either from the browser menu , 


More Tools >> Developer Tools or by pressing key 'F12' on machines with that key!




Activating the mobile preview will give you options to switch between differen devices and see how the tour is going to look.  T switch you can use the drop downs from top of the preview.  You will need to hit REFRESH [F5] to reload the screen.