Find a driving route

It is often necessary to analyze your data to answer questions such as the following:

What is the quickest way to get from point A to point B?
How can a fleet of delivery or service vehicles improve customer service and minimize transportation costs?
Which branch of a store should a potential customer visit to minimize travel time?

Esri Maps for IBM Cognos can help you find the best way to get from one location to another or visit multiple locations. The best route is the shortest route that minimizes travel time. If you have more than two stops to visit, Esri Maps for IBM Cognos can determine the best sequence in which to visit the locations. This is called route optimization.

Esri Maps for IBM Cognos uses specialized services from ArcGIS—the route service and the World Geocoding Service—to find an optimal driving route. Your data can come from ArcGIS or from IBM Cognos.

Find a route

With Esri Maps for IBM Cognos, you can easily find a driving route by specifying two or more destinations on the map using any of the following methods:

Selecting points on the map using a selection tool
Specifying a destination by pressing on the map
Manually entering addresses

When Esri Maps for IBM Cognos finds the best route using the destinations you specified, you can zoom to the full route or print out driving directions.

From the Tools menu, choose Get route.
The Get route pane is displayed.
Note:
This tool is only available if it was enabled by the report author.
Tip:
You can also open the Get route tool from the Analyze features tool (if enabled) after making a selection on the map. The selected features automatically become destinations for your route.
Specify the destinations you want to include in your route using any of the following tools:
- Select destinations by drawing a rectangle—Drag a rectangle on the map to select the points you want to use as destinations. Your map must contain points to select.
- Add a destination by pressing on the map—Press a point on the map to add it as a destination. The destination is added as the first stop.
- Enter an address—Enter an address in the empty destination box or hover over the box and press the Find my location button to populate the box with your current location.
You can repeat any of these methods until all destinations have been specified.
Do any of the following to make changes to your destinations:
- To remove a destination from the route, press the small x beside the destination.
  The x button appears only when your route contains more than two destination points.
- When the route consists of only two points, the Reverse directions button appears beside the addresses. Press this button to switch the start and end destinations.
- To change the order of two or more destinations, press the number marker and drag the destination field to the desired position in the list.
- To change the location of a stop on the map, press the icon on the map and drag it to a new destination; the new address is updated in the address field.
  Note:
  You can move destination points on the map after generating the original route; press Get route again to update the driving route after you move a destination point.
- If you want Esri Maps for IBM Cognos to determine the best sequence in which to visit four or more specified destinations, check the Optimize order check box. When optimizing a route, the first and last stops are fixed and the intermediate stops are optimized.
When you are finished specifying destinations for your route, press Get route.
The route is displayed on the map. Information about the route, including route length (miles or kilometers) and estimated driving time, appears under the list of destinations.
Tip:
To see the entire route displayed on the map, press Zoom to full route.
To view and print driving directions for the route, press the Print button, and then press Print on the directions page that appears. Modify the print settings as needed and press Print.
The resulting printout consists of a map that contains the route and the stops.
To clear the route, close the Get route pane.

Trigger interactive behaviors

While using the Get route tool, you can easily trigger any configured interactive behaviors.

Add one or more destinations to your route.
Press Trigger interactions.
Features intersected by the destination graphics are selected.
Only the features in layers for which on-selection interactive behaviors were configured are selected.
Based on the selection, configured interactive behaviors that are enabled for automatic interactions are triggered.
Note:
If you press Trigger interactions after pressing Get route, features intersected by the route graphic are selected, and configured interactive behaviors that are enabled for automatic interactions are triggered.