A street checked in a minute, not a morning
Manon plans new stations for one of the largest electric car sharing services in Paris.
Listen to the story:
The challenge
Every week the city offers her a few streets for new stations. To judge one she pulls up population, charger and metro maps, and a single street takes a morning. The city wants answers by Friday, and good streets go to rivals while she checks.
How the flow works
With xMap Flows, Manon built Scout. Scout is an AI employee: a flow of 6 blocks.
When Manon types a street into the team's chat,
A street to check (Chat)
Scout weighs it like a planner,
Weighs it like a planner (AI agent)
counts the people living within five hundred metres,
Who lives there (Demographics)
finds the public chargers already there,
Chargers around it (EV charging)
checks the metro stations and car parks nearby,
Metro and parking (Nearby places)
and answers with a verdict and the numbers.
A verdict with numbers (Reply)
What it solves
- A morning per street: solved by AI agent and Reply
- Three maps per answer: solved by Demographics and EV charging and Nearby places
- Good streets lost: solved by Reply
The result
This week the city offers nine streets, and Manon checks all nine before lunch on Monday. Rue de Belleville has fourteen thousand people within a short walk and just two chargers, so the city gets her yes that evening.
Manon used to research streets. Now she just has a conversation about them.
An illustrative scenario: the figures are modelled to show what the flow produces, not a customer's results.
The flow, block by block
- 1
A street to check
Starts the flow when someone writes in its chat: the chat window in the editor, or a chat page you can share or put on your website.
- 2
Weighs it like a planner
An AI agent: for each incoming message it thinks, uses the blocks you link to its Tools port (data, xMap AI, lookups, your tables, other flows, apps), remembers the conversation and writes an answer in {{reply}}.
- 3
Who lives there
Who lives in an area: the number of residents, men and women, and nine age groups, from xMap’s population grid (hexagons of about 0.1 km², about 100 countries).
- 4
Chargers around it
Public charging stations for electric vehicles from Open Charge Map, the open, worldwide register: around each incoming place with counts (stations, charge points, fast stations, the highest power, the nearest and the main operators), or the stations themselves around places, in the Area of interest or around a point, each with its operator, connectors, power, status and address.
- 5
Metro and parking
Places around a point from xMap’s own places database (300M+ places, refreshed every month): pick the types of place (more than 5,000, such as Restaurant, Cafe, Pharmacy, Hospital or Gas station, or a whole group of them) and how far to look.
- 6
A verdict with numbers
Answers whoever started the flow, on the same channel: the app or system that called its Webhook / API gets the answer back, and a message from Slack, WhatsApp, Telegram, Teams, SMS, Outlook or Discord gets a reply in the same chat, through the account of the block that received it.
Templates to build it
Ready-made flows with the same blocks. Open one, change the city and the kind of place, and run it.
- Site advisor chat for the expansion teamA chat where your expansion team names any address and gets people, competitors and a verdict.
- Neighbourhood guide chat for buyersA chat that tells buyers about any neighbourhood, like a local agent.
- Field sales helper chatA chat that tells field reps which shops are near them today.
- Meeting prep chat for repsA chat for reps: name the business you are meeting and get a short brief with questions to ask.
- Research assistant over live location dataA research chat over live people, business and hiring data.
- Chat about places near anyoneA chat for your customers that finds places near anyone, live.
Industries
Learn how it works
- AI agentAn AI that decides which tools to use to answer or complete a task.
- How to build a WhatsApp assistant that answers about placesCustomers ask on WhatsApp; an AI agent searches and replies.
- Location intelligenceUsing where things are, and what is around them, to make business decisions.
- AI agents with tools and memoryAn agent that answers questions using your blocks as tools.
- Answer on WhatsApp, Telegram or SlackAn assistant that replies in the same chat.
- Compare sites side by sideTwo or three spots measured the same way, one column each, the best of every row marked and the best site and why.
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- Eight cabs that hear about a closure firstRahul owns eight cabs that do airport runs in Bengaluru. He drives one of them himself.
Build this flow on your own city
Run a live search on the home page without an account, or let Ask xMap build the flow from one sentence.