Find a driving route
In this topic
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 company with 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 identifies 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 IBM Cognos.
Note:
The route service and the World Geocoding Service work in all supported countries. One or more countries are grouped together to form a region. The route service does not support requests that span more than one region. Consequently, a route will be identified only between those stops that are in the same region as the first stop.
Find a route
With Esri Maps for IBM Cognos, you can 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 clicking the map
- Manually entering addresses
When Esri Maps for IBM Cognos identifies 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 on 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 clicking on the map—Click 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 click the Find my location button
to populate the box with your current location.
You can repeat any of these options until all destinations have been specified.
- Do any of the following to make changes to your destinations if necessary:
- To remove a destination from the route, click 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. Click this button to switch the start and end destinations. - To change the order of two or more destinations, click 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, click 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; click Get route 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.
- To remove a destination from the route, click the small x beside the destination.
- When you're finished specifying destinations for your route, click 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, click Zoom to full route.
- To view and print driving directions for the route, click the Print button, and click Print on the directions page that appears. Modify the print settings as needed and click 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 trigger any configured interactive behaviors.
Note:
The option to trigger configured interactions is only available if the Trigger interactions tool was enabled by the report author. For more information, see Configure map settings and tools.
- Add one or more destinations to your route.
- Click 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 click Trigger interactions after clicking Get route, features intersected by the route graphic are selected, and configured interactive behaviors that are enabled for automatic interactions are triggered.