ArcGIS Business Analyst

What are tabular infographics in ArcGIS Business Analyst Web App

ArcGIS Business Analyst Web App and ArcGIS Community Analyst allow you to create classic reports and infographics for sites and areas of interest. Classic reports are used to understand the demographics of sites and areas using detailed tables, and in some cases charts or maps. These straightforward, simplified classic reports can be exported as PDFs or Excel documents. Classic reports are popular but have some limitations in design and usability. Fortunately, these limitations can be addressed by leveraging infographic capabilities.  

Infographics are an updated way to create reports for your sites with greater flexibility. Infographic capabilities include interactive on-screen viewing, a range of modern design elements, interoperability with Business Analyst Mobile App, and many other responsive capabilities. Using these elevated capabilities, you can recreate your favorite classic reports as infographics that focus on data tables. Say hello to tabular infographics! 

What are tabular infographics? 

Tabular infographics are presentation-ready infographic templates displaying data tables. A tabular infographic is similar to a classic report but with an updated design and improved readability for accessibility. Since it is an infographic, it can leverage infographic functionality to provide a more interactive and customizable experience.  

A tabular infographic and a classic report
Figure 1: Compare the Household Income Profile tabular infographic and classic report.

What are the design advantages of tabular infographics? 

Tabular infographics support theming and modern design options. For instance, infographics provide additional styling options and interactive elements. The styling options include changing the theme of the entire template so you can quickly adapt the template to your organization’s branding. Tabular infographics are designed to display larger font sizes and high color contrast to meet accessibility standards. This improves readability for a variety of audiences. The default color scheme is designed to be print-friendly.  

How do tabular infographics leverage additional capabilities? 

Tabular infographics take your favorite classic report templates to the next level using capabilities unique to infographic templates. For instance, you can run a tabular infographic for multiple sites and immediately see a side-by-side comparison of data for your sites. This stack mode is also available in ArcGIS Business Analyst Mobile App and the Business Analyst widget in Experience Builder. While you can run classic reports for multiple sites, the information is stored in multiple PDFs and is not immediately available in the comparative way that tabular infographics are.  

Tabular infographics side-by-side comparison
Figure 2: Run tabular infographics to compare data across sites.

Another way that tabular infographics leverage infographic-specific capabilities is through providing more options to preview and export templates. You can use the Run infographics workflow to view the tabular infographic prior to exporting it. This visibility can save credits since you can preview the work prior to exporting it. There are also additional options for outputs when exporting infographics compared to classic reports, including as an image or HTML.  

Tabular infographics also support interactive experiences, allowing you to explore variables in infographic panels to get more demographic information. For example, this enhancement can be used to click a value and show a chart to provide more context to the data. Interactive experiences are exportable. You can choose whether or not to export interactive experiences along with the main template. Another way to interact with the data is to use ToolTips. In the Executive Summary tabular infographic, hover over the value of a variable to see the ToolTip as a pop-up panel with the variable’s definition.  

Video of an interactive experience in the Executive Summary tabular infographic
Figure 3: An interactive experience is shown for the Executive Summary tabular infographic.

Where can I find tabular infographics? 

Tabular infographics are currently available in the infographics gallery. You can find the gallery in ArcGIS Business Analyst Web App Advanced on the Gallery tab of the infographic builder. The offerings in the gallery currently include some popular classic reports formatted as tabular infographics. 

Access the gallery
Figure 4: Access the gallery.

You can also filter the templates in the gallery by category. Click the Filter button to choose which categories to show. For instance, to only show tabular infographics, use the Hide others button for the Tabular category.

Filter tabular infographics
Figure 5: Filter the gallery to see only tabular infographics.

How do I create a tabular infographic? 

You can open and customize any of the tabular infographic templates in the gallery. You can also create custom tabular infographics. Classic reports will remain available in Business Analyst Web App throughout the transition to tabular infographics. Moving forward, development efforts will be focused on infographics. 

How would you use tabular infographics? 

We welcome your feedback! How are you using tabular infographics? Are there any functionalities in classic reports that you need implemented in tabular infographics? Please use the feedback option at the bottom of this blog article or post on Esri Community. 

About the authors

Sarah David writes about ArcGIS Business Analyst. She lives in Connecticut with her husband and dog. Outside of work, she loves to read, hike, and cook plant-based meals.

Cheryl is a Product Engineer on the Business Analyst Team and is passionate about creating quality products that help improve the world around us.

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