Adding a map showing selected parcels to a report
I'd made a parcel report, and would like to add a map to the report header that highlights all the parcels that appear in the report (they show up as yellow when I generate the report). Is there a way of doing this? If I add a Geocortex Map in the Report Designer, it doesn't show the highlighted parcels. If I create a Feature Map for the layer in Site Manager, it only highlights one selected parcel (first? last?), and slows down the report generation to the point it is not useful. Any ideas?
Chris
-
Yeah... would really love to be able to do this also! One at a time per page etc is ok until you the report generation starts really crunching!
any ideas anyone?
regards
G
0 -
Layer template reports such as a Parcel Report are used to display the attributes of one or more of a layer's features. So when you select multiple parcels to run the report on, it actually runs a separate report for each of the parcels. The parcel that you see in the feature map is the parcel which that page of the report is for. The next page will be a new report showing another one of the parcels you selected. Therefore, the report will generate slower when you select more features at once.
Because each report is only showing information for one parcel, I don't believe you can have a map that shows all of the parcels you selected.
-Victoria
0 -
I'll add this as an enhancement request to LG as I believe this to be an important feature of reporting.
0 -
Chris and Gareth,
My tests show that the highlighted parcels are respected in a main map added to the report header in Report Designer, provided the features are actually selected; that is, the yellow "selection" star beside the feature listing in the report details is coloured in and the feature is highlighted in the map. My test was to query for one or more parcels in the Charlotte demonstration site, click the yellow star beside each one, then invoke a report which contains a main map control (the low income housing report in the Charlotte site has one). This may have been an incomplete test on my part - Chris, you mentioned that you noticed the selected features were not highlighted in a map control added to Report Designer - if you had the features selected, what were your steps to invoke the report so that I can reproduce the behaviour?
John
0 -
John, I should have clarified, I am "selecting" the features using Tasks|Reports, and then using one of the selection type tools to graphically pick the parcels. They then show up as yellow while the report is generating. I guess that's not the same as actually selecting the parcels so that they are persistently selected.
I imagine most of our users will use the Tasks|Reports to generate reports by graphically picking the parcels, as opposed to actually selecting parcels first, so it would be really nice to be able to add a report header map that corresponds to the report selection, even if it is not persistent. A couple of thoughts:
- why not have the option of adding this "temporary" selection to the selected set?
- is enabling Feature Maps necessary to add this selection map to the report header? Enabling Feature Maps slows down the report hugely, even if only adding a Feature Map to the report header. I find it times out after about 30 records, when we may be running summary reports of 1000+ parcels (with Feature Maps disabled, this takes only a second or two for 1000+ parcels, which is awesome). Obviously this may be a problem for us.
- maybe I'm in the minority, but I find Essential's implementation of identifying and selecting features counter-intuitive. You can Identify records graphically or through a global search and they appear in the results pane, but are not automatically highlighted on the map. You can graphically pick features for a report task and they appear temporarily highlighted, but they are not actually selected. Selecting features (clicking the stars) especially from a long list, can be tricky. And flipping between the Results and Selected panes isn't obvious. As we roll out Essentials for our in-house mapping application, this will be by far and away the hardest thing for our non-technical users (which is most of them) to get a handle on.
--As for running a report directly from currently selected parcels - I'm not able to do this. I submitted this as a possible bug back in Dec [ ref:00D3nQM.5006GFpPL:ref ]
Thanks,
Chris
0 -
Hi Chris,
Yes, when invoking a report using the Reports tool in the advanced toolbar, features are not automatically "selected" and will not be highlighted in the main report. I agree having these features highlighted would be a good option, particularly for including a map in a report as you would like to do.
To your question about enabling feature maps, no this is not necessary if you only want the main map at the top of the report. The feature maps provide only the functionality to display the maps of individual features.
To your point about selections in general, I wonder if it might be good to include an option to have features automatically graphically highlighted when using the identify tools or the global search. I agree that selecting / deselecting features in batch operations is not easy. "Add All to Selection" and "Remove All from Selection" would be welcome additions to the interface.
I'll make sure this feedback gets recorded into our tracking system.
John
0 -
Chris (and others),
I should mention that you may be able to achieve what you want using a Workflow, with a rough sequence consisting of Capture Geometry -> Query -> Select Features -> Report activities (perhaps with some additional pieces thrown in to enhance the user experience). In this way you can have an entry right in the I Want To... menu that a user can choose, though if you wanted to give the user the choice of geometry types there would likely need to be an extra Display Form step at the beginning.
John
0 -
John and Chris,
I agree that the whole selection process is counter-intuitive. I've been lucky enough to work with 3 competitive products here in Oz and they handle selections just so much better. You run a search and the features selected are shown on the map - this could be made optional, but we never had any complaints on the selections being shown - only the colours used ; ) which was configurable for each layer!
There were also the options OOTB to ADD to, REMOVE from, and NEW for the selection process - again, this could be made optional? or a combination of either of these as the admin sees fit?
Selecting the stars at the side of the result set is not all that intuitive IMHO, and just adds to more and more mouse clicks that is what we all try and avoid when setting up these apps....
food for thought..
regards
Gareth
0 -
Thanks for the responses John and Gareth. Trying to think as an end user, I think it would be much clearer to highlight features that are in the results pane. It would provide "expected" visual feedback, and imply a tighter integration between the results pane and the map. Select/Reselect/Unselect/Aselect options would be most welcome (like in IMF days). I wish it was all handled through the results pane as opposed to the additional selection pane (wouldn't a sortable, expandable, pretty graphics tree be nice to show results???). I don't envision our users as needing the selection pane at all, other than to highlight features on the map (although I must admit I haven't explored all the functionality with selected sets).
Anyway, I'm getting off topic here, but it's good stuff to chew on. Props to Latitude for their willingness to listen to user ideas. We appreciate it!
Chris
0
Please sign in to leave a comment.
Comments
9 comments