Q3 2022

New features and improvements introduced from July to September 2022

Custom Markers in Builder

September 19, 2022

New Builder

Now users can include custom icons as markers for point data in Builder maps.This feature includes two differents ways of selecting an icon:

Using one from our preset collection; based on the well-known Maki icon library, which is designed for cartography purposes;
Uploading a custom icon in .png or .svg formats.

Different markers can also be defined by the values of a categorical column, and can even be rotated based on a numeric value; which enables different use-cases such as rotating an arrow based on azimuth for telecommunication antennas or the wind direction in weather maps.

Caching performance improvements

September 16, 2022

Improvement APIs

We have released a few changes in how we cache API requests in the CDN that will produce a significant improvement in the overall performance of the platform; specifically applying to Builder maps and applications developed using our APIs. Learn more about such changes in our documentation for developers at api-docs.carto.com; each end-point in Maps API and SQL API now contains a reference about our caching strategies.

In Builder, users have new a couple of new features:

“Refresh data source”: to make sure users get non-cached versions of the data. Note that with this option your map will be skipping the CDN and getting the data each time from your data warehouse.
“Refresh data source every X”: to allow the user to control the update frequency of the data displayed on public maps.

New layout in Settings section

September 15, 2022

Improvement Workspace

We have improved the layout in the Settings section in the CARTO Workspace; providing a better way to organize different areas by topic and providing a smoother interface for explaining the different Settings options for your CARTO account.

Performance improvements in Dynamic Tiling

September 13, 2022

Improvement APIs

A couple important fixes have been implemented to our Dynamic Tiling strategies. Dynamic Tiling is the technology CARTO has developed to dynamically generate tiles for medium sized dataset and layers loaded as SQL Queries from your cloud data warehouse.

When working with points, many times widgets were not showing data due to our “visual aggregation” strategy when points were very close to each other. We have now removed this type of aggregation, and we are only applying a limit of 200k points per tile to prevent performance issues. If now you encounter widgets not showing data, you just need to zoom in to reduce the number of points per tile.
With our previous strategy some polygons or lines that were falling in the intersection of multiple tiles were splitted for visualization purposes, which was making the same data point count multiple times in widgets. We have solved this problem by asking the user to identify a unique id property for the data source at the time of creating widgets.

Improvements in invitation & request management for Admin users

September 7, 2022

Improvement Workspace

As part of an active taskforce to improve our sign up and login processes, we have now released an improved interface for Admin users to manage invitations to join the CARTO organization and to manage user requests to join it.

Geocoding and isolines in Google BigQuery

August 26, 2022

New Analytics Toolbox - Builder - Workspace

We are very excited to announce that users of Google BigQuery can now geocode their tables with address data and create trade areas around locations based on drive/walk time isolines natively from their data warehouse. These procedures call external location data service providers such as TomTom, HERE and Mapbox. Please check the SQL Reference of our Analytics Toolbox for BigQuery for more details, and also refer to our examples on how to geocode your data and create isolines.

Note that these functionalities are also enabled from the Data Explorer and Builder tools.

Geostatistics functions in the Analytics Toolbox for AWS Redshift

August 26, 2022

New Analytics Toolbox

Users of AWS Redshift can now access a new set of geostatistics functions to expand the spatial capabilities of their data warehouse with CARTO’s Analytics Toolbox. We have released Getis-ord Gi*, Moran’s I and p-value methods that can run natively with your data hosted in Redshift. Learn more about these analytical functions in our product documentation.

August 5, 2022

New Builder

From today, users of Builder can add a new type of widgets to their interactive maps. The Range widget allows you to filter data based on precise numeric ranges.

Cannibalization Analysis available in the Retail module of the Analytics Toolbox for BigQuery

August 4, 2022

New Analytics Toolbox

Retailers working with Google BigQuery and CARTO can now analyze the potential cannibalization cased by a set of new stores into their existing networks, based on the overlap of the different trade areas in terms of geographic area but also in terms of any other spatial feature that the user wants to use in the analysis (e.g. population, number of households). Check out our documentation and this example to learn more about how to run this analysis with our Analytics Toolbox for BigQuery.

Renaming of data sources in Builder

July 28, 2022

Improvement Builder

Users can now rename the data sources added to a Builder map; although seemingly a small product addition, this new feature brings a big improvement in terms of user experience for our users.

New Data Explorer UI

July 15, 2022

Improvement Workspace

We have introduced a new design in the Data Explorer that brings a good amount of improvements for our users: it allows to search and sort data objects within connections, provides pagination and infinite scrolling for connections with access to thousands of tables, facilitates access to Data Observatory subscriptions, includes shortcuts for creating new connections and importing data, etc.

Spatial Index tilesets for Postgresql

July 15, 2022

New Analytics Toolbox

Postgresql users can now generate tilesets based on spatial index data (i.e. H3, Quadbin) natively in their databases. This new functionality from our Analytics Toolbox for Postgresql enables our users to build high performance data visualizations from very large datasets. Check out this example to learn more about how to use this feature.

CARTO for React 1.3

July 12, 2022

New Developer Tools

We are excited to announce a new release of our CARTO for React library, packed with awesome new features to extend the CARTO platform and provide more capabilities for building custom solutions:

We have added support for spatial indexes, so now you can visualize layers and add widgets when you are working with datasets using H3 and Quadbin indexes, in addition to traditional geometries. This is specially useful when you are dealing with large datasets.
We have support now for dynamic tiling. By default the CartoLayer will work with dynamic tiles and the widgets have been updated to work with them.
Widgets now have two different modes: viewport and global.
The GeocoderWidget now is compatible with the new LDS API.
We have a new BarWidget to display categorical/qualitative data using vertical bars.

July 8, 2022

New Workspace

You can now synchronize the user groups coming from your Single Sign-On (SSO) directory (e.g. SAML, LDAP, etc.) with CARTO. Thanks to this new feature users can now share maps and connections with those inherited groups. You can access full details in our documentation on sharing with groups and group management.

Custom Pop-ups in Builder maps

July 7, 2022

New Builder

We have released a new feature for pop-up windows in Builder maps. Now users can customize their pop-ups using HTML and a templating system that allows accessing feature’s properties. This kind of flexibility allows users to add dynamic content to their maps, such as: Google Street View images, custom links based on data properties, images, logos, GIFs, etc. Check out this blogpost to see some examples of this feature in action.

CARTO for deck.gl 8.8

July 1, 2022

New Developer Tools

We are really happy to announce a new release of “CARTO for deck.gl” to allow developers to build even more awesome apps and map visualizations with the CARTO platform. This new release comes from:

Support in the CartoLayer for datasets using spatial indexes such as H3 and Quadbin. You can now build visualizations with very large datasets without the need of geometry data at an incredible performance and reduced costs.
You can now leverage our Dynamic Tiling system with SQL Queries, providing great scaling capabilities to your maps.
deck.gl code base is now migrated to TypeScript. This improves the robustness and maintainability of TypeScript apps using deck.gl as well as the deck.gl codebase itself.