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Troubleshooting Visualizations Built with your Data
Troubleshooting Visualizations Built with your Data

Learn how to solve problems that arise when you're trying to create charts with your uploaded data.

Jennifer Funk avatar
Written by Jennifer Funk
Updated over a week ago

When attempting to select a User Layer to build a visualization, there are three
scenarios that will cause the list of options to be empty:

Scenario 1: No User Layers 

No user layers exist for the organization. You’ll know this is the case if the Layers module is empty. You can create a user layer by drawing or uploading a file, or making a transformation request for layers with data. Learn about supported file types here.

Scenario 2: No Geo-referenced Layers 

A geo-referenced user layer is required, but none exist for the organization. A geo-referenced user layer is a layer in which all geographies contained in the user layer match the geographies mySidewalk uses for the feature class. This allows a user to compare their data with our system data. We currently only support this for correlations. You can create geo-referenced user layers two ways:

  • Upload data that explicitly maps to mySidewalk geographies via some understood geographical identifier (eg., 64108 is easily recognizable as a ZIP Code).

  • Upload point data that includes an address or geographical coordinates that mySidewalk can aggregate up to geographies in a chosen mySidewalk feature class. We refer to this as point aggregation, and the end result is aggregated data values that correspond to geographies within a mySidewalk feature class. An example of when we might do this would be if a user has point data for crimes and they want to visualize those points as totals by a specific feature class (eg., total crimes by ZIP Code).

Scenario 3: No Time Element Layers

Time element metadata is required, but none has been associated with any of the organization’s user layers. You can create the necessary metadata if you upload a layer or request to modify an existing user layer that has data representing multiple snapshots of the same metric across time. Request mySidewalk’s assistance.

mySidewalk feature classes, include:

  • Nation

  • States

  • US Congressional Districts

  • Metro and Micropolitan Areas

  • Metropolitan Planning Organizations

  • Counties

  • State Senate Districts

  • State House Districts

  • Unified School Districts

  • County Subdivisions

  • Places

  • City Council Districts

  • ZIP Codes

  • Neighborhoods

  • Census Tracts

  • Census Block Groups

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