Latest Contributions by KyleWatson

@SusanZwillinger here is the article... https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/bus-analyst/business/great-idea-grids-and-hexagons-centroids-business-analyst-pro/ Thanks for your help! ... View more

John - thanks for pointing me to this GeoNet Post. Clinton - we have some exciting development news in ArcGIS Pro 2.7 Business Analyst that should help you with situations like this.  We are adding support for Arcade expressions in Trade Area tools involving distance calculations.  This allows for awesome flexibility to control how your trade areas can be built, directly from fields in your data. Here's a couple examples. I have restaurants across a regional area, spanning cities and small towns.  I have a field in my restaurant database that tags "1" for urban designated stores, and "2" for rural stores.  I need to consider a farther driving distance for rural stores.  So the expression below can be used to build drive times that represent 30 min for all rural stores and 15 for urban areas.  Using the Generate Drive Time Trade Areas tool. if ($feature.franchise_type == "1") {return 15} if ($feature.franchise_type == "2") {return 30} In Telecom we are placing 5G locations.  On the main drag of Michigan Ave we want to analyze customer/home coverage within 400 meter buffers of each proposed location.  For all other locations we want to model them a bit differently, seeing what is included in 100 and 200 meter areas.  The expression below shows this.  Using the Generate Trade Area Rings tool. if ($feature.street_name == "Michigan") {return 400} else {return [100, 200]} There are countless other custom ways to use expressions, including controlling the size of areas based on ranges of data and threshold values. Please feel free to reach out. Kyle ... View more

Hi William - we've been attempting to replicate this model and error.  So far all is working OK on our side.  The next step might be to use your input data in the workflow.  Would you be opposed to sending it to us?  You can send to kwatson at esri dot com and we'll gladly take a more in-depth look. Kyle & the Business Analyst Team ... View more

Hi Alicia and thanks for your question. This variable is available in the 2019 Data.  If you connect to ArcGIS online as your Business Analyst datasource, you'll find the HAI variable.  Here I searched "afford" in Pro's Enrich Layer and it is presented in the data browser.   If you'd like this data behind the firewall - the on-prem version will be available for download from My Esri today or tomorrow. Here's a list of all 2019 data variables (it will list this HAI variable in "green" as new to 2019): http://downloads.esri.com/esri_content_doc/dbl/us/Variable_List-Esri_2019_and_2024_Updated_Demographics.pdf  Kyle ... View more

Hey thanks Tyler! Old ArcMap BDS files can be read now in Pro.  But moving forward in Pro you'll build custom data as Statistical Data Collections on any polygon layer.  Those fields can be used in Enrich Layer, reports, and infographics, etc.  In the upcoming 2.4 UC release - we are adding the ability to create custom calculations (new fields, combining fields, importing custom scripts to a field).  PLUS - you will be able to share the "SDC" files to your ArcGIS org.  So your custom data can live in a centralized spot for you and your colleagues to tap into. For custom reports and inforgraphics - check out this blog: https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/bus-analyst/business/share-custom-reports-infographics-in-arcgis-pro/ We do not plan on recreating the custom report editor in Pro, we have such a rich building experience now in BA Web.  Any report built in BA Web can be run in BA Pro. Kyle and team ... View more

You bet.  Creating a Study Area will certainly work, and actually behind-the-scenes that tool uses Dissolve to merge multiple boundaries together as one.  However when using a Study Area you will limit your analysis to only that boundary when it is set to active.  Try out Dissolve - it's fun!  ... View more

Hi Brandon - have you tried to Dissolve the 8 boundaries into one whole boundary first?  We do this for Business Analyst Reports within that workflow, but you can use the Dissolve GP tool before running Data Append. Here's a Help link: Dissolve—Help | ArcGIS for Desktop  ... View more

What I think is happening here is that you have polygons of territories (franchises) and want to assign (using spatial intersection) base features to the territories. We don't support this case directly in Territory Design.  So the TD tools can't do it directly, but it can be done using core tools and result is used for Territory Design. If that's what is happening then Spatial Join will help.  Here's two ways you can go... (1)  Join Franchise records to ZIP records. The resulting table can be imported to a territory solution with help of TD Import Territories wizard. (2)  Join ZIP records to the Franchise records, if you want to summarize some demographic attributes of ZIPs and add the summaries to the Franchise records. More info on Spatial Join is here:  Spatial Join—Help | ArcGIS Desktop  ... View more

Hey Sunnie - have you tried Territory Design to do this?  There is a helpful feature in the territory solution creation methods that sounds like it could help.  Check it out... Manually Create Territories—Help | ArcGIS Desktop  This feature allows you to select names for territories using user database or feature layer with territory names. This can be a table or layer containing a territory manager's list or any other data suitable for naming territories. If it is a feature layer with a geometric field, then this field will be taken into account for assigning the name to a nearest territory.  As a primary use case, suppose you have a manager's feature layer where the location field is the office location of the manager and name field that contains managers names. After creating territories, each territory will have the name of the nearest manager. Kyle ... View more

Hi Jeff - we are reviewing this and should have some information for you shortly - thx! ... View more

Hello again Sunnie.  We could probably understand what is happening here if we had your source data to test with.  For now, can you successfully build territories using a straight-line distance calculation rather than the network distance?  The issue could be in the network data, or it could be that + the Population criteria you've entered cannot be met.  So you could also try to modify the population constraints to see of allowing a larger number will return successful results.  This is of course without us having the data.  If you sent the data to Support we can try to reproduce and offer more definitive suggestions. Kyle ... View more

Hi Sunnie, There are two types of performance indexes in Territory Design. (1) The Territory Index - this is an adjacency index that essentially builds a lookup table for each geography so that the software does not have to do a complex spatial operation when assigning or swapping territories.  It is such where each element, for example a ZIP Code knows all of it's adjacent neighbors by ID - this makes the territory building fast and efficient.  Territory Indexes are created on-the-fly when you build a TD solution.  All Territory Indexes are saved to the location where the alignment layer is housed as a .TIDX file.  If you've installed the Business Analyst data you'll see these for all standard datasets already created here:  C:\ArcGIS\Business Analyst\US_2017\Data\Demographic Data\USA_ESRI_2017.gdb.  You can delete these TIDX for any layer and they will be recreated the next time you build territories with them.   (2) Territory Network Index - this is a performance index that acts like an OD-Matrix.  Instead of the software having to calculate every single street feature, it uses a higher set of points to mimic the network.  If say using Los Angeles as an example, you could use a subset of say Block Group centroids as the Territory Network Index points.  Then when you select the network index in the territory connection, it should process much much quicker. Hopefully this is helpful and this should make your analysis successful.  Nationwide territories are perfectly normal, but using a street network for distance is an extremely intensive process.  Try creating a Territory Network Index to help with this. Kyle ... View more

Hello Brandon!  At the 2.1 release, you're right we do not yet have this "store-to-customer assigning" functionality yet.  However there is a way to do this in Pro using some non-BA tools.  You can use the Create Thiessen Polygons tool to build polygons around each store location, then use the Identity tool to select the intersecting customer points.  All customer points will then correspond to each of their closest store locations.  The Thiessen Polygon tool, however, has an ArcGIS Desktop "Advanced" license level.  If you have that, you can try this workflow.  If not, ArcMap will still get you the desired result.  Let us know if this helps! Kyle ... View more