Frequently asked question

Is it possible to join point features with drive time polygons in the Business Analyst web app?

Last Published: April 25, 2020

Answer

No, it is not possible to join point features with drive time polygons in the Business Analyst web app. This is a known limitation, as the Business Analyst web app does not provide the function to join features. However, a possible workaround is to export the points layer and drive time polygons to ArcGIS Online and run the Join Features analysis. The output of the join analysis can be extracted to various output formats such as a CSV file, file geodatabase, or shapefile. To do so, follow the steps below:

  1. In the Business Analyst web app, share the points layer and the drive time polygons to ArcGIS Online.
    1. Click Share map to ArcGIS image of the Share map to ArcGIS icon.
    2. In the Share Map dialog box, provide a title, description, the relevant tags, and click Share.  

      image of the Share Map dialog box
       
  2. Log in to www.arcgis.com, navigate to My Content > BA - My Maps, select the desired web map to view the item details page, and click Open in Map Viewer.
  3. Optionally, clip the points layer to extract the points that fall within the drive time polygons into a new feature layer using the Derive New Locations analysis. Skip this step to retain the original points layer.
    1. Click Analysis > Find Locations > Derive New Locations.
    2. In the Derive New Locations pane, click ADD EXPRESSION.
    3. In the Add Expression dialog box, select the point layer to intersect with the drive time polygon, and select the intersects spatial expression.
    4. Click ADD to add the expression and to close the Add Expression dialog box. 

      image of the Add Expression dialog box
       
    5. Set a name for the Result layer name and the location of the result.

      image of the Derive New Locations pane
       
    6. Click RUN ANALYSIS. The resulting point features falling within the drive time polygons are displayed in the map viewer as a new layer.
  4. Join the drive time polygons layer with the points layer using the Join Features tool.
    1. In the Join Features pane, select the target layer and the join layer.
      Note:
      The target layer receives the attributes from the join layer and the attributes from both layers are copied to a new output layer. For example, to join the attributes from the drive time polygons to the points layer, select the points layer as the target layer, and the drive time polygons as the layer to join to the target layer.
    2. Select the type(s) of join as desired. For example, select Intersects to join the information of intersecting features.
    3. Select the join operation method. For example, select Join one to many to join each drive time polygon to many points.
    4. Set a name for the Result layer name and the location of the result.  

      image of the Join Features pane
       
    5. Click RUN ANALYSIS. A new layer is added to the map viewer containing the information from the joined layers.

      The figure below is an example of the result of joining the information from the drive time polygons (join layer) to the points layer (target layer). The attribute table of the result layer shows information such as which point falls within which drive time polygon.  

      image of the attribute table of the joined layer showing the joined information

The result layer is saved as a hosted feature layer in the location specified in Step 4(d) and can be exported to various file formats using the Extract Data tool in ArcGIS Online.

Article ID:000017919

Software:
  • ArcGIS Online
  • ArcGIS Business Analyst Web App

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