Canada Geocoder Tool

The Canada Geocoder tool uses Designer's Geocoding suite of products, including the CASS Tool and Street Geocoder Tool, to geocode a customer file. This tool currently only works for Canadian addresses.

This tool is a macro that requires a separate data install and license. To use this tool, contact your Account Executive.

Configure the tool

There are four tabs that require user input to successfully configure the tool:

Input: Specify the necessary Address fields from the drop down lists. All fields are required. The ZIP Code field must be formatted as a string. If it is not a string, send the input through a Select Tool first and change the ZIP Code field type to String.
Geocoder Options:

Select a Geocoder from the drop down. This list will be populated with Geocoder datasets already installed on the machine.

You can specify the default dataset from User Settings. Go to Options > User Settings > Edit User Settings and click the Dataset Defaults tab.

Select the Street Geocoder output fields to include in the output.
Preserve input Address field names: when checked, the original field names specified on the Input tab will be output from the tool. Left unchecked, the specified fields will be renamed to : Address, City, State and ZIP.
Choose whether or not to match to the TomTom Multinet Address Points file as a first pass.

Match and Geocode: when selected, the input records will be matched against the TomTom Multinet Address Points Calgary Database file. This file includes ~2million address points, located by their parcel or placed directly on the structure. Any record that does not match to this file will be geocoded as normal.

This option requires a licensed installation of the TomTom Multinet Address Points Calgary Database file and CASS must be enabled.

Do not match file, just geocode: when selected, the input records will be geocoded as normal.

CASS Options:

Choose to include CASS coding or not by checking the box. See CASS Tool.
Select the CASS fields to include in the Output

Output

There are two outputs from this tool:

Left anchor: Geocoded Records will stream out of the left side of the tool, labeled with a G. This data stream will include your original data records and Address fields along with the additional fields you selected to output as a result of the geocoding process.

The only fields returned from your input are the Address fields specified on the Input tab. If you need additional input fields, you will need to join those back to the output of the geocoder tool. Records will be output in the same order as they went in, so you can join by record position.

Right anchor: A Data summary will stream out of the right side of the tool, labeled with an S. The data stream will include 2 fields, GeoLevel and Count to signify the success of the geocoding process. There are 8 possible GeoLevels in order of best to worst

Actual: Address was matched to the TomTom Multinet Address Points file and represents the actual, physical location of the property.
Street: Address is assigned to its interpolated street location.
Intersection: Address is assigned to the intersection of multiple streets.
Extrapolate: When an input address is out of range, the Geocoder assigns the address to the closest known valid street segment.
ZIP9: Address is assigned to the 9-digit ZIP Code, or ZIP+4.
ZIP7: Address is assigned to the 7-digit ZIP Code Match (not common, the first two digits of the ZIP+4)
ZIP5: Address is assigned to the ZIP Code centroid.
Not Coded: no match.