Adding a marker layer

Markers show positional coordinates on a map. The markers are customizable shapes that are placed on the map based on the position coordinates (latitudes and longitudes), or based on the geographic information provided in your data that represent zip codes, cities, counties, regions, or countries.

Before you begin

The data must contain geographical or positional information. If the data contains no geographic coordinates (latitude and longitude), markers can be placed automatically in the center of supported administrative areas.

Procedure

Follow the steps in Adding layers.

Tip: You can reuse the settings of an already existing layer instead of adding a completely new layer. See Duplicating a layer for detailed instructions.
From the list, select Marker layer and select the data table to add markers from; either one of your own data tables at the top of the menu, or one of the available geocoding tables.
The marker layer is added to the Map chart layer list, and the layer with its default settings is added to the map chart.
Optionally, move the layer to a new position.
Review properties for the map chart.
You can change properties such as the color, size, shape, rotation, drawing order, line connection, transparency, jittering, or aggregation of markers, as well as adding labels, tooltips, subsets, show/hide items and so on. You can also use Data limiting as in other visualizations.

Positioning markers on the map

Use the Positioning (in the installed client visualization properties dialog) or Geographic location (in the web client properties popover) property settings if you must make changes to the automatic attempt to place geographical elements on the map.

Select Geocoding (or Name-based (geocoding) in the web client) to place markers according to the geographical name in the data. The markers for the geographical names are automatically positioned (by means of the geocoding tables) on the their geographical coordinates on the map. For more information on geocoding, see Geographic location and geocoding.

When working in the installed client, the Marker Layer Settings dialog provides the option to use Auto-match, if the first automatic geocoding fails. With this functionality, Spotfire makes an attempt to classify the content of the columns selected on the axis (Marker by/Geocode by), in search for geographic information. If any of the columns are successfully classified, then an automatic geocoding is performed which downloads geocoding tables and sets up the column matches.

If you add geocoding tables manually, you might need to edit column matches as well.
Select Coordinate columns (or Coordinate-based in the web client) to place markers using columns in your data that contain coordinates (longitude/latitude values).

Marker layer example

This map chart shows Sweden with a nearly-transparent feature layer, showing county boundary lines, and a marker layer with the following properties:

Title is set to Sweden county capitals.
Appearance is set to opaque.
Data is set to Sweden county capitals, with marking.
Geographical location is set to be based on coordinates.
Shape is set to Shape by column values, and the column set to cities larger than 200,000. (Three cities, Stockholm, Malmö, and Göteborg meet this condition (TRUE), so their shapes are filled circles, and all other county capitals are filled squares.)
Legend is set to display, with Marking, Color by, Shape by, and Size by available.
Color is set to Color scheme with two colors, Color by set to Sum(Population 2015) so smaller cities and towns appear in blue, and the larger cities appear in red.
Size is set to Size by Sum(Population 2015) with marker size slightly enlarged. (Stockholm's marker is significantly larger but the smallest markers are still clearly visible.)
Drawing order is not set because the map has no overlapping markers.
Jittering is not set because the map has no overlapping markers.
Line connection is not set.
Labels is set to show the names of all county capitals.