Interactive digital maps have made data visualization far more robust and engaging for users. Yet many aspects of professional card design that are taken for granted on the paper medium are still missing from most web-based designs. One such function is: tmapmakers’ ability to control a map’s geography.
Good news! ArcGIS for Microsoft 365 now gives you maximum control over your map extents.
Read on to learn how to communicate more clearly using three ArcGIS for Microsoft 365 features:
- Lock card scope
- Set home range
- Bookmarks
The walkthroughs below illustrate the use of these apps specifically in ArcGIS for MS Excel and MS SharePoint. However, the lock extent functions can also be found in ArcGIS for Power BI – see the ArcGIS for Power BI documentation for details.
You are leading a nationwide project where stakeholders need to see data in context, such as across the entire contiguous United States. There is absolutely no need to zoom in on points of interest, as it is important to understand the pattern of how the data is distributed across the United States. Everything necessary to interpret the map is visible when the map is opened.
ArcGIS for Microsoft 365 now allows you to lock your map on this viewpoint to prevent users from exploring irrelevant areas. In other words, you can now design your map like a single-scale paper map: no zoom, no pan.
Follow these steps in ArcGIS for Excel (or similar in ArcGIS for SharePoint) after loading a map to start using the feature:
1. Pan and zoom to the focus area
You should set your geographic extent just right. In most cases, this means that your mapped functions take up as much screen real estate as possible. Of course, make sure your data fits within the window, because once you lock the geographic area, users won’t be able to pan or zoom.
2. Navigation tools
Expand the map tools menu and select Navigation tools. The Map Extent tab is open by default.
3. Lock card extent
When navigation tools are open, you will see Lock card extent as the second option on the Card Extent tab. Click on the Lock map extent unlocked icon. It will turn into a lock icon. Congratulations! Your card is now locked. If you try to zoom or pan the map, nothing happens.
4. Unlock card extension
If you decide to reposition the scope or change the zoom, or if you redesign the map to allow for map navigation, simply click the lock icon again and it will unlock your map. Fear not: unlike printed circuit boards, card locking is always reversible in ArcGIS for MS365!
Home is where you say it is
Sometimes you don’t want to lock a card. Interactivity is often beneficial and an asset in card design. Home buttons, icons on the map that take people back to an original extent, and zoom scale can help solve this.
Unfortunately, using a standard home button can also accidentally confuse the user. For example, if you are interested in highlighting professional soccer clubs in Germany, but your dataset is for all professional clubs across Europe. The default behavior of the Home button (default extent) is to zoom to the full extent of a dataset. But do you really want someone zoomed in on Braunschweig to click the Home button and see a map that stretches from Reykjavik to Vladivostok? (Hint: the answer is no.)
ArcGIS for MS 365 has added a new tool to solve this dilemma – Set the scope of the home tool.
You can now set a default home button area instead of using the default. In this case, you can zoom to and center your map view over Germany and set the home button to always zoom back to this map extent. It overrides the default full data extent behavior. Now when a user presses the start button, they will be shown all of Germany – not all of Europe.
Here’s how to do this in ArcGIS for Excel or ArcGIS for SharePoint after you’ve loaded a spatial dataset.
1. Pan and zoom to the focus area
You should set your geographic extent to the optimal area to return to when someone selects Home icon – for example over a specific county in Iowa, e.g. Madison County, instead of zooming out to show all counties in a dataset called ‘Iowa counties’.
2. Navigation tools
Expand the map tools menu and select Navigation tools.
3. Set home scope
When navigation tools are open, you will see Set map extent tool as the first option. Click on Home icon. Your home button will now automatically take you to the current map extent, regardless of the size of your screen.
Check out the feature right now. Zoom and pan on the map. Then click the Home button. You will be taken back to where you just were.
4. Remove custom Home extent
If you decide to go back to the default extent – which automatically adjusts your map to the full geographic extent of your datasets – simply click the X icon next to the Home icon in the navigation toolbar.
5. Create new Home extent
You can create and recreate as many Home stretches as you like until you get it just right. However, you can only have one home stretch at a time – or the original standard stretch.
But don’t worry. If you want to use many different extents in a single map project, we’ve got you covered in the next section.
Create bookmarks to travel between geographic areas
Do you remember detail cards? They were large-scale insets on small-scale maps that allowed users to see details of important places on static maps showing a large area of ​​context, e.g. urban areas. Because of the interactivity of cards today, they are easy to forget. You can zoom and pan to the area of ​​interest quite quickly.
Let’s say you design maps for a company with operations in 17 cities across the United States. You can set the home extent to show all the cities with your data at a small scale. But your users must then pan and zoom into each city as they move between them. This is neither an efficient nor a fun user experience. (Most of us have experienced map vertigo – becoming geographically disoriented while panning and zooming at large scales.)
We’ve got you covered – ArcGIS for Microsoft 365 now has bookmarks. In addition to your home zoom, you can create preset zoom and stretch levels and save them for quick retrieval by your users.
In the case above, you can now create a unique bookmark for each city, so your users can quickly switch map views from city to city without having to navigate across the US with the mouse. Each bookmark zooms to a preset extent centered on the urban area of ​​interest.
Creating bookmarks is just as quick and easy as using the other two geospatial features.
1. Pan and zoom to the focus area
Set your geographic extent over the detailed area you want to bookmark. In this example, I’m zooming to the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area.
2. Click the Bookmark map icon
Simply click the bookmark icon after zooming to the location you want to create a bookmark to create a bookmark instantly. The navigation tools open to the bookmarks pane and you can enter a name for your bookmark there.
3. Optional: Select Navigation Tools
To find your bookmarks, start by opening Navigation tools (found in the upper left side of the map pane).
4. Select Bookmarks
In the Navigation Tools pane, you’ll see two panels at the top. The first you are familiar with as it contains Lock card extent and Home stretch tools. Click on Bookmark pane.
5. Select the New Bookmark button
You will see all the bookmarks you have created here. You can also create new bookmarks from the right inside the panel by clicking on New bookmark button. Enter a name that makes sense to your end card user.
6. Add, sort and update more bookmarks
You can add as many bookmarks as you want to your map. You can also sort bookmarks by dragging and dropping them into a new order. Select more than one bookmark at a time by holding down the ‘Ctrl’ button (‘Command’ button on MacOS) before dragging and dropping them in an order that makes sense to your users.
You can also quickly update a bookmark. Simply adjust the map window to the appropriate zoom level and click Update button next to the desired bookmark in the menu. This way, you can change bookmarks as you add new data or to suit users’ needs.
7. Customize and delete bookmarks
By default, the basemap you used will be used when creating a thumbnail for your bookmarks. If you add data later or change the basemap, or simply want to upload your own thumbnail to brand or standardize the thumbnail experience, simply click on the thumbnail. You will be asked to provide a URL for the image you prefer.
Sometimes you want to get rid of bookmarks. Not a problem you can click on Delete icon next to a bookmark to remove it. Or if you have a lot to delete, select many bookmarks and click Delete at the top just below Bookmark title to remove many at once.
Start controlling your map’s geography with ArcGIS for Microsoft 365
These new features in ArcGIS for Microsoft 365 bring back three largely absent, but not forgotten, benefits of printed circuit boards for visual communication. Lock scope, Set home rangeand Bookmarks offer you, the mapmaker, control over how users read, use and the geographic context in which they can interpret your visualization.
Start experimenting with them today to keep map users on task, enable more efficient map navigation, and take control of the geography on your maps. Good mapping!