Map View: Connecting salespeople and customers?

grahamb · March 15, 2013 3:27PM

I have two files.
1. Salespeople with IDs and lat/long coordinates
2. Customers with Name, Salesperson ID and lat. long. coordinates

I want plot both customers and sales people locations on the same map, then draw a star map where lines are drawn between each customer and their allocated sales rep...How do I do this please?

I started by loading both files and merging on the ID. This created a file with two sets of latitude longitudes but I can only select one pair of coordinate columns for mapping?. So right now I either get a map with sales reps, or one with customers, depending on which coordinate fields I point the Map View to.

I presume that I should perhaps keep files separate but if so, is their a way to select these from the DataManager and apply to layers in some way. Or how should I do this please? Thanks

daniel · March 18, 2013 1:12PM

The current Map View and connect line doesn't naturally allow for "star maps" (I'm guessing they're just like network maps?). Visokio are developing something with the network view but I don't know if that is applicable here or if it is ready.

Anyways by manipulating the data you can build multiple single line connections to the sales rep. However the way I got this was done by double merging the two data sets in different order (see DataManager connections). Then append the two new sets so that the Map View reads the lat and long of both sales rep and customers in the same column. Use the connect line option and tick the Sales ID and Customer name.

A note, this method works in a small set but if you have very large data sets the number of permutations will scale up so you need to watch the number of records created in this method.

grahamb · March 18, 2013 1:38PM

As you say Daniel a good challenge and interesting solution. My customer file is circa 30k records with 10 reps, so do you think this will work?

daniel · March 18, 2013 1:42PM

Should be ok as long as the result is not in the millions of rows. If the line bit isn't absolutely necessary, I would just suggest you append the two sets together with the same lat and long columns and use different markers shapes & size to show where the REP is.

grahamb · March 18, 2013 1:46PM

Thanks, will try. Hopefully once points layers are added to the map this will be straightforward to do?

daniel · March 18, 2013 1:57PM

Points layering is just appending the point data together into a single data set so its pretty straight forward. The part where you create the star map is what this post is about so vote for it:

http://forums.visokio.com/discussion/comment/7300/#Comment_7300

grahamb · March 18, 2013 2:35PM

Have done so Daniel. Fingers crossed

daniel · March 19, 2013 9:53AM

I've had a think about this and out of curiosity tested this in Omniscope to the extent you may require it, attached is the result.

The number of records for a 30k customer list wasn't very heavy and just doubled in the way I did it. The map view does 'chug' a bit but use the SID & distance calculation fields to narrow this down and it is usable.

grahamb · March 19, 2013 10:25AM

Interesting Daniel and thanks for experimenting. I will try to replicate this if I can get my head round your data flow chart! I am hoping that when the points layer gets added to 2.8 then this can become a whole lot simpler? Maybe a standard function to select the link field and select star map and all builds with distance calculation? Cheers, Graham

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