Create a map for free

Learn how to create a map with Notion Maps

Notion is a versatile tool that you can use for almost everything in your life, from tracking habits to planing your day o vacations, or making a list of your favorite places in your city. The only thing that lacks Notion is the posibility to create a map using the data that you already have in your databases, so in this post I'm going to show you, how you can create a map from your Notion databases.

The first thing is to go to Notionmaps.com and sign up.

The first time there will be an onboarding process, to make it more easy to start, we will follow that onboarding process (if you don't see the onboarding process please contact me).

Onboarding

Preparing your database

The first thing you need to do is prepare o create your database, the database has to have 3 required columns, a "Name" column of type string, a "Latitude" column of type number and a "Longitude" column of type number. The first column is used to identify the location on the map, the other two are the coordinates of your location, you can get this value from a map like Google Maps or Apple Maps, in another post I will show you how to get this info from a Google Maps link.

In the future we plan to add the option to automatically get this coordinates from an address, using services like Google Maps.

Don't worry if you don't get the right coordinates right away, you can adjust the numbers later, the important thing is that you have to have the columns and some number in it, so you can see the results.

Connecting to Notion

Once you have prepared your database, you can proceed to connect to Notion. I recommend that you connect your entire workspace, because is more easy to select any database later, if you select only one database, it will be more difficult to search or add databases later.

If the connection with Notion was successful, you should see something like the image below.

Selecting your database

Now that your are connected to Notion, in the dropdown you should see your database listed, if not please wait a little and refresh the page. You must give a name to your map, it can be the same name of your database, but is up to you choosing a good name.

Selecting a map provider

The last step is to select your preferred map provider, by default OpenStreetMap is selected, currently we support Google Maps and Mapbox as map providers, if you want to use one of those you must have a valid Google Maps api key or a Mapbox token.

Don't worry, you can change this setting any time, or if you don't understand this now, just leave the default option.

Creating the map

If you followed the steps above, you now are connected to Notion, you have selected your database and give a name.

If you click the create map button, your map will be ready, a message will show you how many rows were synced with Notion Maps.

Now you can click the button "Continue to my maps", in that section you will see all the maps that you have created. Every map has the status of the map, the Notion database link and the public link of your map. This public link is that you can use to embed the map in Notion.

Map view

If you followed the steps above you will have the link for your map, if you go to that link you should see your map with your locations.

In that view you have the locations on the map, if you click a location you should see the name of your location and their properties.

In the upper right corner are two things. First is the map name and then a button that says "Update map", that button will let you update your map locations every time you make some change in your Notion database, so you should save the database first and then request a map update.

The last step will be to embed the map in a Notion page with an "embed block".

And that's it, you now have a map connected to your Notion database with very simple steps.