Maps

Introduction

XLCubed Maps are an optional extension which allow plotting geographic data directly in Excel and publishing to the XLCubed Web server.

You can plot the data locations, and optionally set the colour and size of the plotted points to show values.

Video demonstration

For a tutorial, try watching our Map Videos

UI

XLCubed expects your data to be arranged in a particular way to create maps. The columns should contain the following.

Column	Description
Map Name	Title of the map, a map will be created for each different name.
Location Name	Title of the data point, shown when you hover over the point.
Latitude	Latitude of the point.
Longitude	Longitude of the point.
Colour (optional)	Defines the colour of the point plotted, can be a number or text. If no column is selected then all points will be the same colour. See Colours for more information.
Size (optional)	Defines the size of the point, this must be a number. If no column is selected then all points will be the same size.

To create a Map from Excel simply highlight the relevant data and click the Map button in the XLCubed menu.

Map controls

Button	Description
	Zoom in.
	Zoom out.
	Zoom to Fit.
	Toggle map display type. Switch between road and satellite views.
	Toggle fade map. Fading the map makes the data points more prominent. (Requires IE9+ in Excel, and IE9+, Firefox or Chrome on the web)

Output cells

In the properties screen you can set up "output cells" for the map and location names.

With these selected clicking a data point will update Excel. This can then be used to drive a detailed report for the selected point.

If you turn on multi-select and pick an output range rather than a cell you can output multiple values. Drawing tools appear on the map to allow you to pick many points, and OK the selection.

Colours

This column can contain numbers or text, and there are three ways the values could drive the colour.

Firstly, if you have numbers the colours can be from a colour gradient. E.g. Red-Green shading.

Secondly, you can categorise the point. For example with stores the colour column could contain the store type. Each store type would then be plotted a particular colour.

Finally the column could contain specific colours, using named colours or Html syntax such as #ff0000. This allows you maximum flexibility to drive the colour using any criteria you choose.

All of these options are configured in the map properties screen. Right click the map to bring up the screen.