Location Parameters

There are four layers of locations: Regions, Countries, Cities and Sites:

A Location record represents a location at one of these levels. Locations can be attached to Projects to identify the geography that is impacted by the Project in some way. This information can be used to provide reports showing Project data on geographical maps.

It makes sense to set up locations in the following sequence:

Regions

This table defines the master list of Regions, representing the top-level categorisation of locations typically used for geographical markets (e.g. Americas, Europe, Asia).

The record simply defines the Region name:

Countries

This table defines the master list of Countries, which will be linked to Regions.

The record simply defines the Country name and the Region that this Country belongs to.

Cities

This table defines the master list of Cities, each linked to a Country (and via the Country record, to a Region).

The record simply defines the City name and the Country that this City belongs to.

Locations

Locations are the actual records that will be associated with Projects.

A Location can be a Region, Country, City, or Site – it will be set up to link to the appropriate Region, Country or City record set up in the master tables above.

To make this clear: the master tables described in the previous sections are not locations themselves, but merely lists to help us create the Locations in this next step. This means:

• For each Region you defined in the Regions section, you should now create a Location record of type Region if you would like an entire region to be attached to a project (without going down to the level of specifying a country, city or site)
• For each Country you defined in the Countries section, you should now create a Location record of type Country if you would like an entire country to be attached to a Project (without going down to the level of specifying a city or site)
• For each City you defined in the Countries section, you should now create a Location record of type City if you would like a city to be attached to a Project (without going down to the level of a specific site within the city)
• For any specific site (e.g. an office or factory location), create a Location record of type Site.

Due to the hierarchical nature of this data set, the respective level of a Location record will always imply the levels above (e.g. by attaching the City Location of ‘Paris’ to the Project, this Project is now attached to the Country ‘France’ and the Region ‘Europe’).

It is up to you to decide the granularity of Location that is relevant to you. For example, you may decide that all Locations should simply be Countries, in which case you would set up:

• The Region master table defines the region's countries relate to
• The Country master table (naming countries and linking them to regions)
• Location records for each Country, so that these can now be linked to Projects.

In this example, there is no need to set up Locations for Regions, or anything relating to Cities and Sites.

Location records are set up as follows:

In consequence, you can then add Project Location when you create your Projects, as described in the Project Manager User Guide.  If you record the Project Location and use the latitude and longitude fields, you can surface geographical information in Power BI dashboards and reports.