Importing discrete ancillaries to sites

When a new co-location request comes in, speed is everything. The faster you can get data into Shapemaker, the sooner you can run the structural analysis and answer the client. Manually entering ancillary information can be tedious and error-prone—especially for complex sites with many ancillaries. The fastest solution to get your ancillaries into Shapemaker is to upload an Excel sheet to your site (unless you are API-integrated, of course). It is an accurate and scalable way to bring large sets of data into the system—so you can spend less time on data onboarding and more time delivering value.

How to use it

To get started, navigate to the ‘Ancillaries’ tab on a site.

There, you can download the template file. It contains a description on what data you need to provide to successfully run an analysis later, including a sheet regarding which geometry data is required for specific ancillary types.

Each ancillary you want to mount on a site must be matched to an ancillary in the Shapemaker database. In the import, this can be can be done by one of the following matching methods:

Ancillary id (as used in the Shapemaker database)
Ancillary name
Combination of ancillary type, weight and required geometry data (varies per type)

If more than one ancillary matches your provided data, you can select the preferred one in the dialog after uploading. By default, Shapemaker suggests the best match based on the number of matching criteria listed above.

If any data is missing or could not be correctly parsed, we will show you an error or warning in the respective row. You can hover over the icon to find out more details on the problem.

Warnings

You will see a warning when a parameter could not be extracted from the data and a default value was used instead. The default values can be found in the template description.

Errors

You will see an error when required data could not be extracted from the file and you cannot continue the import without taking further action.

When the required ancillary data was provided but we could not find a match in the database, you will see an ‘Add discrete ancillaries’ button in the bottom right of the dialog. This button allows you to add ancillaries directly to the database. After filling out the ancillary data and importing them, your file is re-evaluated.

If errors remain, the file is most likely missing some required data In this case, you will need to correct the issues in your original file before re-uploading it.

Once your ancillaries are imported, you can immediately move on to adding site-specific data or proceed directly to running your analysis.