Bart takes a minute to show you how to geo-map all your Nspire families using the free online tool: www.batchgeocode.com
You can download the .PDF of this article by clicking here
How to Use www.batchgeocode.com
Geocoding is the term used for converting a street address to a latitude and longitude value. Once you have these values for an address you can plot the information on maps.
One tool for doing this is www.batchgeocode.com. Following their instructions you can use an exported set of addresses from Nspire to create a map that shows multiple addresses mapped together. What follows are instructions for using www.batchgeocode.com to create a map showing where all your households are located.
Note: There is a limit to the number of addresses you can geocode per day. The current maximum is 5000 per day per ip address. The site recommends that you not do more than 500 at a time. We have done more in testing but it does take time. Expect to take about 10min per 500 addresses or so. Time may also depend on your internet speed.
Step #1 – Create an export file containing the addresses you want to map.
Open Nspire and go to View Households. In the Household window you can use a query to limit your list of addresses. Next you need to click the Print button in the top right corner of the screen. In the Reports window Click the Export button to create a text file containing the addresses.
In the Export Template window, click the insert button to create a new export template.
In the update window we will create a new export file template for our geocode file.
Name: Name the template Batchgeocode
Description: Whatever you want here. You can leave it blank.
Check the Use Header record check box so you can identify your columns on the geocode web site
Next you need to select your tokens. Click the Modify List button.
In the Find control type Address. Select the Household Home Address in the list. Then in the Token Format list, you can double click Address, City, State, and Zip Code tokens. Your list should look like the one above. After you have your tokens, click the Ok button.
Now we are ready to export. Click the export button and chose to save your file to your desktop. If you take the defaults, the file should be named export.csv. You can change this if you want.
Step #2 – Get you data into the www.batchgeocode.com website
Next you need to open your file in Excel. If you have Windows Excel installed, the export file should already be associated with Excel. All you have to do is double click the export.csv file located on your desktop to open the file in Excel.
Once you have opened the file, select the first cell and click Ctrl-A. Just hold down the Ctrl key on your keyboard then click “A”. This will make Excel select your entire data set. Next click Ctrl-C to copy the data to your clipboard.
Now, point your web browser to http://www.batchgeocode.com.
Under step #2, click the text field and then click ctrl-a to highlight all the data already in the text control. Next press Ctrl-V to paste your data into the text control. Once your data is in the text control click the validate source button to test your data.
You should see information about the number of columns and rows you have in your list.
Step #3 – Select your columns and create your Map
Under Step 4 on the batchgeocode.com web site you need to match your columns up to the correct fields. In Address, select your address column, then set your City, State, and Zip code. The other fields can be used to create more descriptive maps if you choose to import more data.
Under step 5 on the web site, click the Run Geocoder button. A processing message will appear as you step through your records. Once complete your map will appear in Step 6.
You can save a link to your map that you can share. However, note that it will save your address data on their site and it is visible on the page with the map.
There you go. You have now created a map that shows where all your households are located.
Have fun making your own.
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4 Responses
Cool stuff — got a question — is there a way to do an individuals query that takes out duplicates (like you do when printing labels)? We have a TON of households that we can’t easily remove due to inactivity — we can quickly weed them out in the individuals screen… but can’t get rid of duplicates in the household to pare down the list.
I think this would be phenomenal when trying to put together small home groups. We’re in the process of gearing up for the fall — would be cool to identify people who have the gift of hospitality that live in a certain area where we have higher concentrations of member households.
Am I missing something obvious, or have I asked for yet another thing that isn’t in the software yet? (Sorry, Bart, I really don’t sit around dreaming up ways to make more work for you! Look at it this way, I’m creating job security for you!)
Dave, a couple questions come to mind initially. 1. How are you naming your households? (is the naming like Johnson1, Johnson2 or like Frank and Mary, Johnson and Tony and Lynn, Johnson)
We recommend naming households in the format such as “Frank and Mary, Johnson” since this helps to eliminate duplicate households down the road. As for now, you have a bunch of households with some duplicates already in there.
If I understand your question right, you are saying you can see the duplicate individuals easier than the duplicate households. I would like to have support contact you to see about finding a solution to this. I’m going to create a support ticket for you now and you should be contacted soon.
Thanks Dave!
We name households by LastName, Head of Household. Ex: Hirschler, Dave
We have missionaries, denominational leaders, etc. in our database. So, I would like to query an attendance event (where we actually track people who attend), or — we query a demographic (which is done as individuals — but then consolidate the query to eliminate any duplicate members who live in the same household) Did that make any sense?
This fall we have a HUGE evangelistic outreach being hosted by 30-40 area churches. We will have 100 performing missionaries converging our our community for a couple of weeks and they will need housing. I would love to be able to query all members who have the gift of hospitality, but then geomap them so that I can find the ones who live closest to the ministry venue, as opposed from the furthest end of the county. I might have 5 people in the same household with the gift of hospitality. I don’t want to have them show up 5 times on the geomap, I just want to see the ONE household. Since households don’t have that demographic, I have to do an individual query. I would like to narrow it down (like I can do with labels and remove duplicates from the same household) before I send the data out to be geomapped.
I hope this makes sense. It does in my head, but my head works differently than most people’s (which is good for everyone but me
)
Dave, No problem, you make perfect sense. We have been talking about this around the office. We have a few ideas we’ve tossed. I’ll let you know more as progress continues. Thanks for your incite and AWESOME blog articles.