Below is guidance from City staff on how to start using the City’s open data portal. The City offers this service to ensure the City’s data is transparent and accessible so university researchers, City staff, and residents can come together to solve problems.
Have a question? Send us a note at businessanalytics@southbendin.gov and we will get back to you!
| 1. To access City data, head to the South Bend Open Data Portal home page. |
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| 2. If you know what you are looking for, just type the keyword or dataset name in the search tab and click on the data that you were looking for. This guide will use the 311 Phone call Log dataset as an example.
If you aren’t sure what to search for, scroll down and click on the data category that fits the best to the data that you are looking for. |
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| Have a question? Send us a note and we will get back to you! |
| 1. Open the 311 Phone Call Log data (found here) to follow our tutorial. This will take you to the dataset’s main page. This page contains a summary of the data, as well as important information about type of the data, the date it was last updated, the date it was published, and the number of records present in the dataset. It also displays a preview of the actual dataset. Below the summary, click “View Full Details” to see a more detailed information about the dataset and its features. |
2. To filter the data, click on the filter icon  on the tab below the summary information tab  . |
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3. Once we are in the filter tab, we can select an attribute and filter the data by that attribute. In our case, the available attributes are: Call Date, Work Order Type, Called About, Department, Duration. The portal also allows you to download the data ( ) and add it to a list of favorites  . |
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| Have a question? Send us a note and we will get back to you! |
| 1. The South Bend Open Data Portal has more advanced functionality such as creating maps, stories as well as using APIs to access and use the data. To get access to these features, click on the left-bottom button “I want to use this”. |
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| 2. To create maps, simply click on Create a Map. Then click on “Advanced Mapping”. |
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A new window will open up, like the one below, where you will be able to create maps (note: the 311 Phone Call log data does not have any geographic location information, which is why there is no data visualized on the map). |
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| 3. To access APIs, click on “View API Resources” and choose from the available source. |
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| 4. By Clicking on the “View Data Source” you can get access to ArcGIS REST Services Directory: |
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| 5. To open the data in ArcGIS site, click on “Open in ArcGIS Online”. |
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| Have a question? Send us a note and we will get back to you! |