The development team here at OCSI are always working on a number of different projects. And looking for ways in which work from one project can be used to improve another and make your user experience even better. Today we are rolling out a collection of these improvements.
We noticed that people are creating more and more custom areas in Local Insight and it is great to see people making the most out of the custom areas feature! As a result we have adapted the way you can search for your custom areas, on the Map and on the Manage custom areas pages, to make it easier for you to find specific areas within a long list. We’ve also made some minor improvements to help people understand and effectively use the Dashboard.
What’s changed?
Maps page
Previously when you wanted to view a custom area on the map, you would click on the services icon and select the area from the drop down box. We have now created a specific button for custom areas. This new Areas button can be found nestled between the reports and settings button on the map page. Click the button and a list of all the custom areas on Local Insight with a filtering option appears.
Use the filtering box to type in the name of a particular custom area and then select that area to view on the map. Next to each custom area is a little information icon. Click on this icon to open up a popup detailing information about that custom area. Information includes; a list of services within the area, how the area was created, when it was created, who created it and which constituent regions are contained within the area.

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Manage custom areas page
If you are a group admin or power user who creates custom areas for your group, you will also see improvements on the Manage custom areas page. We have added a filter box so you can easily zoom to a custom area within a long list.

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To refresh your knowledge on the different ways of creating custom areas in Local Insight, check out the custom area section in the Knowledge Base.
Dashboard
The Dashboard is a great way of visualising how your custom areas compare to one and another on multiple indicators. To ensure that everyone understand how the dashboard works and what it is showing, we have added a link to a detailed Knowledge Base article. Hover your cursor over the colour key in the top left hand corner to find the link to the Knowledge Base article.
If you haven’t used the Knowledge Base before, it is full of bite sized articles which help you get the most out of Local Insight. It can be found on the Support tab in the top right hand corner of Local Insight.
If you have any questions about the recent improvements to Local Insight then please contact us on support@ocsi.co.uk.