Population census gives the government an idea of different populations in different parts of country which in turn aids the government in adequate provision of social amenities like housing, water, electricity, roads, schools, and hospital.
Keeping this in mind, has come up with a feature to map this exclusive Census data with CRM data over a map. This feature of Census Data Visualization helps user to visualize census data on map for better and more accurate decision-making. Visualization of this data on Maplytics helps user to analyze various information of the required area in a country like Housing units, Area land, Area water, population demographics, etc., and take strategic decisions.
A few sets of census data are available by default within Maplytics. These default sets are provided by Bing maps for USA. Users can also plot their census files on the map which contains census data. Users can configure categories to see colored regions as per the configuration and also configure attributes to see on Summary card and hover on region.
The feature can be used by Sales and Marketing Managers to decide upon campaigns and sales regions, field reps can use it to give in their suggestions or check out allotted regions to design on their sales pitch. The C-suite too can have a peek at it to verify campaign and launch decisions.
To plot census data, a user can choose the option of ‘Files’ in the feature of Overlay. Once done, user can select a proper category attribute and a summary attribute. Details of same can be referred to .
Configuration for Census data
Users can configure Census files provided by Maplytics in Dynamics CRM.
While configuring census data into Dynamics CRM, territories get created within which respective census data gets saved in the form of geographies. Following are the territories for census data saved on configuration:
- England-Cities
- Germany-Postalcodes
- NewYork-Postalcodes
- USA 111th Congressional Districts
- USA Counties
- USA States
- USA-Postalcodes
Configuration for attributes
Users can configure the attributes available in census data/shape files on map, create categories for attributes and select colors to visualize categorized data on the map. This allows the user to frame data in a way they want to view it on the map.
Attribute Configuration:
Users can select the attributes to show on Summary card shown on the click on regions in the census data/shape file plotted on the map.
Users can select a maximum of 6 attributes that will be shown on the hover on the regions in the census data/shape file plotted on the map.
Users can select the attributes from the census data/shape file to be shown as columns in the data grid in the Detail map.
Category Configuration
Users can create categories for the attributes in the census data/shape file. Creating categories will help the user to view the categorized census data for required attributes in desired colors. Some categories are provided by default for configured census data. Users can click on + New button to create a new category for any attribute.
- Create filters and define colors
After clicking on Edit/New button, user can filter the attributes and define colors for the ranges of the filtered attributes.
-
- Attribute: This shows name of the Attribute for which category has been created/will be created.
- Display Name: The user can type a name for the category which should be displayed in the list of categories.
- Color: This can be used to set colors for individual filters set. The user can click on Auto Set button to set random colors for all the values.
After user has created categories, they can plot the census data along with an attribute selected to visualize categorized Census data on map as shown below:
If the same set of users using Census Data Visualization work with lands, real estate or farms, etc. they can visualize their lands on a map with this feature of Land Area Mapping. With this, users can assign land regions to the records and visualize them on the map to understand the coverage of the area for each of the records.
Create and Assign land areas to entity records
Create 1: N relationship with Geography entity
The user first needs to assign land regions (Geographies) to records of CRM entity for which lands are to be visualized. For this, user needs to create a 1: N relationship between that entity and the Geography entity. For example, if user wants to visualize the landscapes for Account records, so to create a 1: N relationship between the Accounts entity and the Geography entity. Users can also add a grid on the Accounts form in order to see the list of landscapes that have been assigned to the record.
Attribute Mapping for Landscapes
Once a relationship is created, same can be selected in respective Entity map.
Assign lands to a single record
To visualize the land of a record, the user first needs to create the geography for the landscape and assign the geography to the respective record.
After clicking on ‘Land Area Mapping’, a new window will open where the user can upload Shape files or Excel files or draw shapes for the landscapes on the map.
Assign lands to multiple records
Users can select multiple records from home grid and assign lands to selected records from same map. After selecting required records, users can click on ‘Land Area Mapping’ button.
A new window will open where the user can upload Shape files or Excel files or draw shapes for the landscapes on the map. Now using the selection tool, the required land on the map is selected and right-clicked on to ‘Assign Geographies’.
Visualizing Assigned lands to record
Users can select an entity in Datasource and the respective view in the ‘Plot Records’ card in Detail map to plot the record on the map as pushpins. While visualizing records on the Detail map, users can right-click on any pushpin to open the Contextual menu and use the ‘Show Land Area’ button to plot land that is assigned to the respective record.
Users can also click on any area plotted on the map to open the Summary card to view the metadata of the region.
Lands assigned to records selected from the Entity home grid look as follows-
This is great but is there more?
Apart from and , Maplytics has been able to develop notable features like , , with turn-by-turn navigation and along-the-route, , Truck Routing, Tracking Field reps with , performance analysis of complex data with , amongst others.
You can write to us at [email protected] for your mapping queries, to explore the product further, a of 15 days, or a personalized demo within Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM / Dataverse.
For more on Maplytics, do visit our or . For further details, you can hop on to our , , and .
Until then,
Happy Mapping!
