What's new in Galigeo for Webi G17

[Former Member]

Hi all,

Once a year, Galigeo releases a major version of its mapping extension for Web Intelligence. And the version G17 comes with the biggest change log of its history.

For those who don't know the product yet, Galigeo for Webi is part of the SAP Solution Extension (alongside with Galigeo for Lumira and Galigeo for Design Studio). These extensions are specialized on bringing mapping capabilities to the existing SAP BI solutions. For more information, I invite you to go to the product page: http://www.galigeo.com/products-overview/sap-business-objects.

The main change for the new version concern the adoption of self-service and mapping automation to provide more freedom to end users. Everything has been designed so that non GIS* people can easily do some advanced GIS things.

(*Geographic Information System)

Most of the new features focus on three things: simplicity, self-service and automation. Let's review some of them one by one.

 

1. Import your own data

Users can now import their own flat files (CSV, XLS, XLSX) to a map document and visualize the data in a minute.

All data can be managed through a new panel added to the interface.
The "Auto Mapping" feature can automatically detects the best way to represent the imported file on a map. Each column is analyzed to see if the values correspond to an existing cartographic layer (for example zip codes, region id, etc...) or eventually directly contain some longitude/lattitude columns.
Imported data are saved with the document. Authors can make it public so that everyone can see it on the document. However, the files imported by the end users are only visible by themselves and won't interfere with the others.

 

2. Automatic mapping and mapping wizard

Version G17 introduces a mapping wizard to adjust the way a query or a dataset is represented on a map (the thematic mapping is done afterward). In most cases, the "Auto Mapping" will do the job automatically. However, users might want to choose a different dimension or adjust the visibility scales.


3. Self service

The data panel can also be used to quicly visualize a indicator on a map.

Simply drag'n drop an indicator on the map and select what kind of thematic mapping you want to use.



 

4. Contextual help

This is another feature that make the application easier to use. The user documentation is now embeded and you will see some new "?" on every panels bringing a contextual help.



5. Indicator aggregation

Mapping a BI dataset on a geographic layer sometimes generates some duplicated records. For example, a zip code data can be defined by year, by typology, etc... In those cases, the geographic dimension apears duplicated in the original dataset. To make sure that the thematic mapping is correct, we need to make sure that the aggregation is correct.

User can now choose one of these operators for each indicator:

• Sum


• Average


• Minimum


• Maximum


• None (first non null value)

6. Display flows on a map

I think the screenshot below speaks by itself.

7. Thematic filtering

Each thematic layer can now be filtered on a indicator or a dimension.This is useful to specify some criterias before displaying a specific layer.


8. Operational layers defined from the configuration page

Operational layers represents the external layers provided by Arcgis Server. Previous versions did support operational layers but they add to be defined in a config file by the administrator.

Now every authors can easily manage the list for each documents.



The visibility of these layers is then saved with the document.


9. Global usage statistics for administrators

Administrators can now get who's using what at a glance.
Statistics are displayed as a report from the administration console.

10. Other improvements

The full list would be too long to go through in details. Here are some quick hits for those who used a previous version:

• Control labels from the layer panel


• Activate/desactivate thematic classes by clicking on them in the legend


• WMTS basemaps


• Heatmap and cluster visibility saved with the document


• Link to georeports from the infowindow


• Support for Google Pro accounts


• Improved geobubbles


• Default point generalization now keeps the features with the highest indicators