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Welcome to the CDXZipStream June 2016 Newsletter
This month we cover the options for getting Bing Maps
keys through the Microsoft website and authorized Microsoft
resellers. We also offer some tips and tricks for using
CDXZipStream Bing-related functions, and review the ability of the
CDXRadius function to return up to a million postal codes within a
specified radius area.
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Getting a Bing
Maps License Key
If you're new to CDXZipStream or have just upgraded to
the latest version, you may want to use Bing-related functions that
can do driving and route calculations, geocode and reverse geocode,
look up postal codes and verify address information. To use
Bing Maps as the source of mapping data for these functions, the
first step is to get a Bing Maps license key. Free basic keys
for evaluation purposes can be created from the Microsoft website, or
you can purchase an enterprise version from Microsoft resellers such
as Onterra Systems.
1. Go to the Bing Maps Dev Center and sign in
with your Microsoft Account. If you don't have an account, you
have the opportunity to create one from the sign in page; there is no
cost or obligation associated with having a Microsoft account.
2. After signing in, you will be forwarded to a
page with a "My Account" menu. Select "My
Keys" and on the next page click on the link for creating a new
key.
3. Next you'll see a box, shown below, with
several fields to fill in:
4. Click on "Create" and you will see
your new Bing Maps key and related details listed. To the right
of the key select "Copy key".
5. Now you can open Excel and from the
"Settings" icon on the CDXZipStream commandbar, click on
"Bing Maps Settings", then "Set Bing Maps Key",
and use the keyboard shortcut CTRL-V to paste the new key into
CDXZipStream.
To get an enterprise key:
Contact an authorized Microsoft reseller for an enterprise
Bing Maps key such as Onterra Systems. You can
contact Onterra using their on-line order form here. If you work for a
larger organization, please check with your IT department first to
see if you already have access to a key as part of a Microsoft
enterprise agreement. Microsoft also provides a good review
of Bing Maps licensing options on
its website.
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Tips and Tricks for Bing Maps Functions
Here are some helpful options when using the
CDXZipStream functions CDXLocateBing and CDXRouteBing:
1. Use partial address data: You don't
have to input complete address data to get results - Bing can geocode
and calculate driving routes using partial addresses, such as those
with missing street numbers, or even just postal codes. However, it
is a good idea to include country information whenever possible, but
especially when working with partial addresses; it is not unusual for
duplicate postal codes to occur in different countries.
2. Try it again: Since Bing Maps is a web
service, there may be times of heavy usage when data requests are
unsuccessful. Unfortunately, error messages from Bing don't
necessarily differentiate between cases where an address is
legitimately not found, versus an empty result due high demand.
If you're getting a lot of unexpected errors when using
Bing-related functions, try running the calculations a second time to
see if more results are returned.
4. Use our Bing-compatible Excel templates:
We offer a wide variety of Excel templates (most of them free)
that use either Bing Maps or Microsoft MapPoint as the source of
mapping data. They cover the most common CDXZipStream
operations, including geocoding, reverse geocoding, driving distance
and time calculations, and radius analysis. Besides being
simple to use, they offer the advantage of tracking the number of
calculations completed; you can also cancel the calculations at any
time by pressing the keyboard ESC key without losing the data already
returned to the worksheet. Please visit our website here
for a listing of available templates.
5. Enable autocopy and set to text options:
When using the CDXRouteBing or CDXLocateBing functions with
long lists of locations, we highly recommend enabling
the Autocopy and Set to text options, which will
return data until the first empty row, and also return the data as
text. A large number of CDXZipStream formulas in a worksheet
can significantly slow down Excel, especially during sorting or
recalculation, and using text in lieu of formulas avoids this
problem..
6. Use Bing Maps from your browser:
BingMaps.com has a couple of new features you may find helpful
when working with CDXZipStream. Now there's a copy function for
latitude and longitude associated with a point on a map. Just
right-click on the location of interest, and from the drop-down menu
select "Copy" under the provided latitude and longitude
data. You can then easily paste (CTRL-V) the data to
your worksheet. Try this option if CDXZipStream functions can't
find an address in your list; both CDXRouteBing and CDXLocateBing can
use latitude and longitude as input. A second feature now available
with Bing Maps is a birds-eye view of traffic levels and construction
areas. So if you are getting surprising or inconsistent
routing results from CDXZipStream, type the area (e.g.
"Pittsburgh, PA") into Bing Maps and click on the
"Traffic" icon. Roads are color-coded according to
traffic, and construction areas are highlighted in yellow or red.
Areas of construction or heavy traffic (if you are using the
"Quickest with traffic" route calculation) may be affecting
the results.
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A Million Reasons to Use CDXRadius
When 64-bit CDXZipStream was introduced last year, it
included a number of new features, including the ability to return up
to a million postal codes when using CDXRadius.
The CDXRadius function returns a list of postal codes
within a specified distance of a target postal code. Data can
be returned as a single text string, a Microsoft Excel array, or a
text list. It works with the CDXZipStream U.S. and Canadian
postal code databases, either individually or in combination.
Since Canada has over 800K postal codes, the ability to return
up to 1 MM codes in CDXRadius provides coverage of much larger radius
areas there.
CDXRadius can be used in combination with the Excel
LOOKUP function to find which customers, for instance, are within the
radius distance of a store location, as shown in this tutorial:
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Find ZIP
Codes in a Radius
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Although the video uses U.S. locations in the example,
Canadian locations can also be used if you have purchased the
Canadian database option. We also offer a free radius analysis
template that automates this process; it can be downloaded from our
website here.
Please note that to obtain postal code lists for up to
a million results, you must also use Excel version 2007 and higher
since earlier versions do not contain enough rows for the larger
postal code arrays.
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Latest Data
Updates
Canadian and
U.S. data feeds of CDXZipStream were updated as of June 24.
There were 85 changes made to the U.S. database this month.
If you would like to update your database to reflect these
changes, select the "Account" option on the
CDXZipStream commandbar and click on "Check for Available
Database Updates". You can then update each database as
required.
CDXZipStream
updates are a part of the one-year software maintenance
subscription included with your purchase. If you would like to
extend your subscription, please sign in to the CDX Technologies
website and from the account area for CDXZipStream, select "Buy
Data Update".
As always
we hope you find the information here helpful for you and your
organization. You can contact us with your feedback and
suggestions by replying to this email.
The
Team at CDX Technologies
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In
This Issue
Getting a Bing Maps License Key
Tips and Tricks when using Bing Maps Functions
A Million Reasons to Use CDXRadius
Data Updates
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