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Data Workbench

The Data Workbench allows you to upload custom data, edit it directly in the editor, and publish it with the Mapbox Tiling Service (MTS). When publishing with MTS, you can define MTS recipes: rules that define how your source data is processed into performant vector tilesets.

Publishing with MTS gives you finer control over how your source data is transformed into more performant vector tilesets, and the Data Workbench provides an easy-to-use UI to configure your tilesets.

Upload your data​

To get started with the Data Workbench, you will need to start with uploading your data:

  1. Open the Data Workbench

Go to the Mapbox Console and click on Data Manager v2 [beta].

Uploads initiated from this tab will use the new Data Workbench instead of our legacy uploader.

  1. Upload your data.

You can drag-and-drop single or multiple files into this page to create a single project with the Data Workbench.

  1. View your data.

After uploading your file(s), click into the project to view it inside the Data Workbench. Here, you’ll see a preview of your data on the map and in a table view.

Now that have uploaded you will be able to edit or published your data. To learn more, see the following sections.

Editing data on the map​

After you have uploaded your data, you can go into the Data Workbench and make edits to your data. You can make edits directly in the editor, by either editing the features directly or their properties.

Here’s a list of operations used to change the features of your map:

  • Select individual or multiple features and move them to update their position (latitude and longitude)
  • Edit feature properties in the table
  • Remove individual features or features in bulk
  • Add points, lines, or polygons to the map
  • Change the shape of a geometry with the following operations: union, subtract, intersect, and exclude
  • Scale features

In the table view, you can also filter your data by keyword and update properties for individual or multiple features in your dataset.

Publishing your data​

Once you’re satisfied with your source data, you can move to the publish step to publish your data as a tileset to be loaded on the map. In this stage, you can define the logic for how your source data is transformed into a tileset, using MTS recipe features and preview your recipe live before publishing. Here are examples of what MTS recipes can enable for you:

  • Simplify geometries at lower zooms so that your tiles are only as small as needed for performant loading.
  • Define hierarchy of features per zoom level
  • Union features based on shared attributes to optimize tileset size

Accessing your MTS tileset​

Published tilesets with the Data Workbench can be accessed in the Data manager v2 [beta] tab. You can also fetch tilesets directly in our web or mobile SDKs (Android, iOS) API.

Styling your data​

Once your tileset is published, follow the Style an MTS created tileset to style your data using the Style Editor.

Restrictions and limits​

The Data Workbench tool contains the following restrictions and limits with its usage:

  • Only supports uploads and editing for files up to 300 MB and a max per-feature limit of 20 MB.
  • File types are restricted to: GeoJSON, CSV, KML, FlatGeobuf, and GPX. Other file types, such as Shapefile, GeoTIFF (raster), and MBTiles will continue to route to the legacy uploading experience using the Uploads API. We will add support for these file types in the future.

Pricing​

Tilesets published with the Data Workbench use the Mapbox Tiling Service (MTS) which is billed by input file size and compute units (CU). The monthly free tier for MTS is 10 GB and 20 CUs, and most vector uploads typically range between 0.3 and 5 CU. Read more about MTS pricing go to the Mapbox pricing page.

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