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We have made some major improvements to the Services feature on Local Insight so that you can now provide more contextual information to each of the individual service locations on the map.
The enhanced functionality allows you to add more locally held information to Local Insight so that you can signpost users to important information about their local services. As well as being able to say where a particular service is – you can also include contextual information quickly and easily in the same place. Coupled with the open data available within the system and the locally held datasets you can add in, this improved functionality contributes to making Local Insight a one-stop shop for local information for you and your strategic partners.
The developments focus on:
This blog is here to give you a rundown of all the changes including:
This functionality has been in the pipeline for a while and was voted a priority at the 2018 Local Insight user group so we are delighted that it is now up and running.
The developments & design were improved through the user testing period so a big thank you to everyone who spent time providing us with valuable feedback.
For step-by-step guidance, please read through the Manage Services section on the Help Centre.
Previously, you could upload your services, categorise them into a maximum of 30 types and then view those locations on the map. Now, along with assigning your services a type you can also add contextual information for each individual service, which can then be displayed on the map.
Adding metadata is optional and completely customisable. To add metadata to your service data you can input data in the 5 columns to the right of the postcode and service type columns.
Below is an example of how metadata will display on the map once uploaded.
For step-by-step guidance, please read through the Manage Services section on the Help Centre.
We ran extensive beta testing on this new functionality to ensure it meets the needs of our user base. The below improvements have been informed by the beta testing.
You no longer have to add UPRNs
Previously when you uploaded services you needed to add a Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN) in the first column. The purpose of this was to inform Local Insight that each row was a separate service, even if postcodes were duplicated. Local Insight now intuitively knows that each row is a separate service so you don’t have to waste time putting in arbitrary UPRNS.
Please note. If your services have UPRNs that you wanted to keep in the tool, then get in touch at support@ocsi.co.uk as we have the UPRNs in the database and can send them to you. You can then add them back in as metadata if you wanted to still see the UPRNs on the map.
Removed copy and paste option
Previously, you could upload your services by either copying and pasting or uploading a CSV. We have removed the copy and paste option. Removing this option allowed us to focus on improving the error feedback and speeding up the upload process as these were highlighted as priorities during beta testing.
Better error feedback
We have improved the error feedback you receive when uploading services so that any formatting issues can easily be identified and rectified. This should make uploading services a smoother & less confusing process.
If you are a community foundation, you could upload the organisations you fund as Services and add metadata to provide additional information on the grants that they have applied for and received.
To illustrate this, the below example shows The Barrow Cadbury Trust grant data from GrantNav, reformatted and uploaded into Local Insight.
The image below displays how the first row of data is formatted so it can be uploaded into Local Insight
The image below shows how that data will display on Local Insight when the service icon is clicked on.
Uploading this information would allow you to visualise all the grant applications geographically and then overlay the socio-economic datasets in Local Insight to gain an understanding of the characteristics of that area to explore whether local giving is going to the places most in need.
If you are a Local Authority who has a public-facing Local Insight site then you could upload useful information about local services to help signpost information to public users.
To illustrate this, the below example shows GP surgeries in North Somerset published on Data.gov.uk by North Somerset Council reformatted and uploaded into Local Insight.
The image below displays how the data is formatted so it can be uploaded into Local Insight
The image below shows how that data will display on Local Insight when the service icons are clicked on.
The services functionality has been designed to be completely customisable so it can be used to upload a whole range of information. As today is a general election, the below example shows all the polling stations in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham.
The polling station data was downloaded from Data.gov.uk and published by London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham
The image below displays how the data is formatted so it can be uploaded into Local Insight.
The image below shows how that data will display on Local Insight when the service icons are clicked on.
Feedback
Once again, thank you to all those users who took part in beta testing to help us develop this. We are always looking for more feedback and would also love to hear how you are using the improved Services functionality, so please do get in touch with us on support@ocsi.co.uk
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