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The Home Page

Learn how to navigate the mySidewalk home page

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

The mySidewalk Home page centralizes access to the most critical tools for your data storytelling workflow. From here, you’re just one click away from finding the data you need, discovering valuable insights, and telling your community’s story.

There are four main sections on the homepage:

  1. Get data for your community

  2. Find insights

  3. Tell a story

  4. Sidebar

The Top Section: Get Data for Your Community

This section helps you start a new search right away. If you know what you're looking for, you can search by keyword, or explore Data Guides for suggestions.

  • Data Search: Search mySidewalk’s comprehensive library of over 4 billion data points by keyword. You can also filter by source, time element, and geography.

  • Data Guides: Explore topically curated data guides to select data based on recommendations from our team and partners.

The Middle Section: Find Insights

This section allows you to view interactive visualizations, interpret your data, and discover actionable insights.

  • Explore a Map: Opens an interactive map to help you identify and understand spatial patterns.
    Map view guide: here

  • Review Trends: Opens trend graphs for up to 100 regions and allows you to calculate changes over time.
    Trends view guide: here

  • Discover Relationships: Opens a correlation matrix to reveal the strength of relationships between selected variables.
    Relationships view guide: here

  • Analyze Distribution: Shows how selected regions rank and the distribution shape of data across those regions.
    Distribution view guide: here

    Note: You must select regions and data before viewing visualizations. If not, you will be prompted to do so.

The Bottom Section: Tell a Story

This section provides tools for telling your data stories.

  • From Scratch: Opens a blank report where you can add content.

  • From a Template: Opens a searchable list of report templates covering topics like housing and food access.

  • Pick Up Where You Left Off: Lists recent reports and dashboards that you and your team have been working on.

The Sidebar

The sidebar offers quick access to core product areas and tools for managing your team's data.

  • Seek: Access the product area for data search, exploration, and insights discovery.

  • Reports: Create and share a report from scratch or a template, or edit existing reports.

  • Dashboards: Create and share a dashboard, or edit an existing dashboard.

  • Folders: Manage folders containing reports and dashboards.

  • Your Team’s Data: Manage data layers your team has created or uploaded.

  • Upload Data: Upload your own data to mySidewalk.

  • Draw a Boundary: Create a custom boundary for your analysis and storytelling.

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