Key Stage 2 data was updated on 1st March with data now available up to 2023.
Crime
Crime data (Dec 2023) was updated on 13th of February.
Economy & Employment
Universal Credit data was updated on 7th of February (with an update for Nov 2023 and data for Dec 2023) and again on 19th of February (with an update for Dec 2023 and data for Jan 2024). Metadata information was improved on 7th of February.
Claimant Count data was updated on 14th of February (with an update for Dec 2023 and data for Jan 2024).
Business Counts were updated on 1st of March with data for 2023.
Deprivation
Metadata for the Low Income Families dataset was improved on 7th of February.
Population
Population Estimates for Regions were republished on 7th of February. We noticed that some duplicates had appeared in the data, confusing the region values within the system so we have refreshed these with the correct values.
This update covers December 2023 and January 2024.
Children & Young People
Free School Meal data detailing pupil eligibility over a prior 6 year period was added on 2nd January. Data has been added from the 2015/16 school year through to 2022/23.
Crime
Crime data (Nov 2023) was updated on 5thof January.
Economy & Employment
Universal Credit data was updated on 19th of December (with an update for Sep 2023 and data for Oct and Nov 2023).
Claimant Count data was updated on 19th of December (with an update for Sep 2023 and data for Oct and Nov 2023) and again on 16th January (with an update for Nov 2023 and data for Dec 2023).
Apprenticeships data was updated on 12th of January to include data for 2021-2022 and 2022-2023. We also fixed the data for the Country geography for 2020-2021.
Environment
The Renewables dataset (2022) was updated on 2nd of January.
The Emissions dataset (2021) was updated on 12th January. On 24th of January we released a fix for missing County level values.
As part of this update we deprecated some indicators of the emission dataset. All deprecated indicators can be found in our list of deprecated indicators.
Health
The Wellbeing dataset (2022-2023) was updated on 3rdof January.
Population
Population Estimates for 2022 were added on 15th of January for Local Authorities and higher level geographies. We also updated all population estimates indicators of these geographies with rebased figures back to 2012. As the changes to historic values are small, we made the decision to not recalculate Claimant Count rates, Universal Credit rates and Crime rates for the years 2012 to 2021.
In version 2.4.0 of Report Builder we have continued to improve the behaviour of the chart widgets, following an upgrade of the charting library in the 2.3.0 update. We have also made changes to how Report Builder works with ArcGIS Enterprise as the data, storage and authentication platform instead of ArcGIS Online.
New features
Ability to add fixed lines and zones to bar and line charts
Bar and Line charts can now show fixed lines or zones additionally to the displayed indicator(s). You can add up to 4 lines and up to 4 zones to the chart. Each line has it’s own fixed value, label, colour, width and style. For each zone, the start and end value, label, colour and opacity can be defined. Lines and zones can be added to either the x or the y axis allowing for a wide rage of use cases.
Ability to add Mean and/or Median lines to bar charts
You can chose to display the mean and/or median line either superimposed over or behind the bars of your bar chart. The label, line style and colour can be adjusted.
Export/print options for web map widgets
The simple version of exporting a web map widget is by enabling the Export Snapshot Button which will appear at the bottom right of the map. It takes a simple screenshot of the map widget and saves it to your browser’s downloads folder.
The more advanced Print Button allows the user to print the web map into different file formats, providing a range of options for size and layout.
Both these export options are mutually exclusive, meaning the Export Snapshot Button will only show if the Print Button setting is toggled off. Please note that the Print Button is not available for 3D maps.
Improved support for using data in ArcGIS Enterprise
Report Builder already supported the use of ArcGIS Server services where these services have been referenced in ArcGIS Online to make them easier to access and discover. In this update however, we have taken further steps to make it possible to use ArcGIS Enterprise as the data, storage and authentication platform instead of ArcGIS Online.
If you are hosting your own data catalog, and this is the data source for a report, the catalog table (master table) can include URLs to services from ArcGIS Enterprise and Report Builder will request and handle the authentication to these services appropriately. If the items are (semi)private you will be prompted to sign in to see the data in the report, whether you are editing the report or viewing it as an end user. An example of this is shown below.
Failure to sign in as a user with sufficient privileges will mean that any widgets in the report containing private data will not load.
Currently, the data catalog master table itself must be hosted in ArcGIS Online, but this is a step towards alternative deployments where the data catalog as well as the data services are hosted in ArcGIS Enterprise.
If you are interested in using Report Builder with data hosted in ArcGIS Enterprise we would like to know, so please get in touch with your Esri UK account manager.
Series Type of Pie Charts simplified
The setting Series Type for Pie Charts has been removed as it caused confusion. The rules now are:
include all areas = true => one “pie” per indicator and each segment corresponds to a feature
include all areas = false => one “pie” per feature (i.e. if you use show comparisons = true) and each segment corresponds to an indicator
Further enhancements
You can now use the Configure App button within ArcGIS Online to open the edit version of the report.
There is now an option to open the metadata pop-up when selecting indicators for text widgets.
It is now possible to configure if comparison bars are displayed at the right of all other bars or included in the core feature bar sorting.
Key bug fixes
Bar charts showing counts per value for a lower level comparison geography (for example the deprivation charts in our standard National Data Service reports) no longer show the x-axis labels in random order.
Bar charts showing one indicator for all areas can again display comparison values as horizontal lines.
It is again possible to create a pie chart showing only one percentage indicator value and filling the remaining pie to 100%.
Metadata pop-ups in the data selection dialogs as well as in the table now hide empty fields.
Time Series Table: Metadata icons are no longer hidden when group-rows-by-indicator is active.
Charts are no longer cut off at the bottom if Title Position is set to title-bar.
Width and Height settings of widgets are now rounded to full numbers when resizing the widget by dragging the handlers.
All infographic widgets now have setting to enable and disable comparison features.
Indicator search option within the widget’s Data & Settings dialog is working reliably even for indicators with special characters or multiple whitespaces in the indicator name.
We hope you will enjoy this new release of Report Builder!
The main goal of Report Builder version 2.3.0 is the upgrade to the charting library (used for the chart widgets) to the latest available version. This is largely a behind-the-scenes change, although you may notice some very subtle differences to the look and feel of the charts. Besides improving performance and adding functionality, this enabled a number of chart-related feature requests and bug fixes. Version 2.3.0 also includes several non-chart related improvements and bug fixes, as well as changes to support new behaviour in the latest update to ArcGIS Online.
New features
Ability to remove chart axis lines without removing axis labels
We have introduced two advanced settings to cartesian charts called X Axis – Show Border? and Y Axis – Show Border? which allows for a chart like this (no Y-axis line):
Ability to show comparison bars in bar charts on the far right
Values for comparison areas are now always displayed to the right of any bar for core layer feature(s) and are not included in the sorting of the other bars.
Ability to insert the value for the current date and the current date
You can now use the #TODAY variable in a Text or Text Box widget to display indicator values for the current year. This is useful for indicators where the latest date might be different from the current date e.g. population projections.
The #TODAY variable picks up todays’ date and returns it using the specified format:
A tooltip has been added to the export icons of charts and tables.
Ability to add line breaks to tooltips
You can use \n to add a line break into a chart tooltip. This is especially useful for smaller chart widgets where the tooltip would otherwise be cut off.
Disable widget double-click edit
By default, double-clicking on a widget in a report will open the Data & Settings dialog, or in the case of a Text or Text Box Widget, the text editor. While double-clicking on a Text or Text Box Widget, it is possible to accidentally click the Cut button in the widget toolbar and remove the widget from the report, particularly if the text widget only contains one line of text. If you are finding this a problem, you can disable the double-click action for widgets. You can do this by clicking the ellipsis in the top right corner of Report Builder and toggling the Double-click to Edit setting.
Changes in Pie Chart legend layout
The update to the latest charting library meant that we had to make minor changes to the layout and position of Pie Chart legends. If you are using Pie Charts in your reports, especially if these are smaller widgets, you should check that all legend categories are still visible. If not, please adjust the size of the widget slightly until the full legend is displayed.
Key bug fixes
Chart widgets
Cartesian charts: axis colour is overwritten by grid line colour
Bar charts: bars sit on top of X-axis, causing axis line to only be visible between the bars
Pyramid Chart: palette colour is only applied to left side of chart
Report Builder crashes if you set a pyramid chart to Constrain Palette Colours = True and have only one colour defined in the Palette
Population pyramid with aggregated data – data label left/right settings get overridden
Scatterplot widget: default point size is too small
Text / Text Box Widgets
When highlighting the default text to delete it, the text editor closes if the mouse pointer is moved outside of text box
Inserting an icon doesn’t allow the icon to be selected (to delete it or change size or colour) and doesn’t allow for text to be added after the icon
Text not showing in Edit Text/Rules popup (the first time you edit it)
Other bug fixes
Report Builder doesn’t support nested/grouped layers in web maps built with the new ArcGIS Online map viewer
First page is blank if you print a report using Firefox
Groups on Report Builder home page are not displayed in alphabetical order
Time Series Table: table breaks if the indicators have different dates available
Long delay for a table widget to show when added to a report
“Save As” on existing report creates an AGOL item with an incorrect URL
Page order dialog crashes when report contains a large number of web map widgets
We hope you will enjoy this new release of Report Builder!
October 2021 monthly and 12 monthly rolling average data was updated and published on AGOL with relative reports on the 29th of November.
Economy & Employment
Claimant Count (October 2021) was last updated on the 16th of November.
The Business Register and Employment Survey (BRES) is a collection of employee and employment estimates at detailed geographical and industrial levels. The provisional 2020 and revised 2019 estimates were released on the 9th of November and published to AGOL on the 11th of the month.
People in Universal Credit data for October 2021 is now available on the Data Catalog. The latest release was published on AGOL on the 17th of November.
Environment
The Environment theme got some brand new additions this last month! Besides updating the Carbon Emissions statistics (2019) on the 4th of November, the NDS now includes two brand new collections about renewable energy and waste management. The Renewables dataset includes information on capacity, generation, and the number of sites for different technologies based on renewable sources. These were published on the 4th of November. The Waste dataset includes information relative to waste collection and management by local authorities, this was uploaded on the 4th of November.
Health
Indicators from the ASCOF – Adult Social Care Framework Outcomes – were updated on the 15th of November. This dataset includes 107 indicators measuring how well care and support services achieve the outcomes that matter most to people. This collection of measures includes indicators coming from multiple sources:
Adult Social Care Survey (ASCS). Please note: the 2020-21 dataset was voluntary due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As only 18 CASSRs participated in the 2020-21 survey, aggregated ASCOF outcomes have not been calculated at regional, council type, and England level. Further details are available in the ASCS publication;
Short and Long Term Support (SALT);
Mental Health Services Data Set (MHSDS);
Delayed Transfer of care (DToC) – Due to the impact of coronavirus (COVID-19), the DToC collection has been paused for 2020-21;
Survey of Adult Carers in England (SACE). Due to the additional pressures that COVID-19 has brought on all services, the Survey of Adult Carers in England (SACE) 2020-21 was postponed by one full year. It will continue to run biennially and will be included in the 2021-22 ASCOF publication.
Wellbeing indicators (2021) have been updated on the 23rd of November.
Housing
ONS house pricing has been updated on the 24th of November. The latest release includes data for the financial year 2020/2021.
Population
Nationality & Country of Birth data was updated on the 25th of November.
Report Builder version 2.0.2 addresses a number of bugs, several of which will ensure a smoother migration from version 1 to version 2 reports. We have also added some of the functionality of Report Builder 1 that had not yet been implemented in version 2, as well as performance, accessibility and error handling improvements.
Bug fixes
Bar Charts set to horizontal orientation now also work when the selected data contains upper and lower confidence limits.
The Scatter/Bubble Chart widget has gained the setting X Axis Range which allows the x-axis to be constrained between two defined values.
The Scatter/Bubble Chart widget can now be configured to show all points in the same colour without having to define a separate colour for each feature. This is done by switching Constrain Palette Colors on:
The Filled Icon widget now shows the icon filled in the selected Highlight Color if Highlight Selected Feature is enabled.
Copying widgets from one report to another now works more reliably. In version 2.0.1 and when copying multiple widgets in succession, a browser refresh was required between pasting different widgets.
In the Edit Chart Colors… dialog (main menu – Styling – Chart Colors) the Toggle direct edit buttons now work by providing a text field to insert colour values in hexadecimal or RBG format.
Exiting a report now takes the user back to the same folder view with the same sorting retained.
Fix for an issue with hash/anchor links that occurred when using the # symbol in the browser address bar . This allows users e.g. to jump to a particular section of a report by providing the URL to the anchor tag.
Fix for certain font families (those containing spaces in the name) not being applied in view mode of a report.
Improved migration
Pie Charts in migrated reports no longer group small segments together into one category.
Titles of Table widgets are now migrated correctly.
The content of the Table Footer settings from Report Builder 1 is now migrated to the setting Caption in Report Builder 2. Please note: Any tables in reports that have been migrated and saved before the release of Report Builder version 2.0.2 will have lost the Table Footer text. You can re-add the text by entering it into the Caption setting manually. Alternatively, if the equivalent version 1 report still exists, you can migrate it again.
Additional functionality
It is now possible to change the font colour of text in a Text widget through the editor toolbar. You have the option to choose one of the predefined colours or use the palette icon to open the Color Picker dialog
The Advanced Settings dialog in the Pages menu has gained options to customise the index page of the report.
Any changes to the Pages|Advanced Settings dialog now turns the Save button of the report editor orange, indicating that there are unsaved changes.
Line and scatterplot widget point styles have been extended and some of the less obvious options have been subtly renamed.
Web accessibility has been improved by adding the option to show unique point markers in chart series lines and index options to chart labels – please see this blog post to find out more about accessibility for reports created using Report Builder.
The Data Catalog data model is cached in the browser whilst the editor page is open, which means the widget settings dialog opens faster.
Widgets have become more robust to temporary data connection errors. If a connection fails, the widget will attempt to reconnect to the data after a few seconds, up to 3 times before giving up.
If you have any questions relating to this release or migration of reports from version 1 to version 2 please contact support@instantatlas.com.
You may have just taken out a trial of the Data Catalog app in the ArcGIS Marketplace and are wondering what this app is all about. Alternatively, you or the administrator of your organisational ArcGIS Online account may have purchased a subscription of the Data Catalog app and you are now wondering where to start. This tutorial will give you an overview of the purpose and main features of the Data Catalog.
The Data Catalog app in the ArcGIS Marketplace actually gives you access to four related apps that can be accessed through the InstantAtlas Data Catalog | Hub. These are (click on each item to see a short description):
Data Catalog | Manager
The purpose of the Data Catalog Manager is to organise data from different feature services into a logical structure that will help you and your colleagues to quickly find the data you are looking for to use it in Web Maps or in the InstantAtlas Report Builder or Dashboard Builder apps.
Data Catalog | Inspector
The Inspector allows you to check whether your data catalog contains any errors. It also gives an overview over how many core layers, themes, indicators, instances (dates) and relationships exist in your data catalog.
Data Catalog | Explorer
The Explorer lists all of the indicators of your data catalog, together with their metadata and the core layers they exist for. The explorer contains a search tool, filter and download options and a way to view the data as a table or on a map.
Data Catalog | Web Map Builder
The Web Map Builder allows you to create a webmap containing one or more data layers from your data catalog.
Creating a new data catalog with population data
To use each of these apps you will need a valid InstantAtlas data catalog in your ArcGIS Online account. Assuming you are new to the Data Catalog app, it is likely that you don’t have an InstantAtlas data catalog yet. The homepage of the Hub will detect this and display a welcome text together with a big orange button labelled Add New Data Catalog at the top right-hand side.
Click this button and you will be directed to the Add New Catalog page.
If your organisation already has an InstantAtlas data catalog, you won’t see the welcome text and the orange Add New Data Catalog button. If you still wish to follow this tutorial to get familiar with the Data Catalog apps, you can force the creation of a new catalog by clicking on Manage Catalog in the hub homepage and then changing the URL in your browser from /manager?item=<itemid> to /manager?catalog=new.
On the Add New Catalog page, enter a suitable name for your new data catalog and select the folder you want it to be saved in. Then, under Data, select Example population data – USA. Now click on the button Add New Data Catalog.
The new data catalog is created in the specified folder and a bar will indicate progress. Once finished, the Data Catalog|Manager will open showing the content of the data catalog.
At the top of the screen you will see a list of Core Layers. A core layer is a feature layer that represents the geographical features for which data is to be viewed. In this example dataset, there are three core layers: County, State and United States.
Below the core layers you will see the Data Model for the selected core layer. A data model consists of themes, sub-themes and indicators in a tree structure.
Before editing the data model in the Data Catalog Manager, you may want to have a look at your ArcGIS Online content, particularly the folder you specified when creating the new data catalog. You will see two new hosted tables together with their relating file geodatabases.
The table with the same name as your new data catalog is called the master table. Open the item’s details page and click on Data in the blue menu (top left-hand side). This table contains the definition of the core layers and data model with its themes, indicators and instances. If you scroll to the right you will find the Service_URL field containing the references to the relevant feature services.
The second new table in your folder contains the metadata for the indicators / instances in the data catalog.
Creating sub-themes and moving indicators
Back in the Data Catalog Manager, explore the data model of the US example population data catalog. Initially it only contains one theme called Population and a number of indicators within this theme (click on the folder name to expand its contents).
Different core layers can contain different indicators; however, the theme structure is the same across all core layers and hence only needs to be defined for one of them. Let’s create two sub-themes within the Population theme and move the existing indicators into the two new themes.
To create a sub-theme, select the parent theme (in this example Population) and click on the Add Theme button. A new folder will appear within the Population folder called New Theme <yyyy-mm-dd hh:ss>, where <yyyy-mm-dd hh:ss> is being replaced by the date and time stamp of the theme creation.
To rename the theme, select it, so that it is highlighted and click on the button and enter Counts as the new theme name. Select the button to submit the changes. In the same way create a second sub-theme within the Population theme called Rates.
Next you will move the indicators that contain the word ‘percentage’ in the indicator name into the Rates sub-theme. The other indicators are to be moved into the Counts sub-theme. To move an indicator, select it and use the button to drag and drop the indicator into the respective sub-theme folder. A green plus icon needs to appear to the left of the folder you wish to move the indicator into before you release your mouse button. The data model will refresh after every move to show the changes.
If you have moved the indicators whilst having either the State or the United States core layer active you should now select the County core layer. You will find additional indicators in the County core layer that do not exist in the other two. Move these indicators into their respective sub-themes as well.
You may have noticed that when you make a change to an indicator (e.g. its position but it applies to the name as well) this is reflected no matter which core layer is selected above.
Adding income indicators from a second feature service
Currently the data catalog only contains data from one single feature service. One of the benefits of the Data Catalog Manager is that it is possible to manage and organise data from multiple different feature services that might be saved in different ArcGIS Online accounts. To demonstrate this, let’s assume you have some income related indicators in a second feature service and you wish to add them to your data model.
As a first step, create a new root theme by clicking on the Add Theme button at the top right-hand side of the data model. Rename this theme to Income and create two sub-themes, one called Households and the other called Families. With the Households theme selected, click on the Add Indicator Connection button. At the bottom of the Choose Data Layer… dialog switch the option only search in my organisation off. In the search field at the bottom left hand side type USDemo Income. Select the Feature Service called USDEMO_Income and click Choose.
In the Choose Layer… dialog that opens, select the layer from the drop-down list that corresponds to the active core layer in your data catalog. For example if you have the core layer State active you should pick STATE_Income from the drop-down list. Then click the Choose button.
In the Choose Indicators & Dates dialog, untick the checkbox of all indicators that are not related to households. Leave all date checkboxes ticked. Then click the Save button.
As a result, you will see all household income related indicators listed in the Households sub-theme within the Income theme.
You can check if the references to the data fields from the feature service were generated successfully by selecting one of the indicators and clicking the Dates button. The dialog that opens shows all dates for that indicator together with their field names from the feature service. You can also find the link to the feature service at the top of the dialog.
Please note that the data catalog stores only references to the feature services holding the data – the data values themselves are not imported into the master table.
Similar to adding the household income indicators, you should now add the indicators related to family income into the Families sub-theme.
Adding indicators has to be done for each core layer separately, so you may want to add the available income indicators into the relevant theme for the other two core layers.
If you wish to add metadata for your new indicators, this can be done by clicking on the button of a particular indicator. You will see the list of available metadata items with the IndicatorID already filled in. Click on the Edit button at the bottom left-hand side to enter metadata information. The Title will be added as soon as you click on the Save Changes button (Title and IndicatorID cannot be changed via this dialog).
If you have a large number of indicators, adding metadata through the Data Catalog Manager interface may not be the most efficient method. As an alternative, you can create a CSV file containing the metadata for your new indicators and append it to your metadata table within ArcGIS Online.
Checking the data catalog using the Inspector
Once you have added all indicators for all core layers to the data catalog, you can now use the Data Catalog|Inspector to check that the data catalog is valid.
There are two ways to access the inspector: You can return to the Hub homepage by clicking the logo at the top left-hand corner of the screen and then select Inspect Catalog. Alternatively, click on the cogwheel icon on the right-hand side of the page. This opens a wheel from where the other apps – including the Inspector – can be accessed.
The Inspector allows you to check the integrity of your data catalog. You can choose which items (core layers, themes, indicators, instances and relationships) of the data catalog to include in the inspection. Once you made your selection, click the green Check button. Messages will be displayed in the box below.
A green circled tick indicates that no issues were found with this element. If you see warnings and/or errors these should be attended to as they could have an impact on your data showing correctly in a web map or an InstantAtlas report. If you need assistance in solving any issues, please get in touch with support@instantatlas.com.
Browsing the data using the Explorer
There are two ways to access the Explorer: You can return to the Hub homepage by clicking the logo at the top left-hand corner of the screen and then select Explore Catalog. Alternatively, click on the cogwheel icon on the right-hand side of the page. This opens a wheel from where the other apps – including the Explorer – can be accessed.
The explorer allows you to search for a particular indicator using the search field and/or filter the list of indicators by theme/geography/publisher.
Click on an indicator and then use the tabs to view metadata or view the data in a table, map or chart. There is the option to download the data (CSV) from the Table tab.
Creating a web map using the Web Map Builder
The Web Map Builder allows you to quickly create a web map using one or more of the indicators in your data catalog.
There are two ways to access the Web Map Builder: You can return to the Hub homepage by clicking the logo at the top left-hand corner of the screen and then select Build a Web Map. Alternatively, click on the cogwheel icon at the right border of the page. This opens a wheel from where the other apps – including the Web Map Builder – can be accessed.
On the left-hand side, you can see the data model of your data catalog in the Data tab. Expand the themes to see the indicators. At the bottom you can change the active core layer. You can add an indicator to the map on the right by clicking on one of the plus icons. The icon adds the selected indicator for the active core layer whilst the icon adds the indicator for all available layers. After you have added one or more indicators, switch to the Layers tab where you can review your selection and if necessary remove layers again.
Once you are happy with your selection click the orange button to save your web map. More information is available on the Web Map Builder help page.
Please note that the Web Map Builder allows you to create a quick starting point for a web map. Its purpose is not to replicate all of the functionality of the ArcGIS Online Map Viewer so for any further changes to the appearance and functionality of your web map you should continue editing it in ArcGIS Online.
What’s next?
Congratulations, you have now completed this introduction tutorial. As a next step we recommend that you have a look at the Data Catalog help pages. You will need to read these carefully if you wish to add further data to your catalog, in order to understand the rules and requirements for the feature services containing the data. If you have any questions that have not been answered yet or if you get stuck in creating your own data catalog, please feel free to contact support@instantatlas.com.
