Business Analyst Online - Find Location

You can enter an address or lat/long coordinates to find a location on the map. With this location you can add rings, drive times and bands.

Steps:

To access Find Location, click Maps, Define Areas for Reports and Find Location.
The Find Location dialog box opens on the left.
Type an address.
1. To enter long/lat coordinates, click or enter a Lat/Long.
2. Enter the Long/Lat coordinates.
As an option, you can name your location.
Click Go.
The Multiple Matches Found dialog box appears with matches similar to your entry. Click the correct entry.

A pin is placed on the map indicating the location with a dialog box providing the address and options to add rings, drive times or bands; move the point or delete the point. Naming the site is optional. If a site name is not entered then the address is used as the site name by default.

The dialog box for the point can be minimized or closed using the buttons on the upper right corner.

Rings

Rings are circles generated on the map around the point. You can choose up to three rings and indicate the radius of the rings around the point. Report data is summarized for the area contained within each ring. The limit for ring size is 1,000 miles. Rings can be in miles or kilometers and the default is 1, 3, and 5.

Tip:

You can use non-whole numbers such as .1, .3 and .5 for ring sizes. Using small ring sizes in dense urban areas like New York, New York is useful while using these in sparsely populated areas provides results that may be hard to interpret.

Add rings

Steps:

Click Add rings, drive times or bands.
Click Rings.
You can set the radius or use the defaults and click Apply.

Drive Time

A drive time represents how long it takes to drive to a specific location. These areas represent the distance traveled from the site in a given time. For example, a store's 10-minute drive time area defines the area in which drivers can reach the point in 10 minutes or less. Travel time considers the posted speed limits per street segments. The limit for drive-time size is 300 minutes. The default is 5, 10, and 15. Additionally, you can select miles to find out the distance drive time. For example, you can find a 10 mile drive time from a point.

Add drive times

Steps:

Click Add rings, drive times or bands.
Click Drive Times.
You can set the time or use the defaults and click Apply.

Bands

Bands are study areas with no overlap. They provide the traditional ring study area but without duplication of overlapping areas. These are useful for understanding the incremental market changes as you move away from a center location. For example, specifying values of 5, 10, and 15 miles results in reports being generated for data from 0–5, 5–10, and 10–15 mile bands from the center. These also calculate the differences in areas in reports. If using drive time donuts with 5, 10 and 15 miles results in reports being generated for data from 0-5, 5-10 and 10-15 mile bands from the center.

Add bands

Steps:

Click Add rings, drive times or bands.
Click Bands.
Click the corresponding button to create bands for rings or drive times.
1. If rings are selected, set the radius or use the defaults and click Apply.
2. If drive times are selected, set the time or use the defaults and click Apply.

Other site menu options

You can also move or delete the point.

Move this point

This allows you to move the point on the map.

Click Move this point.

You can now drag the pin to move it to another location on the map.

Delete this point

This allows you to delete the point on the map.

Click Delete this point.

The point is deleted from the map.

Get reports

You can create reports for the location you have created.

Steps:

Click Get Reports.
Select the report from the Select Report drop-down menu.
Select the report format from the Format drop-down menu.
Click Run Report.
When the report is ready, click Open Report.

Edit site

You can edit the rings, drive times and bands for the site.

Click Site to make edits.

Colors

Once you have created a ring or drive time for your site, you can change the site colors. The fill and border color, transparency, and thickness options can be set.

Steps:

To change the fill, click Fill.
Fill is selected by default.
To change fill, follow these steps:
- To change the color, click the color picker and a color selection palette appears. Continue until you have changed all the colors you want to change.
- To change the transparency, use the Transparency slider. Slide it to the left to decrease the transparency percentage or to the right to increase the transparency percentage.
- Click the No Fill check box for no fill.
- To reset the fill and border settings to the original values, click Reset.
- To save your edits for only the site being edited, click OK.
- To save your edits for all future sites of the same type, click Save in Preferences.
  The Preferences dialog box appears with the Find Location tab opened and your color changes made.
  
  If you want your changes to be saved in Preferences, click Save. If not, click Cancel. If you save your changes in Preferences, the next time a site of the same type is created, opened, or edited, it will display the newly saved changes. To reset the fill and border settings to the original values, click Restore Defaults.
To change the colors for border, follow these steps:
- To change the color, click the color picker and a color selection palette appears. Continue until you have changed all the colors you want to change.
- To change the border, click Border.
- To change the transparency and thickness, use the appropriate slider. Slide the line to the left to decrease the percentage or to the right to increase the percentage.
- Click the No Border check box for no borders.
- To reset the fill and border settings to the original values, click Reset.
- To save your edits for only the site being edited, click OK.
- To save your edits for all future sites of the same type, click Save in Preferences.
  The Preferences dialog box appears with the Find Location tab opened and your color changes made.
  
  If you want your changes to be saved in Preferences, click Save. If not, click Cancel. If you save your changes in Preferences, the next time a site of the same type is created, opened, or edited, it will display the newly saved changes. To reset the fill and border settings to the original values, click Restore Defaults.

Clear

This option clears the site from the map but doesn't delete it.

Click Clear.

Now that you've saved your site, you can create standard reports and comparison reports. Click Get Reports.