Once GeoFlow is finished plotting you can start aggregating the data. For example, you can drag Actual Price into the Height field to see bars representing the sum of tickets sold in each zip code as shown below. How to prepare your data for visualizing in GeoFlow For best results with GeoFlow, the data should be organized in an Excel table or in a PowerPivot Data Model. For example if your sales data is in an aggregated PivotTable format, you will want to go back to the actual data or table used to create the PivotTable. Here’s why: While a PivotTable aggregates the total sales or instances of sales for regions, GeoFlow can leverage each instance of a sale as a point in time, animate it over time, and also plot it in the exact spot. Similarly, aggregations done geographically in a PivotTable (for example, cities across a state, states across a country, or countries across a region/continent) can now be detailed on a GeoFlow map that retains the same granular level of detail. NOTE: GeoFlow exclusively uses the Vertipaq/xVelocity engine in Excel as its data source. Any data that is added into Vertipaq will be accessible to GeoFlow. GeoFlow can only work with Excel’s Data Model – it cannot connect to external servers. In addition, GeoFlow does not support hierarchies in the Data Model To get external data into the Data Model in Excel, click Data > the connection you want in the External Data group, and then follow the steps in the Data Connection Wizard, making sure you check the option to use the Data Model in Excel on the last step. All data has to be in English. Working with non-aggregated data doesn’t always show you data quality issues, such as typos and inaccurate data. In some cases, it is good to question the quality of the data GeoFlow has plotted. This may result in some iterative data-cleansing work to be done before you refresh your data and run your exploration in GeoFlow again. Note that you can refresh the data model from the GeoFlow ribbon. You can add tables or ranges to the model from the GeoFlow split button under Insert tab in the Excel ribbon.
Once GeoFlow is finished plotting you can start aggregating the data. For example, you can drag Actual Price into the Height field to see bars representing the sum of tickets sold in each zip code as shown below. How to prepare your data for visualizing in GeoFlow For best results with GeoFlow, the data should be organized in an Excel table or in a PowerPivot Data Model. For example if your sales data is in an aggregated PivotTable format, you will want to go back to the actual data or table used to create the PivotTable. Here’s why: While a PivotTable aggregates the total sales or instances of sales for regions, GeoFlow can leverage each instance of a sale as a point in time, animate it over time, and also plot it in the exact spot. Similarly, aggregations done geographically in a PivotTable (for example, cities across a state, states across a country, or countries across a region/continent) can now be detailed on a GeoFlow map that retains the same granular level of detail. NOTE: GeoFlow exclusively uses the Vertipaq/xVelocity engine in Excel as its data source. Any data that is added into Vertipaq will be accessible to GeoFlow. GeoFlow can only work with Excel’s Data Model – it cannot connect to external servers. In addition, GeoFlow does not support hierarchies in the Data Model To get external data into the Data Model in Excel, click Data > the connection you want in the External Data group, and then follow the steps in the Data Connection Wizard, making sure you check the option to use the Data Model in Excel on the last step. All data has to be in English. Working with non-aggregated data doesn’t always show you data quality issues, such as typos and inaccurate data. In some cases, it is good to question the quality of the data GeoFlow has plotted. This may result in some iterative data-cleansing work to be done before you refresh your data and run your exploration in GeoFlow again. Note that you can refresh the data model from the GeoFlow ribbon. You can add tables or ranges to the model from the GeoFlow split button under Insert tab in the Excel ribbon.
getting%20started%20with%20geoflow%20preview.docx