In reply to shaun m.

Hi Shaun,
I appreciate your feedback. You are correct, typically the region and business data will be in separate datasets. This is addressed at the top of the post. Unless you have GIS software or the provider uses an open data portal that allows viewing of the region shapes prior to download, it is a good idea to verify the shapes are accurate and meet your needs before adding in the second dataset of the business data. That would only further muddy the debugging process should an error occur in the workflow. Isolating one dataset at a time can be helpful. This post is an example of one way to do that.

To answer you question specifically, it depends upon your requirement for the final map. If you want a choropleth map, the business data and shape data must have a common variable that allows the two tables to be joined. Once joined, as shown in step 4 of the post, a Color role can then be assigned from the business data to show the distribution across the polygons defined in the shape data.

If you desire the business data to be displayed as a scatter or bubble plot overlaid on the regions, a specific VA object must be used. Auto-charting will not work in this situation. Depending upon your version of VA, you will need to use the 'Geo region-coordinate' graph type from the Object panel or create a new template in Graph Builder to support two geographic layers. Then, separate geographic variables must be created, one for the region layer and one for the scatter/bubble layer.

I hope this helps. If you have further questions, please reach out to Tech Support for additional assistance.