The AlignMix options allows you to customize the appearance of your maps and what terms are used for each level of hierarchy. The options can also be used to set AlignMix to low resource mode which will allow slower computers to use the software for mapping and creating sales territories. There are currently four sections found in the options section: View, geography, project, and tools.
The view section allows you to change the display of the latitude and longitude. This is shown in the bottom left of the main AlignMix screen. In the options you can change it from signed decimals (Latitude +54.65478, longitude -1.32664789) to Degrees, minutes and seconds (54, 29”, 27’N, 45’E). The only place you will see these changes take place is in the bottom left of your AlignMix screen when you are using the mouse to float around on the screen. In the view section you can also change the display of the map on the screen. You change the color scheme and color accents by using the first two drop-downs. Then you can also change the color of the land and sea by clicking on the color boxes. Many users leave this as default but there are a few that change both of these to white so that you only see the Colored sales territories and no other land or water on the map. By default, you should leave the resolution to what you see set. The one thing you can change is the low resource mode check box. Only check this box if you are using a slower computer that you have noticed a lag when using the AlignMix software. By clicking this check box, you will be able to tell the software to only redraw what you see on the screen and not what you do not see. This will help prevent lag on older computers.
The second section of the options is the Geography section. Here you can change the default settings for your geography. This will not impact the file you are currently working on. It will only change what map you will see when you start a brand new AlignMix file.
The third section is split into two sections; general and naming convention. The general section you can choose to have the rep name as also the ID, or when not checked you can have a different ID and different name for each sales rep. The second option when checked will ignore the gender of the sales reps. The only reason the gender option exists is so that you can have to separate icons for sales reps. The icons can be customized in configure layers. Some of our Pro users use this option to map sales reps as one icon, and then the second gender can show locations of distribution centers.
The second portion of the project section allows you to change the terms used to describe the different levels of hierarchy and the naming of those mangers. This can also be customized when you start a new project. There are two parts for each level that can be edited, the singular form and the plural form. If your lowest form of territories is called an “Area” ‘then you would rename this row to Area and Areas. If you sales reps call on “clients” you would then rename Account to Client and then do the same for the plural form. The next part of this section allows you to edit the names of the hierarchy. The Pro version allows you to have three total levels. By default, those three levels are territories, districts, and regions. If your organization uses different terms for these levels; this is where you would make those changes. Always make sure to rename the singular form and also the plural form of each term. If you do make changes to these terms make sure to also change the names of the first line and second line mangers to match the hierarchy that they are assigned to. You wouldn’t want to have a district manager assigned to a region. You would make sure to rename that level of manager to District Manager. If you do not have “sales Reps” but you have territory managers or franchisees then this is where you would make this edit, but make sure to change both the singular and plural form for each of the terms.
The fourth and final section of the AlignMix options covers the zoom wheel. By default the scroll wheel on your mouse will zoom in and out by 2 levels of zoom. If you move the chevron to the right, it will zoom in and out by one zoom level with every click of the scroll wheel. Moving it to the left will do the opposite.