Tutorial: Creating an InstantAtlas report with labels on the map

In version 4 of InstantAtlas it is possible to specify your own symbols to display for point contextual geographies. In other words, if you publish a report with a contextual layer that contains points, you can decide what symbol will be used to represent any of the contextual points in the map. You should provide your custom point symbols as one or more SVG files. When you toggle the contextual geography and zoom into the map of your report, the labels will rescale so that they never obscure the base geography features.

You can view an example report by clicking here.

Steps:

  1. On the Choose Contextual Geographies screen of the InstantAtlas Publisher, upload a point map file as a contextual geography
  2. On the Choose Settings... screen of the Publisher change the "Use contextual point names as symbol names" setting to True by clicking the checkbox
  3. Make sure you place the SVG files with your custom symbols in the report folder (i.e. along with all the other files making up your report)
  4. Give each SVG file containing a custom symbol a file name that matches the name of the contextual point(s) it should represent in the report. For example, if you have a contextual point called "Church" in your report (this name is contained in the field in the map file that you selected as the Feature name field when you added the contextual layer in the Publisher) and you with to represent it using a custom symbol, the SVG file containing that symbol must be called "Church.svg".
  5. Your report will display the custom symbols in your report as long as the SVG file names match the names of the contextual points

In the example report provided above, the custom symbols created to represent contextual points just happen to be text (i.e. labels).

Note that you may need to adjust the viewbox of your custom symbol SVG files to ensure that the symbols appear in the report. If you have having difficulties making your custom symbols appear in the map please contact the InstantAtlas support team on +44 (0)131 6248935 or emailing support@geowise.co.uk.