Skip to main content

Basic Grouping to Show Differentiation

What are we talking about here?
Creating basic maps that simply map all addresses are useful, but grouping allows you to kick things up a notch.

Let’s say you are mapping your wedding attendee list for your wedding website and want to allow the map viewer to easily differentiate between the bride’s family and the groom’s family. MapAList has a Map Type built to handle just that – it’s called Group by Distinct Column Values (using unique pin images) and can be selected in Step 4 – Configure Map of the map creation process.

This Map Type allows you to tell MapAList which column in your worksheet contains the grouping attribute. MapAList then examines the values in that column and assigns a unique pin image to each distinct value. Running with the wedding example, what this means is that you would need a column in your worksheet that associates each address with the bride or groom…let’s take a look at an example.

What does it look like from a spreadsheet perspective?
In the sample spreadsheet below, you can see a column called Group which is used to distinguish each address as a member of the bride’s family, a member of the groom’s family, or a friend. Note that you may need to click on the image below and drag to the right to see this column (due to the way Blogger sizes iframes). I could have called the column anything I wanted – for example Family or Side, MapAList doesn’t care. I could also have additional values in the Group column – for example Groomsmen and Bridesmaids. The point I’m trying to get across is that the number of groups is not limited to 3. You could have 50…all MapAList needs to know is the name of the column that contains the grouping attributes. So let’s see what we get when we map this sheet…


http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pqacvdx2XdPdkS4tSqvidBA

What does it look like from a map perspective?

What you can see is that MapAList selected red pins to represent the addresses associated with the bride’s family white pins to represent the groom’s family, and green pins to represent friends. If my worksheet had contained addresses with a Group called Groomsmen, we would have seen a 4th pin type on the left side of the map that represented the Groomsmen addresses and the associated pins on the map.



Okay – so walk me through it step by step…
The process is very much like making a basic map that shows all addresses – the key difference is in Step 4 – Configure Map below:

Step 4 – Configure Map
•Choose Group by Distinct Column Values (using unique pin images).

Click on the image to take a closer look

•Choose the Column that contains the attribute that you would like to group by.
Click on the image to take a closer look

•Click on the Preview Map button to display your map. A unique pin image will represent each distinct column value in the column you selected.
•Click on the Next button.

Step 5 – Save Map
•Modify Additional Setting as you see fit.
•Click on the Save & View Map button.
•Click on the Close This, and Create New Map button.


What are other users doing with this feature?
So now that you know how to use Basic Grouping to Show Differentiation, give some thought to how you might use it. Other users have used grouping to differentiate between:

•Bride’s and groom’s friends/family (you saw that one coming)
•Sales targets that are hot/medium/cold
•Clients using specific versions of a their software
•Types of crimes committed in a specific area
•Regular and premium users of a website
•Destinations visited in 2008, 2007, 2006, etc.
•Comment and us how you're using Basic Grouping

Hope this was helpful...more to come.

--The Map Commissioner (E-mail)
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

New Video Tutorials (Updated)

We decided to experiment and create some video tutorials in the hope they might be more effective instruction and better at getting the word out about what features exist in mapalist and how to utilize them. We hope you find value in the first few we put out. Creating your First Map Using Custom Icons Starting from an Excel Sheet Editing your Maps, Post-Creation Syncing your Map and Google Sheet
Read more

Taking your Maps to the Next Level

As our user count has steadily grown, the MapAList support team has received an increasing number of calls and e-mails from users looking to do more with our solution. Over 80% of the feature requests we’ve received are, well, features that already exist within the base MapAList solution. What does that tell us? What it tells me is that we need to do a better job articulating the feature set MapAList has to offer out of the box...and that’s exactly what we’re going to do. For the next several weeks we will be publishing installments of Taking Your Maps to the Next Level – a series of short tutorials meant to enable you, the user, to get more out of MapAList. Each installment will focus on a single feature, show examples of both spreadsheets and maps, and provide step by step instructions to make it work. Here’s the current plan… 01/02/09 – Basic Grouping to Show Differentiation 01/09/09 – Advanced Grouping to Show Differentiation 01/16/09 – Adding Hyperlinks to Your Map Points 01/23/0
Read more

Allow your Member/User Base to Add Pins to your Map Using Google Forms

As the MapAList user base has grown over the past couple of years, one of the things we’ve noticed is that we have a ton of organizations leveraging our toolset to map their member/user bases. Religious organizations use MapAList to track their congregations; alumni associations use MapAList to track their members; campaigns and non-profits use MapAList to track their supporters/donors…you get the point. The reason I bring this up is because a few of these organizations have gotten smart and realized that they could push the work of updating their maps out to the user based directly using Google Forms. It’s like self check-out at the grocery store – the users love it because they are empowered (and because it’s a novelty to scan those barcodes) and so does the store because it reduces labor. Sounds cool – right? Well, implementing such a solution on your site with MapAList is not terribly difficult. Those folks at Google have made Google Forms easy to design and feed to a G
Read more