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FAQ

List of frequently asked questions. Feel free to open an issue to add your question to this page.

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Account

Why do I need to register an Ellipsis Drive account?
As a (non-registered) public user, you have fewer capabilities when using Ellipsis Drive. When you don’t have an account, you can’t be invited to join maps, edit or comment under your registered name, or host Maps of your own.
As a registered user, you can be invited to join Maps, make edits, add comments, and host content of your own.
How do I create an account?
To register a new Ellipsis Drive account, please visit the registration form available here.
Fill in personal details and click on the REGISTER button. Read more about the registration process here.
Is Ellipsis Drive a paid service?
No. Your account is free. Ellipsis Drive is only a paid service for users who host content of their own. Click here to know more about different user types.

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Payments

How can I make a cost estimation upfront for using Ellipsis Drive?
Below are some of the key depending factors that need to be considered:
  1. 1.
    Data type (To read more about this, click here)
  2. 2.
    Data owner: You or your client? (Refer to the data transfer option in the drive so that your clients pay for the services instead of you as a data producer).
  3. 3.
    CTA: Upload some of your datasets to explore how they behave in Ellipsis Drive, enabling you to extrapolate data size from a sample set to your entire dataset. Our team is happy to actively support you in this process to make your time investment kept at a minimum.
How can I make payments?
Ellipsis Drive applies a simple storage-based pricing model.
You pay a monthly fee for the amount of data in your Drive. You can pay as you go based on the amount of data that you have activated.
To learn about the payment options, click here.
How can I receive payments?
You can generate revenue with your Drive content by setting a monthly subscription price.
You receive payments from subscribers as a balance on your Ellipsis account. These funds can then be transferred to your preferred bank account from there. Costs incurred during financial transitions, due to for example currency exchange, are costs for the user.
How can I add a credit card?
Click here for step by step guide to add a credit card to the Ellipsis Drive account.

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Sharing Spatial Data

How can I share my data with my customer/target audience?
There are 2 ways to share your data.
  1. 1.
    Host your data in Ellipsis Drive yourselves and share the data by inviting your client.
  2. 2.
    Transfer data ownership easily from your own account to your client's Ellipsis Drive account, having them pick up the bill instead. This is a strategic partnership with us and includes revenue sharing when your client becomes an Ellipsis Drive user. Read the full article here to know more.
Can I share my data with people who do not have an Ellipsis account?
Yes, definitely!
As an owner, you can decide who can find and access your data, and what permissions should they have. You can set these visibility preferences in the MANAGE SHARING tab in Settings. Click here to learn more.
Can I share my data privately?
Yes, definitely!
As an owner, you can decide who can find and access your data, and what permissions should they have. You can set these visibility preferences in the ‘General‘ tab in Settings. Click here to learn more.

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Data delivery via Ellipsis Drive

What levels of processed data can I deliver via the drive and share with my audience?
Any levels of processed spatial data can be ingested into Ellipsis Drive, for example from L1 to L4 processed imagery or anything else really!
The only requirement is that your data should be geo-referenced, meaning it should have a location attached to it. The quality of the spatial data that you upload and share with your audience via Ellipsis Drive remains unaffected.
How much time does it take to deliver my data to my client via Ellipsis Drive?
When aiming to deliver data via Ellipsis Drive there are two things that take time.
1. The data upload - Seeing as the process can be parallelized for large data files and the limiting factor in most cases is your internet speed. 2. Data processing - After a file has been successfully uploaded it needs to be processed, everything is nicely tiled up and index ready to be serviced via API endpoints and protocol of your choice. This is a highly parallel and optimized process but for files going into the terabytes, this may still take a few hours.
Do I need to use the Ellipsis Drive application to deliver my data?
No, it’s optional. The Ellipsis Drive web UI and Viewer is our optional off-the-shelf frontend that you or your customers are able to use. However, you have the ultimate freedom to interact with Ellipsis Drive’s backend and use your own frontends to service your content. You may also choose to have customers use the various available protocols and packages directly. This is a great way to automate delivery workflows and save time on manual data management and maintenance!
Can I customize and brand the data delivery, receival, and integration experience for my client via Ellipsis Drive?
Yes. When using the Ellipsis Drive web UI and Viewer you may complete your account profile to show your logo, website, description etc. When using your own frontend in combination with our backend, you are in full control of branding.

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Storage

How can I increase or decrease my storage space?
Go to your storage dashboard to increase or decrease the storage limit.
How can I reduce my storage cost?
📌 Remove raw data. This will remove the lzw compressed tile pyramid and can clear up to 95% of your data. This is only an option if you are interested in the visualizations only. If you also want to query the actual raster values you cannot remove the raw data.
📌 Make sure your files do not contain large amounts of transparent values.
📌 Permanently remove timestamps that you have deleted. If you delete a capture it is only archived, in the Danger Zone (in the General tab of Map settings) you can permanently delete one.
What is the difference between ACTIVE and PASSIVE storage?
Data in ACTIVE storage is activated for all Drive functionalities. You and your collaborators can use your content simultaneously and in any tool.
Not using your data layers very frequently anymore? Then you can place your data in the PASSIVE storage. Here, the metadata remains searchable but you need to activate your data to be able to use it again.
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Data in PASSIVE storage can be hosted at a large discount, please contact our sales team at [email protected] for more details.
Is my data stored safely?
Yes. Your data security is very important to us. We recommend you visit our Privacy Policy for full details.

Upload Spatial Data

How can I upload my data?
📌 Run through this article How to upload raster files to see how to upload raster files to a Raster Map 📌 Run through this article How to upload vector files to see how to upload vector files to a Vector Map.
Which data formats are currently supported?
We support the most commonly used vector and raster data formats and are always actively looking to support new data formats based on your needs.
Which Coordinate Reference Systems (CRS) are currently supported?
Any type of CRS of your spatial datasets is suitable to upload. The drive re-projects your heterogeneous datasets to Web Mercator (WGS84). This reprojection can change the size of your data as it effectively changes the surface area that your data covers. Read more about how the drive processes and changes the size of your data in this article.

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Data Protection & Security

How secure is my data hosted in Ellipsis Drive?
Very secure. Data security is important for all of us and that will stay that way. You may find our cloud’s compliance details here. Our system (built-in the aforementioned public cloud) is up-to-date with the latest cybersecurity measurements and on top of real-time version control, two extra backups of your content are created every month.
As a drive that makes data sharing easy, any possible human errors in oversharing your content should be minded. Check out this help center article to make sure the access settings are well understood. A rule of thumb to avoid the risk of accidental oversharing is to limit access to the degree that is needed for someone to work with your data. Meaning, if something should only be viewing your content, don’t give them edit or admin rights.

Integrate with Ellipsis Drive

How can I plug my data into other applications such as QGIS and ArcGIS?
Ellipsis Drive is developed as an interoperable framework. You can use your data via standard protocols such as WFS, WMS, and WMTS. You can find these links right next to the map layers in the viewer, as well as in the 'general' tab in settings.
Click here if you run into problems when looking to connect to drive-generated web services via QGIS or ArcGIS.

System Maintenance

What is the downtime of Ellipsis Drive?
We have less than 0.01% downtime. Scheduled maintenance is planned during the weekends.

🤔 Have more questions?

Did we miss your question? Drop us a line and we will get back to you within 24 hours.