Best Mapping Software & Location calcs

[Carveout]

Hello Community!

First timer...Looking for advise and some validation on two topics (related).

Currently we have been using Tableau to plot customer and prospect locations that are located within a radius of our locations. We refer to this as "Location Affinity". This is a baseline calc of 50-mile concentric rings but it has its limitations (i.e. 1/2 of the distance could end up in the Atlantic Ocean or Great Lakes as an example.) We look at any site located within the 50-mile ring.

I am looking to up our game w/a mapping package to not only look at new location affinity calculations (sovereignty, latency rings, a better mileage calc) which I may be able to do via Alteryx (maybe someone can give me ideas on ways or data sets to work from) but also visuals.

We currently have been using Tableau, which is good to show some drill down views, but as I start to dig deeper and try to increase the velocity of (Location based-insights) I feel as though we are not moving quick enough and I have to pre-conceive the insight versus finding an inside on the fly.

I would love to be able to do "overlays" where I choose a data set to overlay on a map for quick insights.

Any suggestions are very much appreciated!

Thanks in advance.

Barry

[TuvyL]

Hi @Carveout,

I'm going to tag a few of my friends here who happen to be map aficionados & spatial wizzes! They might be able to help with some advice here.

cc: @Deanna, @Hollingsworth, @Samanthaj_hughes, and @CharlieS

[Deanna]

Hi, @Carveout and thank you, @TuvyL , for the introduction!  I would be very glad to help; I have been using Alteryx since 2005, and throughout these years, I have been utilizing it heavily for spatial and demographic analytics.  There are some awesome spatial tools in Alteryx that may work really well in your scenario, especially the Trade Area tool along with the TomTom Dataset within the Location Insights add-on bundle.

With the TomTom dataset, you can create drivetime trade areas, which are based on a distance within a specified time frame (i.e. how far one can drive in 10 minutes from a central point).  The drivetime boundaries are then used in place of radii; since the drivetime boundaries are based on street networks, they won't go out into the ocean (unless there is a bridge), over mountains, across lakes, etc.  These boundaries can provide excellent insight into your customers, allowing you to see if they are within certain drivetimes.  You can also use the TomTom data within the Distance tool, and calculate drivetime and drive distance, along with straight-line distance.

In addition, the TomTom data and Address toolset provides outstanding geocoding capabilities; since Alteryx runs in virtual memory, you may find that processing of certain spatial data and geocoding can be really fast!  Alteryx also uses CASS (Coding Accuracy Support System) from the U.S. Postal Service to clean and standardize addresses prior to geocoding.

Spatial matching of locational data is also available in Alteryx; you can spatially overlay layers and find the relationships between them utilizing the easy to use Spatial Match tool!  Find Nearest, Spatial Process (Intersect, Combine, etc.), Buffer, and many more spatial functions are found in the Spatial toolset as well, and this is just a sample of the spatial options Alteryx offers!

Mapping is a feature of the Reporting tools, and you can make informative, attractive maps in Alteryx, adding one or many layers to the base map.  You can even output multiple maps in one workflow, as well as output temporary .pdf maps to test the map contents prior to producing output.

I highly recommend Alteryx for these and other spatial analytics; when you have time, please review the Alteryx Academy training on Spatial at this link - it can be found at the Academy button in the Menu at the top left of this page, then Interactive Lessons, and is very helpful!  There is also a great post by @JessicaS  at Alteryx with steps on how to use the Report Map tool:  https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer/Tool-Mastery-Report-Map/ta-p/37225

Please also feel free to reach out to me or any of the "Spatial ACEs" Tuvy has listed; we are always glad to help with geospatial ideas!  I look forward to talking Location Analytics with you!

@Deanna 

Deanna Sanchez

[CharlieS]

Hi @Carveout 

Welcome; you're in the right place. The Community has lots of spatial nerds here to help.

Data:

The illustrious @Deanna covered benefits of the Location Insights data package available from Alteryx. That data package also includes map base layers for things like roadways, parks, airports, and water boundaries (including coastlines and [Great] lakes). 

Documentation on the Maps in the Location Insights data package:

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Location-Data/Data-Products-101-Maps/ta-p/398016 

An alternative/additional source for map base layers in the US are the TIGER/Line files published for free by the Census Bureau. There are LOTS of layers available here for everything from water boundaries to standard geographies like CBSAs, counties, ZIP code tabulation areas, block groups, etc. 

TIGER/Line Download portal:

https://www.census.gov/geographies/mapping-files/time-series/geo/tiger-line-file.html 

Methods:

I think you'll find that Alteryx is extremely powerful for geospatial processing. The name "Alteryx" even refers to ALTERing Y(latitude) and X(longitude). There's lots we can do here, but it might be best to narrow the focus to a particular use case  to get started. Based on the situation where you described using 50-mile rings from customers to identify potential locations: if you have overlapping 50-mile rings and want to find "hot spots" of overlap, there's a Heat Map tool which does this out of the box. My favorite part is that this "tool" is actually just a macro that you can right-click and open to explore the methods of to maybe gain some inspiration. 

https://help.alteryx.com/current/designer/heat-map-tool 

Otherwise, we can dive into whatever questions/use cases you may have. Feel free to tag any of us if you post new topics. Happy Alteryx-ing!

[Samanthaj_hughes]

Hey @Carveout 

You are in the right place and @TuvyL has introduced you to a great crowd. We love spatial here.

@Deanna & @CharlieS have given lots of advice around spatial options in the tool.

I would say for your "circles into the sea" issue, create a generalised boundary of the country you work in. USA or UK, etc. and have this in your back pocket for clipping those regions that end in the sea. For a USA boundary, you could simply find a USA state SHP file and COMBINE using the SUMMERIZE tool. Doing this will get you used to all the different tools that you have access to in order to create spatial objects. Then after your TRADE AREA tool or BUFFER tool use the SPATIAL PROCESS tool to keep / remove the parts you are not interested in. (also described as clipping/cookie cutting in GIS)

For visuals there are numerous blogs where people use Alteryx Spatial tools, https://intersectionsandoverlaps.wordpress.com/ (shameless plug - its a blog I write with some spatial friends of mine) there are lots of visuals here as well as workflows that can support what you are trying to understand around the spatial tools. Esp around the "clipping" function.

In terms of different ways to look at the spatial problem there are APIs out there too which you can fully take advantage of within Alteryx that will give you a spatial return that you can then work with as well as the data package within Alteryx that will give you access to drivetime data, map bases, etc.

Alteryx can absolutely show layers on a map in a browse tool. However if you are looking for an interactive map with lots of overlays, you may not be wanting Alteryx but perhaps Leaflet or a more formal GIS based system to deliver that capability. (ESRI / QGIS / CARTO / MAPINFO)

Hope we have all managed to give a little bit of insight to your question.

#Alteryxrocks

[Carveout]

Thanks Deanna! Very helpful.

One follow-up (for now). Once I use any of the Spatial and Demographic tools in Alteryx and want to export to a 3rd party mapping tool (ESRI, MapInfo, Tableau Maps, etc) do you have recommendations as to who can give me some insights into ease of exporting as well as the functionality of these packages?

Thank you,

Barry

[CharlieS · Accepted solution]

Alteryx comes with support to export spatial objects with data in various file formats.These are built into the standard Output tool you can add to your workflow and just select the file format from the dropdown in the configuration for that tool. ESRI, MapInfo, and Tableau are included in the list of supported file types below.

https://help.alteryx.com/current/designer/data-sources 

As far as feature support goes, Alteryx generally supports the spatial objects and data appended to those objects. However, cartographic features like those configured in the Report Map tool are not exported. In some cases in the past where some cartographic attributes were necessary, I have written those out via string editing for the .kml format (save as text with ".kml" extension).