MapInfo Pro

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  • 1.  Time Slider?

    Posted 07-17-2020 08:18
    I notice ESRI, QGIS and even Cadcorp now have time sliders- really useful tech. Will this be appearing for Mapinfo soon? Or is it there and I've missed it?

    Martin

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    Martin Burroughs
    Oldham Council
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  • 2.  RE: Time Slider?

    Posted 07-17-2020 10:08
    It would be nice Martin
    I found this in the Ideas portal
    https://ideas.pitneybowes.com/ideas/MIPRO-I-664
    Says it is under consideration - give it another vote....
    I liked the functionality in the Encom products of Engage and Discover
    but that was sold off.

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    John Ievers
    CDR Group
    Hope Valley, United Kingdom
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  • 3.  RE: Time Slider?

    Posted 07-17-2020 10:31
    Thanks John, voted for that.
    This is such core visualisation ability these days it's a surprise it's not there. It is possible to set up scripts to export time slices and then use animated gifs, but that takes significant time.
    You'd think it'd be a good selling point when demoing MI as well. I can see senior managers getting sucked in by that sort of abilty in the same way that they do by the likes of Tableau.

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    Martin Burroughs
    Oldham Council
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  • 4.  RE: Time Slider?

    Employee
    Posted 07-21-2020 16:52
    Hello,

    This is something we are potentially looking at implementing in an upcoming release. I'd love to know more about your specific use cases for a time slider. What types of data would you be most interested in building a time-series for? Is it mostly raster data? Also, is it the visualization component of the time series that is most useful or is the ability to conduct analysis and display differences between time stamps within the series something of interest? Any feedback or input is greatly appreciated.

    Thanks

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    Patrick Collins
    Senior Product Manager - SaaS
    Pitney Bowes Software, Inc.
    Boulder, CO
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  • 5.  RE: Time Slider?

    Posted 07-22-2020 05:31
    Hi Patrick, no, not Raster data, usually thematic maps or point data.

    So for example
    1. Indices of deprivation as a thematic map- being able to click through between different iterations and compare.
    2. Unemployment figures, mapped thematically at LSOA level as  percentage of working age population. Playng through these in an animation can reveal the long-term trends that it's hard to see just looking at two fixed time periods on a printed map. And we probably have about 60 compatible time slices so there's a lot of potential to play a long time series. This would also be a good one to record as a video and then embed in powerpoint or whatever.
    3.  Covid positive tests, dot mapped by postcode centroid. It's important to be able to see how outbreaks are changing over time, and playing through that while zoomed in our out to particular areas would really help understanding and planning where to make interventions on the ground. About a good a real life example as you're ever going to get :-).
    For all those it's probably helpful to be able to define start and end points for what is being played or stepped through. In example 3, it might also be helpful to specify what length of data is being shown at one time (so step through the data day by day, always showing the last 7 days positive tests)

    I dont think (for me) analysis is the useful bit. I would probably just use sql or export to a more analytic tool if I wanted that.

    Happy to discuss more if needed.

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    Martin Burroughs
    Oldham Council
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  • 6.  RE: Time Slider?

    Posted 07-22-2020 06:49
    Just thinking about this again, there would be two ways the data would be stored. Some data would have a different column for each date (usually moving through time from left to right). This would be the case for unemployment and IMD. Some data which comes as one datafeed (Covid data) will be a flat file (columns for say postcode, date, and count).

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    Martin Burroughs
    Oldham Council
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  • 7.  RE: Time Slider?

    Employee
    Posted 08-17-2021 03:02
    Hi Martin

    Time Series is coming in MapInfo Pro v2021 early October this year.
    If you want to have a look, we have posted more details in the MapInfo Lab here on the Community.

    I'll check if you already are invited to that group and if not, I'll invite you

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    Peter Horsbøll Møller
    Principal Presales Consultant | Distinguished Engineer
    Precisely | Trust in Data
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  • 8.  RE: Time Slider?

    Employee
    Posted 08-19-2021 16:32
      |   view attached
    Here is a video I created with Pro 2021 alpha showing a time series of lightning strikes over Denmark.

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    Bob Fortin
    Software Architect and Distinguished Engineer
    MapInfo Pro Development Team
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  • 9.  RE: Time Slider?

    Posted 08-24-2021 06:41
    Looking good :-).
    Don't think transposing data is going to be a major issue.

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    Martin Burroughs
    Oldham Council
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  • 10.  RE: Time Slider?

    Employee
    Posted 08-19-2021 16:22
    Hi Martin,

    We require the data to be in row format with date, time or datetime column(s). This is similar to ESRI and QGis.
    I have a tool that I plan to post that allows you to transpose a table with columns for dates to a row format. Other tools such as Excel can do this transpose also.

    -Bob

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    Bob Fortin
    Software Architect and Distinguished Engineer
    MapInfo Pro Development Team
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