Introduction to Drilling with CMaps Analytics Designer

CMaps Analytics views natively support drilling between maps layers using a geographic hierarchy definition.  CMaps Analytics drilling requires 2 configuration steps:

1. Create geographic hierarchy with Layer drill behaviors:

For each layer, you can view Drilling properties in the “Appearance” tab.

Drill Level

Drill level is a numeric value starting at 1 as the top layer in the hierarchy. As you drill down you will move from level 1 to 2 to 3 and so on.

The top layer, enter “1”

Drill When

Currently there are 2 options for triggering a drill action.

Layer Clicked

Clicking on a Layer will immediately drill without displaying the InfoWindow

InfoWindow Icon

Clicking on a layer will display the InfoWindow and present you with a drill icon inside of the InfoWindow

Drill Parent

Select the parent layer that is one layer up in the hierarchy.

Learn more about drill behaviors

STEP 2. Layer Drill Keys and Properties:

To configure drilling between layers, you need to establish a data relationship, which is accomplished through a drill key definition. For example, if you click on a state and want to see city icons appear for that given state, the states layer and cities layer both need to be connected. This is the role of layer drill keys. The following example demonstrates:

Layer 1: Top Layer

For layer 1, which is the top layer, we have regions east and west. The drill IDs will correspond to layer 2 drill IDs.

DATA

Label  |   Drill ID

West Region    West
East Region     East

PROPERTIES

The top layer in your drill hierarchy will have a Drill Level = 1. You can set the Drill When trigger to either drill when a layer is clicked, or when an end user clicks on a drill icon inside of the InfoWindow. The Drill Parent for Layer 1 will be set to “Any Layer Above Me.”

Layer 2: Child Layer

Layer 2 has a drill ID that corresponds to layer 1. So when a user clicks on “West”, CMaps Analytics will automatically display only the locations with the drill ID “West”

DATA

Label  |   Drill ID

CA    West
NV     West
NY    East
FL     East

PROPERTIES

The second layer is a “child layer” that is dependant on the “parent layer” (layer 1). This second layer is Drill Level = 2. You can set the Drill When trigger to any value, because there is no additional child layers. The Drill Parent for Layer 2 will be set to the specific layer that contains corresponding drill IDs. In this example Layer 1 (named Regions), is the drill parent.

3 Layer Hierarchy Example

To add more than 2 layers, the Drill ID data property will serve as a reference for the parent layer, and also needs to drive child layers. In this scenario, the data format for Layer 2 changes slightly. The following shows the same example with 3 layers of geographic hierarchy.

Layer 1

Label  |   Drill ID

West    West
East     East

Layer 2

The big difference with a geographic hierarchy with more than two layers is a need for parent and child drill IDs. In this example, Layer 2 needs to contain the keys as you drill from layer 1. Because there is also a dependent 3rd layer, there needs to be a second set of keys to drive the drill path. To do this, place the parent and child drill IDs with a “|” delimiter.

Label  |   Drill ID

CA    West|CA
NV     West|NV
NY    East|NY
FL     East|FL

Layer 3

Label  |   Drill ID

Los Angeles    CA
San Diego       CA
Nevada           NV
Reno               NV

Learn more about layer properties 

Other Drilling Options

Drilling via OLAP style reporting or dashboard integrations, additional integration steps are required using the CMaps Analytics API. Please contact CMaps Analytics support for additional guidance and support.