Upgrading an InstantAtlas Dynamic Report

Justification for upgrading can be boiled down to two reasons: fixes and features.

Sometimes reports created with earlier versions of the software, when certain problems were present, may only be fixed by upgrading the report to a later version of the software. Before you upgrade, we highly suggest contacting the Support Team to check that errors or issues in your report can be resolved by upgrading.

Other times the question of upgrading is prompted by the appearance of exciting new software features. For example, you may be interested in the Population Pyramid chart, or prefer to use icons for contextual geography layers, or need to incorporate new text and images that can now appear in the tooltips of map layers. If so, you will need to ensure the report is created in version 6.5 or later of the InstantAtlas Desktop software. This is because these (and many other) features only became available from version 6.5 onwards.

InstantAtlas Desktop v.6.5 (Single Map template). The latest to-date version is 6.5.3 with 6.5.2 templates.

What’s the easiest and fastest way to upgrade an existing report to the latest version of InstantAtlas?

If you want to upgrade to the latest version of the software, you must possess a valid Maintenance contract. Contact the Support Team if you are unsure whether you or your organisation has one.

When you’re ready to upgrade, log into My InstantAtlas and head to the Maintenance area – but please note, only users with valid Maintenance contracts will be able to do this!  Download and install the latest version of the software onto your machine. Then follow the steps below or watch the video to learn how to upgrade the report without losing the edits you made when you created your old report.

1. Republish the report using the same template, map files, data.xml file, and settings you used in the older report. Unpack the new report into a new report folder.
2. TOP FUTURE-PROOFING TIP: Take this opportunity to use the project file feature in the latest version of the software! It will contain information about everything you set in the Publisher to create your report, including file locations, advanced settings, labelling, opacity, icon files, etc. When you republish the report in the future, you can just upload the project file and the Publisher will pre-fill with all of the correct settings (taken from the project file) for you. (Please note: if you later change the locations of objects, for example, the map files you used, the project file won’t contain those edits.)
3. Copy and paste all images (logos, background map tiles, etc) from the old report folder into the new report folder.
4.  Locate the old config.xml file in your old report folder.
5. Go to the Config Upgrade tool, available from My InstantAtlas. Upgrade the config.xml file in your old report folder with the tool. This will create the necessary edits to convert the config.xml file to the latest version of the software. Save the new config.xml file in your new report folder. (If you find that confusing, click the video above to see a step-by-step use of the config.xml upgrade tool in My InstantAtlas.)
6. If you are upgrading from 6.5.0, you won’t need to upgrade your default.css files. You can just copy and paste the old default.css file into the new report folder.
7. For report versions prior to 6.5.0, upgrading the default.css file is a little more complicated, so we offer to upgrade one default.css file for you for free. Contact us for more details. Your new default.css file can then be used across all of your 6.5.2 reports. Simply drop it into the new report folder, and you’re ready to go.

And that’s it. You’ll have a report with the latest product fixes and features, and hopefully feel more confident about upgrading your reports in the future when new releases occur.

If you have any questions, leave a comment below!

Friday InstantAtlas link of the day – John Patterson (Blackpool Council)'s new blog and IA User Conference 2012 (Rochdale)!

Friday has started out on an amazing high for me. Not only do we have sugar donuts (courtesy of our lovely Sales team) but we have this awesome unsolicited blog post from blogger John Patterson (Blackpool Council).

Did you present at the conference? If so, head over there quick!

Did you go to the conference? If so, you might be in one or two of his pictures.

Do you want to know what happened at the conference? What are you waiting for – go go go! (I’ll wait right here while you do.)

Now that you’ve read his post, did you wish you went the conference? If so, that makes two of us. That’s right, this friendly neighbourhood Support team member was supposed to present after @frenchpeter. And unfortunately, I was very ill that weekend and could not make it. I can only wonder what @Jonopatterson would have made of my presentation….

 

Free Background Mapping Services and InstantAtlas

This post is all about free background mapping services that you can use with InstantAtlas, including some important information about current services that may soon be disconnected.

The good news first then! Many of our customers use ESRI’s ArcGIS Server Online background mapping services to enhance their reports. For example, the Arizona Cancer Registry uses the World Street Map in Web Mercator Auxiliary Sphere (102100).

Those who have longed for an understated, elegant and neutral background against our colourful base geography imagery will be delighted to know that the new Light Gray Canvas Map service was recently announced by ESRI!

You can see a demo of the effect here, and anyone with map files projected to 102100 can use this service with InstantAtlas for free.*

Say you really like the Light Gray Canvas background map below, but you don’t have map data in 102100. If you have access to a geographic information system (GIS), you can ask to have your current map files re-projected to 102100.

Unfortunately, ESRI is unlikely to release the service in any other projection. The reason for this is actually pretty sound: 102100 matches Bing Maps and Google Maps, so it makes sense moving forward that they all match up nicely.

We are working hard on the next release of our software, which will contain the ability to project your base geography from a number of common projections into 102100. This will allow you to use the Light Gray Canvas background map without needing to reproject your map data manually before adding them to the InstantAtlas Publisher.

Now to the disconnection of ESRI’s free online mapping services: the Support Team is aware that ESRI’s 4326 services (also known as the unprojected or lat/long) are no longer updated, and will be retired soon.

The background mapping services commonly used in InstantAtlas that will be retired in the first quarter of 2012 are:

ESRI_StreetMap_World_2D

ESRI_ShadedRelief_World_2D

CSP_Imagery_World_2D

Two other services will also be retired at some point in the near future, but the dates are currently unknown. These are:

I3_Imagery_Prime_World_2D

NGS_Topo_US_2D

What does this mean for the InstantAtlas user community? Well, first of all, don’t panic. You can wait until the background services disconnect before doing anything. However, when the services are no longer available, you will have to republish your reports to see background maps in your reports again.

Before you get started republishing all those reports there are some key tips and tricks to upgrading that you will really want to know about. These will be covered in my next blog post. So stay tuned!

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• - The Light Gray Canvas Map currently covers North America at 1:9,000 and most of the world at 1:2,000,000. This means this background map may not appear for you if your base geography falls outside those scale parameters. ESRI is committed to adding more coverage for the world, so keep checking here for more updates when we hear about them!

Got a great idea for a new component or improved functionality for InstantAtlas? Feature Request it!

InstantAtlas is packed full of features that enable sophisticated yet user-friendly configurations and presentations of mapped data. However, occasionally we receive questions from our customers about features or functions of InstantAtlas that do not quite meet their specific requirements. It’s in these cases that our customers find themselves in a unique position of power – they can Feature Request!

You might be surprised to know that our software developments often result from Feature Requests by our customers. For example, customers asked for the ability to map indicator values as graduated points over shaded polygons. The new Double Base Layer Map template, released with InstantAtlas Desktop v.6.5.0 and freely available to anyone with the Double Map Time Series template, directly resulted from these Feature Requests.

Another great Feature Request that made it into the latest release is the new Pyramid Chart. This simple, yet powerful graph allows side-by-side, at-a-glance comparisons of population data by age groups or gender. You can see this in action over at the Cornwall Parish/Town Council Population Estimates.

Now you might be wondering how to send us a Feature Request. It’s so simple – just send an email to the Support Team (support@geowise.co.uk) detailing what you want. To support your case, it is particularly helpful to send screenshots or images showing how your Feature Request would improve report presentation. In the rare case that we can’t help you achieve your goal with the current version of the software, we will log your email as a Feature Request!

Although we can’t guarantee every feature request will appear in future versions of InstantAtlas, we can promise that we take Feature Requests very seriously. The Development Team goes through every single Feature Request when planning the next version of InstantAtlas, so you can be certain your views will be heard!

We want InstantAtlas to meet your needs and take your data presentations to the next level. So if you want it, Feature Request it!