Prepare Geographical Data for Display

MicroStrategy Workstation uses geo roles to display geographical data in map and geospatial service visualizations. This topic describes how to prepare geographical data for display in the following types of visualizations:

Geospatial Service Visualizations with Markers
Map Visualizations with Markers
Map Visualizations with Density Areas

During the data import process, MicroStrategy Workstation automatically assigns geo roles, such as city or longitude information. You can also assign geo roles during import.

If your data is already imported into Workstation, you can assign geo roles in the following ways:

Define a single attribute and assign it a geo role to identify what type of geographical information it contains. MicroStrategy Workstation automatically adds latitude and longitude information to data columns that you assign the Country, State, City, ZIP Code, or Location geo roles.

Your data source includes the names of cities where your company has field offices. You can create an attribute called City, which contains the names of these cities, then assign it the City geo role. MicroStrategy Workstation automatically adds latitude and longitude information for each city to the City attribute. You can then use the City attribute to provide latitude and longitude information for map markers in the visualization.

MicroStrategy adds latitude and longitude information to an attribute by adding attribute forms. An attribute form is a component of an attribute that provides additional descriptive information. Attribute forms appear in the Editor panel of an map or geospatial service visualization when you display your data using an attribute that has been assigned a geo role. The supplemental latitude and longitude information for the City attribute is contained in the attribute forms City@Latitude and City@Longitude. See Select Which Attribute Forms to Display in a Visualization for more information.
Define two separate attributes to provide the latitude and longitude information of each location.

Your data source has latitude and longitude information for each of your company's stores. First, create an attribute that contains the latitude of each store and assign it the Latitude geo role. Second, create an attribute that contains the longitude of each store and assign it the Longitude geo role. Then use the two Latitude and Longitude attributes to provide latitude and longitude information for map markers in the visualization.

Assign Geo Roles

In the Datasets panel, right-click the attribute you want to assign a geo role and select Define Geography.
Select the geographic type from the drop-down list. If you need to remove the geographic type later, you can select None.
When selecting some geographic types, such as zip codes, checkboxes appear for new attributes you can create (for example, County, State, Zip, etc.). Select the appropriate checkboxes to create additional attributes.
Click OK.