An Introduction To Map-Making, Part 2
Thursday, June 9, 2011
New to map-making with Google tools? Last week we focused on how you could get started by creating a map of your organization’s offices with Google Maps My Places. After walking through My Places, I mentioned Google Fusion Tables, another powerful Google mapping tool. One of the many applications of this tool is that you can import a spreadsheet and turn it into a map for easy publishing on the web. Fusion Tables is especially useful to people who have more than just a handful of locations to plot on a map, or who want a more interactive map that allows users to filter locations or other complex tasks.
A great example of a nonprofit that benefits from using Fusion Tables is MarinSpace, an organization dedicated to helping Marin County nonprofits improve the quality of their workspaces. MarinSpace regularly looks at nonprofits’ locations to understand where these organizations work in relation to each other. From mapping their locations, they can make co-locating suggestions and identify gaps in community services. They’ve even found that sometimes there are clusters of organizations that don’t realize they are a block away from each other and could be sharing knowledge and resources. Executive Director Shelley Hamilton had been using My Maps to map all this data. After learning about Fusion Tables at a Google Earth Outreach workshop in February, Shelley started using it to map nonprofits and is enthusiastic about how easy it is to use: “Once you have your info in Fusion Tables, a couple of clicks and boom, there it is!”
Who doesn’t like a little instant gratification? Let’s get started on our own map, shall we?
Before you start:
2. Click the New Table button to get a drop-down menu and choose Import Table.
3. Specify the file you’d like to upload. For this example, I’m using a sample Google Spreadsheet of my nonprofit’s locations with a column for each type of additional information that I want to associate with the locations.
Once you’ve selected the file click Next. The next two steps allow you to select which columns you’d like to import and add attributes. Proceed through the steps and click Finish.
4. You will now see your data displayed as a table.
Fusion Tables tries to recognize columns with locations during import and automatically categorize them as location data. You can skip ahead to step 5 to try this out, but if for some reason Fusion Tables didn’t recognize the correct location column, you’ll need to set it manually. To set the locaiton column manually, click Edit, then Modify columns. Select the appropriate column and set type to Location. Save your changes.
5. You are now one step away from your map! Click the Visualize menu and select Map. Fusion Tables should now geocode the location information in the column you’ve specified and create your map.
6. Now the fun really begins. You can use the options above your map to customize your info windows and make them more appealing (add links, select which fields appear, etc.). You can make your info window content more rich by including images, videos, data charts and more. Next you might want to configure your placemark style by changing their color or icon, or using one of the other style options.
Note: If you have polygon or line data in a GIS shapefile or KML file, you can also add and style in Fusion Tables. Just import your KML file the same way you imported a spreadsheet, or use shapescape to import a GIS shapefile.
7. Once you are satisfied with your map, click Get embeddable link for the code to embed it in your organization’s website.
If you’d like step-by-step instructions, you can find them in the Google Earth Outreach "Fusion Mapper" tutorial. Once you’ve mastered the basics, there are a many more things you can do with Fusion Tables. Check out the Google Fusion Tables Example Gallery and the tutorials in the Fusion Tables Help Center for inspiration and guidance. To add options for users to search your map or use a drop down menu to filter results on your map, check out the FusionTablesLayer Builder.
I hope this Fusion Tables map primer will help get your mapping creative juices flowing! For more tutorials and resources, see the Google Earth Outreach website.
A great example of a nonprofit that benefits from using Fusion Tables is MarinSpace, an organization dedicated to helping Marin County nonprofits improve the quality of their workspaces. MarinSpace regularly looks at nonprofits’ locations to understand where these organizations work in relation to each other. From mapping their locations, they can make co-locating suggestions and identify gaps in community services. They’ve even found that sometimes there are clusters of organizations that don’t realize they are a block away from each other and could be sharing knowledge and resources. Executive Director Shelley Hamilton had been using My Maps to map all this data. After learning about Fusion Tables at a Google Earth Outreach workshop in February, Shelley started using it to map nonprofits and is enthusiastic about how easy it is to use: “Once you have your info in Fusion Tables, a couple of clicks and boom, there it is!”
Who doesn’t like a little instant gratification? Let’s get started on our own map, shall we?
Before you start:
- You’ll need to have a Google Account to use Fusion Tables, so create a free account if you don’t have one.
- Prepare a dataset with location information to import into Fusion Tables. You can use comma-separated files (.csv), Microsoft Excel files (.xls, .xlsx), an OpenDocument Spreadsheet (.ods), Keyhole Markup Language (.kml) or data already in a Google Spreadsheet.
2. Click the New Table button to get a drop-down menu and choose Import Table.
3. Specify the file you’d like to upload. For this example, I’m using a sample Google Spreadsheet of my nonprofit’s locations with a column for each type of additional information that I want to associate with the locations.
4. You will now see your data displayed as a table.
6. Now the fun really begins. You can use the options above your map to customize your info windows and make them more appealing (add links, select which fields appear, etc.). You can make your info window content more rich by including images, videos, data charts and more. Next you might want to configure your placemark style by changing their color or icon, or using one of the other style options.
Note: If you have polygon or line data in a GIS shapefile or KML file, you can also add and style in Fusion Tables. Just import your KML file the same way you imported a spreadsheet, or use shapescape to import a GIS shapefile.
7. Once you are satisfied with your map, click Get embeddable link for the code to embed it in your organization’s website.
If you’d like step-by-step instructions, you can find them in the Google Earth Outreach "Fusion Mapper" tutorial. Once you’ve mastered the basics, there are a many more things you can do with Fusion Tables. Check out the Google Fusion Tables Example Gallery and the tutorials in the Fusion Tables Help Center for inspiration and guidance. To add options for users to search your map or use a drop down menu to filter results on your map, check out the FusionTablesLayer Builder.
I hope this Fusion Tables map primer will help get your mapping creative juices flowing! For more tutorials and resources, see the Google Earth Outreach website.
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