Setting the Business Analyst data source

Available with Business Analyst license.

Business Analyst data is available either from locally installed data or from Portal for ArcGIS. The portal can be a connection to ArcGIS Online or an Enterprise portal. By default, the data source is set to your connected portal if no local data is installed. However, if locally installed data exists, the default data source is installed data. If there are multiple installed datasets, the first dataset installed is the default data source. Setting the data source to a specific local dataset or portal ensures that the correct data is used in Business Analyst tools.

Connect to a locally installed country dataset

To connect to a locally installed dataset, set your data source to an installed dataset.

  1. On the Analysis tab, in the Workflows group, click Business Analysis, and click Change data source.
  2. Click Computer on the Business Analyst Data Source dialog box.
  3. Select one of the locally installed datasets—for example, USA_ESRI_2021.
  4. Click OK.
Note:

The data source setting can also be accessed from the Analysis tab. Click Environments and scroll down to the Business Analyst heading where the Data Source parameter is located.

Connect to a dataset in Portal for ArcGIS or ArcGIS Online

To connect to a portal, set your data source to a portal connection and select a country.

  1. Sign in to a portal. The portal can be an ArcGIS Online or an ArcGIS Enterprise portal that has GeoEnrichment installed and configured.
  2. On the Analysis tab, in the Tools group, click Business Analysis , and click Change data source.
  3. Click Portal on the Business Analyst Data Source dialog box.
  4. Choose a country.

    Some countries support more than one data source. For example, United States has either Standard or Landscape.

  5. Click OK.

Connect to a custom local dataset

A custom data connection is not associated with any installed dataset and is only available when no local data is installed. Custom data is used as a data source to create a Statistical Data Collection (SDCX) with a custom apportionment layer. Apportionment is a geographic methodology to aggregate data. If no apportionment layer is selected, geometry (that is, the area) is used with the apportionment method.

To use a custom apportionment layer, select Custom Data as the data source.

  1. On the Analysis tab, in the Tools group, click Business Analysis, and click Change data source.
  2. Click Computer on the Business Analyst Data Source dialog box.
  3. Click Custom Data.
  4. Click OK.

After setting the data source to Custom Data, create an SDCX that can be used in the enrichment process.

  1. On the Insert tab, in the Project group, click Connections, and click New Statistical Data Collection (SDCX).
  2. In the SDCX Properties dialog box, choose a point layer to be the apportionment layer.
  3. Click the Create a Performance Index option to improve performance when using the SDCX.