What's New in CARTO - Q4 2024
As a new year begins, we’re excited to recap some of our favorite updates and new features that we’ve added to the CARTO platform in the final quarter of 2024. 2024 was a huge year for geospatial - and CARTO in particular - with our users benefitting from ever faster, more scalable and more secure spatial analytics, natively on their cloud data warehouse platforms. 2024 was also a groundbreaking year for the advancement of GenAI technologies, which we’re starting to see disrupt geospatial analysis as we understand it today. At CARTO, we continue to be at the forefront of this revolution and in 2024 we launched our first version of AI Agents. The journey doesn’t stop here! We’ve got big plans for 2025 and we can’t wait to share them with you.
Our quest is to break the GIS data silo by developing the first and only real cloud native GIS platform for BigQuery, Snowflake, Databricks, Redshift and more. We remain focused on empowering users with cutting-edge tools for geospatial analysis, visualization, and app development at an enormous scale. Whether you’re a data analyst, scientist, developer, or GIS professional, there’s something for everyone in this product update.
Let’s dive in!
Helps you to: Repurpose your maps effortlessly when your data sources change.
We’ve added the ability for Builder users to easily switch the location or connection of data sources without breaking their map configurations. As long as field names and types remain consistent, map settings like styles, widgets, and interactions will remain intact. For unsupported fields, configurations will default, ensuring map functionality is preserved as much as possible. Learn more about this new feature here.
Helps you to: Ensure consistent styling across your organization’s maps.
Admins can now define and apply reusable custom color palettes across all maps in their CARTO organization. This update eliminates the need for repetitive manual styling and ensures brand consistency across all visualizations. Custom palettes can be set up in Settings and applied directly in Builder. Learn more here.
Helps you to: Identify trends and reduce visual clutter in massive datasets with point data.
Builder now supports dynamic clustering of point data. This feature allows for:
- Reduced Visual Clutter: Grouping nearby points into clusters at higher zoom levels.
- Improved Performance: Faster rendering of large datasets.
- Interactive Exploration: Seamlessly reveal individual points as you zoom in.
Learn more about this type of visualization here.
Helps you to: Tailor map visuals to specific use cases.
Map creators can now enable the new basemap selector in Builder. This allows end-users to switch between available basemaps within your organization, allowing them to select the basemap which provides the best visual context for their needs. Learn more here.
Helps you to: Navigate large datasets more efficiently.
Take the pain out of data exploration with the new upgrades to the table widget, including:
- Search functionality to quickly locate features.
- Highlight and zoom options to explore features directly on the map.
- Enhanced configuration for labeling, formatting, and reordering columns.
Learn more here.
Helps you to: Improve styling for dense point datasets.
Visualizing point data? You may have noticed the new carto_point_density property when styling your data. The point density is a numeric value which explains the spatial density of your data, and can be used like any numeric variable in your layer options. For example, you can use this property to determine radius, fill and stroke color - all helping you to better craft a compelling density-based visualization. Learn more here.
Helps you to: Perform seamless geospatial analysis in your Databricks environment, without code!
Love Databricks, but prefer a low-code approach to spatial analysis? We’ve got your back with direct support for Databricks in CARTO Workflows! Leveraging tools like Databricks Spatial SQL, Apache Sedona and our Analytics Toolbox, Workflows enables no-code analysis with all computation pushed to Databricks - allowing you to work at a massive scale!
Find out how to integrate CARTO with Databricks here.
Helps you to: Easily browse and discover spatial datasets.
This quarter, we gave our Data Observatory a revamp! This included:
- A redesigned interface for easier navigation.
- Richer metadata, including detailed descriptions, use cases and FAQs.
Explore the updated catalog to find demographic, mobility, and environmental data to enrich your projects. Learn more here.
Helps you to: Leverage Snowflake’s secure environment for geospatial analysis, visualization and app development.
You can now deploy CARTO as a Native App using Snowflake-managed Container Services. This method, currently in public preview, offers:
- Enhanced security within Snowflake’s environment.
- Streamlined installation and setup.
Read more about this deployment option here.
Helps you to: Enhance security in geospatial app development.
There are no trade-offs between simplicity, flexibility and security - Developers can now use named sources to conceal SQL queries in CARTO applications without adding extra backend services. Named Sources can be managed via UI or API. Check out our guides to get started.
Helps you to: Streamline group management for Admins.
We've introduced several improvements to help Admins of organizations using SSO groups manage them more effectively. Admins can now view the composition of groups, search for specific users within them, and delete unused groups. Additionally, we've implemented a new method to synchronize only a subset of groups into CARTO.
Learn more here.
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That’s a wrap on our product updates from Q4 2024 - we hope you enjoy using them to take your spatial analysis to the next level! So what does the future hold? Pre-register for our upcoming report Spatial Analysis in 2025: key trends to learn what’s coming in 2025, and how to stay ahead of the curve.
To stay up to date on our most recent product releases remember to keep an eye on our What’s New page and follow us on LinkedIn for as-they-happen announcements!
Looking for resources to help you on your spatial journey? As always, our Academy is here to help you deepen your expertise, or you can sign up for a 14-day free trial here.
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