Microsoft Tag – URL Shortcodes

For anyone out there who has had some trouble finding the shortcodes for Microsoft’s Tag URL tags, below is a list.

Short Codes

Postal Code Geo:

{!PostalCode}

Latitude:

{!Lat}

Longitude:

{!Long}

Device ID:

{!deviceID}

These URL shortcodes can be used when creating your tags to give you some information about who the scanner is and where they were scanning. Let’s say I send out a bunch of tags stuck to boxes of my product. I can have these URL tags point to my server, deliver something to the user and at the same time grab some information about the user from the URL information they pass back to me. Let’s say I want to make a tag that delivers me a device ID and the postal code where the tag was scanned.

Full URL

I would create a tag with the following URL:

https://iwearshorts.com/tag/boxscan.php?deviceID={!deviceID}&postalCode={!PostalCode}

Then create the actual page to capture the information and give the user the desired experience. This technology represents a remarkable improvement over the older QR technology because it allows us to make our tags dynamic, offers analytics, and represents a more attractive barcode to the user. More on Tag as this technology becomes more mature and better uses are discovered for it.

Capture

To capture the information I might do something like this:

<?php
	if(isset($_GET['deviceID']) && isset($_GET['postalCode'])) {
		// get the interger values and display the stuff
		$deviceID = intval($_GET['deviceID']);
		$postalCode = intval($_GET['postalCode']);

		if(!empty($deviceID) && !empty($postalCode)) {
			$message = "We were able to capture your device ID: <em>" . $deviceID . "</em> and your postal code: <em>" . $postalCode . "</em>";
		} else {
			$message = "Unable to capture the device ID";
		}
	} else {
		$message = "No GET data available.";
	}
?>