Geographically Analyze Data Using QlikMaps
With the business intelligence platform QlikView, you can access QlikMaps Extension Object, a mapping visualization and location-based analytics engine that does not require any additional server infrastructure. QlikMaps allows you to custom map territories and regions by using custom-defined shapes known as “Shape Files” and “Boundary Files”.
The Benefits of Using QlikMaps
QlikMaps offers a variety of benefits, including:
- Access to rich and interactive location analytics
- Street-level views and virtual visits of locations
- The opportunity to visualize relationships and directionalities among points plotted on the map, thanks to QlikMaps’ unique “spider” functionality
- Heat maps to allow for quick and effective visual understanding of data
- The ability to lasso points and polygons on the map to make selections
- Custom regions that can be integrated using custom shape file
- Multi-layer support, which allows you to add or remove any layer type with the click of a button
- Custom pop-ups for additional detail information
- Full functionality from all browsers and devices (through use of HTML5 and AJAX)
With QlikView, making a single selection in the dashboard will influence all the reports in dashboard. Similarly in QlikMaps, you can select a region or location point using the lasso feature or clicking the particular entity twice.
QlikMaps useful features include:
- Polygon Mapping
- Point Mapping
- Multi-layering
Polygon Mapping allows you to display a transparent heat map on top of the map. This feature works similarly to the straight table in QlikView, and it allows:
- Popup labeling
- Configuring custom pop-ups (such as charts)
- Use of custom boundaries for the heat map
- Street views
- Use of custom colors
- Exporting of data to Excel
- Consider an example, in which a heat map is created as:
It’s clear that you are not able to see any underlying geographic data. In such cases, you can make the heat map transparent:
Point Mapping allows you to display the location of an entity in the map just by providing its latitude and longitude values. Additionally, you can:
- Use custom icons for specific entities
- Create different sized icons to show, at a glance, which entity has higher volume:
- Configure custom pop-ups (such as displaying charts)
- Use the lasso feature to select points
- Zoom in for more detailed map view
- Visualize a relationship between two points using “spider” functionality:
Multi-layering
Allows you to combine QlikMaps’ polygon and point mapping features, providing a geographic representation of the location along with its entities:
The benefits of multi-layering include:
- Pop-up functionality
- The ability to deselect any layer with a single click in the checkbox
- A lasso feature
- The ability to search for geographic locations
Custom Defined Shapes
Another useful feature of Qlikmaps: It allows you to use custom boundaries for a custom location or region.
For example, consider the United States with all state boundaries delineated:
With tools like ArcGIS and QGIS it’s easy to create four regional areas within the U.S. map:
It’s possible to use similarly defined shapes in Qlikmaps.
Creating custom boundaries is a two-step process, which involves:
- Creation of shape files (.shp) using geographical data in ArcGIS. In this step, you take a zip and territory/region map and join with the base file of ArcGIS, to create the shape file (.shp) for your custom data.
- Converting the .shp (shape file) file into a .csv file using the QGIS Tool to create boundary files. Below, we have a shape file from the ArcGIS tool; the same can be converted into a boundary file in .csv format in QGIS.
For more information about these capabilities and improving your business analytics systems, contact us today.