Displaying the location of places like health centers, childcare centers, or job support centers on a map helps readers understand where they can easily access services, or where gaps in services exist. In order to upload this information in Chart, your file must contain the latitude and longitude coordinates for each location. So, if you only have addresses, you'll need to through a process called geocoding to get the lat-long coordinates. We will show you how to do that here.

Geocoding addresses can be done with a number of third party online services. We like one called geocod.io but there are several that you can use. Depending on how many addresses you have, you might need to pay for the service to get those points geocoded (geocod.io offers 2500 free lookups per day).

To prepare your .csv or .xls file for geocoding you will need to format your list of addresses in a way that the geocoder will accept. Typically this means you will need to split your address into separate columns. Probably something like this:

You can then follow the directions on the service to submit the addresses and get back an output that contains the latitude and longitude of each address.

Once you have a lat/long for each address, you can format a spreadsheet to upload as a geographic file (as a layer) into mySidewalk.

First, double check the formatting. 1 (one) header row and at least 2 columns should be named latitude and longitude (or lat/long or x/y).

You can also give these points names by adding a column called “Name” or “Description” and filling out the name for each point.

Uploading the address isn’t necessary but if you want that data to live in mySidewalk, you can certainly include it. Check out a good upload sample below.

Now that you have clean, formatted data, you can upload it!

Click "Upload" (icon with arrow pointing up) in the navigation bar.

Choose “Upload Layer” and then bring in your file. It can take a few seconds up to a few minutes to process (depending on the size of your layer) but your layer will soon be available to use.
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A successful upload will result in a layer being created and you will see a success screen. Click on the name of your layer to see the layer management page. On this page, you can update the name of your layer, add tags, add a description and select the label that should display when the layer is added to a map.

The most common use case for a point layer like this is in a map. Create a new map, select “Add My Layer” and choose this layer in the list. Then you can start to layer additional data on top of it for presentation. Read more about maps here.