The MVP Impact Series - Q2 2026
Welcome to our quarterly celebration of Esri Community MVPs - the trusted Esri advocates who dedicate their time and expertise to helping thousands succeed. These elite members embody the spirit of community collaboration, going beyond simply answering questions to provide comprehensive solutions that enable users to overcome technical obstacles and grow their GIS capabilities. In this Q2 edition, we're highlighting top MVP solutions, must-read blogs, an in-depth MVP spotlight and more.
These notable solutions showcase the depth and breadth of MVP expertise across Esri products and use cases. Each represents comprehensive guidance that helped users overcome complex challenges and advance their projects.
A GIS analyst struggled to calculate karst feature overlap on a parcel - KenBuja delivered a clean Arcade script using Union() to merge geometries and intersect with the parcel for accurate area calculations.
"Thank you @KenBuja! This worked perfectly and is a lot cleaner/more stream-lined than my original workflow, I appreciate your help!"
A Survey123 form embedded in Experience Builder was displaying all conditional questions at once. Neal_t_k pinpointed a case-sensitive syntax issue in the XLSForm, and one targeted fix restored the entire form's conditional logic.
"Thank you so much; that solved the issue! I wasn't sure one thing would make the whole situation function as intended, but that is the very nature of code. I appreciate your help."
A cartographer needed each map series page to show only its relevant tract in the legend. AlfredBaldenweck recommended symbolizing by unique values and enabling "show features visible in map extent," a clean no-code fix that resolved it immediately.
“Ah, displaying it in the legend is quite a bit different; missed that part of the puzzle. Alfred's solution is indeed how I would (and have) accomplish that.”
A user couldn't access ArcPy in ArcGIS Online Notebooks due to a non-obvious licensing tier difference and DanPatterson immediately pinpointed that the Advanced tier is required, where the user recreated their notebook to resolve it.
"Thanks @DanPatterson, I did notice the different tiers of Notebooks when creating a new one albeit never bothered to try the Advanced one. So, I recreated the tool in an Advanced Notebook and I'm no longer getting the error."
These standout contributions recognizes the MVPs who provided the most solutions authored to Community questions during the quarter, demonstrating their technical expertise and commitment to helping users successfully resolve work challenges.
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Solutions Authored Solutions Authored Solutions Authored
Blog articles in Esri Community are a platform for thought leadership and educational storytelling, and they often serve as a launch pad for collaboration. MVPs often author articles that inspire the Community to push the boundaries of GIS, fueling a cycle of continuous learning and innovation that elevates the entire Esri ecosystem.
631 Views
Author: @JoshuaBixby
Joshua creates a deep-dive technical analysis of Esri's newly surfaced arcgis-geometry Python library - implemented in Rust - inspecting both the Python and Rust components to map out what's coming for the ArcGIS platform.
598 Views
Feature vertices to points ... for Basic ArcGIS Pro
Author: @DanPatterson
Dan shares a practical Python/ArcPy tutorial enabling Basic license ArcGIS Pro users to extract feature vertices to points — addressing a common workflow gap for users without access to Advanced license tools.
334 Views
Map Layers Custom Widgets
Author: @Brian_McLeer
Brian crafts a new custom Experience Builder widget providing enhanced map layer management controls — expanding on native layer list functionality with additional configuration options.
Simon Schutte, GIS Consultant at con terra GmbHThe MVP Insights brings you closer to the people behind the contributions, exploring their professional journeys, Community experiences, and the wisdom they've gained. This quarter, we're honored to feature Simon Schutte @SimonSchütte_ct who has been an MVP since 2025. As a GIS Consultant at con terra GmbH in Germany, an Esri Platinum Partner, Simon specializes in ArcGIS Enterprise Administration, helping clients from public agencies to private enterprises with complex configurations, upgrades, and migrations. Simon's fascination with geography began in school when he created his first map, a literary map for a novel analysis, leading him to pursue an MSc in Geography and over ten years working with Esri software. With five Esri certifications and a passion for Enterprise architecture and security, he actively contributes to Community with over 620 posts, 30 solutions, and 60 ideas submitted. In this conversation, Simon reflects on his MVP experience, shares how Community collaboration enhances his consulting work and offers advice for business partners and emerging contributors.
1. You became an Esri Community MVP in 2025 and have quickly established yourself as an active contributor with over 620 posts and 30 solutions authored. What has being a part of the Esri Community MVP program meant to you both personally and professionally, and how has it influenced your approach to helping others in Esri Community?
Being named an Esri Community MVP in 2025 was both an honour and a strong motivation to continue contributing to the GIS community. Personally, it felt like recognition for the many hours spent helping others solve real-world problems, sharing workflows, and discussing best practices around the ArcGIS ecosystem.
I try not to focus only on providing a quick answer, but instead on giving context, explaining the reasoning behind a solution. I also aim to contribute in a way that encourages collaboration and constructive discussion, because some of the best solutions come from multiple people building on each other’s ideas. That collaborative spirit is what makes the Esri Community valuable.
What matters most to me, is the feedback from community members and fellow MVPs. There are even some clients who know me from my community posts and value my contributions. Knowing that a post, workaround, or shared experience helped someone overcome a challenge and move a project forward is incredibly rewarding. That spirit of collaboration is what continues to motivate my contributions to the Esri Community and makes being part of the MVP program so meaningful.
2. As a GIS Consultant at con terra GmbH, you specialize in ArcGIS Enterprise Administration and help customers with complex installation, configuration, upgrades, and migration tasks. Can you share a specific example of how your engagement with Esri Community has enhanced your ability to deliver solutions for your clients?
Absolutely. One thing that has consistently helped me in my role as a GIS Consultant is realizing that many “customer-specific” problems are shared experiences across the ArcGIS ecosystem. The Esri Community is often the fastest way to validate whether an issue is isolated, configuration-related, or a broader platform behaviour that others have already encountered.
One example was a deployment of ArcGIS Enterprise with a highly available Object Store. With the introduction of ArcGIS Enterprise 11.4/11.5, Esri replaced the Tile Cache Data Store with the Object Store and introduced a fundamentally different high availability architecture. Rather than a two-machine setup with a primary and standby node, the Object Store requires a three-machine cluster.
While implementing this new architecture, I encountered several technical challenges and unanswered questions. By systematically documenting my findings and sharing them with the Esri Community, I was able to troubleshoot the deployment, uncover an underlying product bug, and provide practical guidance for other administrators facing similar issues. The collaboration between community members and Esri ultimately led to documentation improvements, product patches, and published solutions that continue to help users successfully deploy and maintain highly available Object Store environments.
Solved: Configure ArcGIS Object datastore in High Availabi... - Esri Community
Solved: 11.5 - webgisdr - replication of objectStore broke... - Esri Community
The Esri Community also helps me prepare proactively for customer projects. Before major releases or migrations, I follow discussions about new features, deprecations, and upgrade experiences from early adopters. These real-world insights often reveal operational challenges that are not yet reflected in the documentation.
For example, community discussions around an ArcGIS Data Store upgrade issue between versions 11.5 and 12.1 helped highlight potential risks and mitigation strategies before they affected projects I was involved in. Learning from the experiences of others makes it easier to avoid common pitfalls and plan deployments more effectively.
I try to give back by sharing lessons learned from customer projects, particularly in the areas of ArcGIS Enterprise administration and advanced deployment scenarios. This exchange of practical experience is one of the most valuable aspects of the Esri Community, helping improve troubleshooting, solution quality, and the guidance we provide to customers.
3. You've submitted an impressive 60 ideas to Esri Community, demonstrating your forward-thinking approach to Esri products. What drives you to be so active in shaping the future of Esri products, and can you share an idea submission that's particularly meaningful to you and why?
What drives me to submit ideas is that I work with ArcGIS technology every day in customer projects and regularly encounter opportunities where small product enhancements could significantly improve administration, development workflows, or user experience. The Ideas platform provides a direct way to share those observations with Esri and help shape the products based on real-world requirements. I see it as an extension of the same mindset that motivates me to contribute in the Community: if a challenge affects one organization, it is likely to affect many others as well.
Two ideas are particularly meaningful to me because they address challenges I encounter regularly in customer environments.
Several of our clients rely heavily on ArcGIS Dashboards and manage hundreds of dashboards across their organizations. Creating and maintaining these dashboards manually can be time-consuming and difficult to scale. This led me to advocate for API support for dashboard creation through my idea, Update the arcgis.apps.dashboard to support the ne... - Esri Community.
I am particularly excited about this idea because it modernizes the ArcGIS application development ecosystem and enables developers to leverage newer capabilities and development patterns. More importantly, it unlocks opportunities for automation at scale, significantly improving productivity, consistency, and maintainability for organizations that manage dashboard deployments at scale.
The second is the idea for centralized management of users, user types, licenses, and related administrative tasks across ArcGIS environments. Centralised management of (users), ArcGIS User Typ... - Esri Community. This is probably the idea I am most eager to see realized. In many Enterprise projects, administrators spend considerable time managing identities, licensing, and access across multiple systems. A more centralized approach would reduce administrative overhead, improve governance, and simplify operations for organizations of all sizes. Because I encounter these challenges regularly in customer environments, I see significant potential value in this idea.
When an idea ultimately leads to product enhancement, it is a great example of how the Community can help shape the future of the ArcGIS platform.
4. Working with German clients at con terra GmbH while being active in Esri Community gives you a unique perspective on how GIS users across different regions approach similar challenges. What advice would you give to GIS users who might be hesitant to become more active Community contributors?
One thing I’ve learned through both my consulting work at con terra GmbH and my activity in the Esri Community is that GIS users around the world are often dealing with very similar challenges: whether it’s ArcGIS Enterprise upgrades, authentication setups, automation and security requirements, or performance issues. The details of the environments may differ, but the underlying problems are usually surprisingly similar.
My advice to users who hesitate to become active in the Community is simple: You do not need to be “the top expert” to contribute something valuable. Some of the most useful Community posts are not perfect technical deep dives (even though I greatly enjoy those) but practical experiences, small workarounds, lessons learned during upgrades or simply confirming that a certain issue also occurs in another environment.
Sharing your experience can save others a huge amount of time. It helps people avoid unnecessary debugging, set realistic expectations, and focus much faster on possible solutions or workarounds.
My advice:
- Share practical experiences.
- Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don´t hesitate to answer to your own question with lessons learned.
- Participate in discussions even if you don’t have “the” answer.
The Community becomes valuable because many people contribute small pieces of real-world knowledge.
5. In your recognition of Chris Underwood in The MVP Impact Q1 edition, you praised him for "consistently keeping Community members informed about the status of ongoing issues" and for "bridging communication effectively between community members and Esri teams." As a business partner and consultant who also contributes actively to Community discussions, how has building relationships with Esri staff enhanced your work at con terra GmbH? What advice would you give to other consultants and partners about the value of engaging with Esri staff in Esri Community?
Building relationships with Esri staff (from all over the world) through the Community has been extremely valuable in my role at con terra. As a consultant, I regularly work on complex ArcGIS Enterprise deployments, migrations, and integration projects where timely and accurate information is essential. Community interactions provide direct access to the people who develop, support, and maintain the products we work with every day.
While some situations require opening a support case through My Esri, many questions and challenges can be discussed openly in the Community. This not only helps resolve issues more efficiently but also creates a shared knowledge base that benefits other customers, partners, and administrators facing similar situations.
What I particularly appreciate is the transparency and engagement from Esri staff members like Chris Underwood. When issues arise, having Esri staff actively communicate status updates, clarify expected behaviour, or provide workarounds helps us make informed decisions and set realistic expectations with customers. In several cases, Community discussions have helped confirm whether an issue was a known defect, a configuration problem, or an intended product change long before the information was reflected elsewhere.
My advice to other consultants and partners would be to view the Community as more than a support forum. It is a place to build professional relationships, share experiences, and engage directly with both Esri staff and other experienced users.
For me, one of the greatest strengths of the Esri Community is that it brings together customers, partners, MVPs, and Esri staff in a single space where everyone is working toward the same goal: making the ArcGIS system more successful and easier to use.
MVPs don't just help Community members - they're invaluable partners to Esri staff, helping us solve complex technical challenges, support customers more effectively, and deliver solutions. Here's what our team members have to say about the MVPs who've made a difference in their work.
Robert LeClair, Principal Technical LeadDan Patterson (@DanPatterson) , well known within the ArcGIS Pro community as "sort of retired," is anything but retired when it comes to supporting ArcGIS Pro users. He is a prolific contributor who consistently provides clear, concise, and thoughtful responses to the many questions posed by our customers, helping GIS professionals solve problems and deepen their expertise. Each morning, when I log into the ArcGIS Pro community to review new questions, I'm always pleased to see that Dan has already been actively assisting users. His dedication, technical knowledge, and willingness to share his expertise have made him an invaluable resource as a highly respected member of the community.
The best collaborations are reciprocal. MVPs also want to recognize the Esri staff members who've been instrumental in their Community journey - providing guidance, support, and partnership that makes their contributions possible.
Laura Mott, MVP, City of Mason City
Seeing Esri staff (Jianxia Song (@Jianxia) and Alix Vezina (@AlixVezina)) engage thoughtfully and consistently makes users feel valued and heard.
The impact of Esri Community MVPs extends well beyond the threads they answer and the blogs they author. This section spotlights external news, awards, and features that recognize the real-world influence MVPs continue to make across the GIS industry.
2025 Esri Community Contest — MVP Awards Announced
The Esri Awards brings well-deserved recognition to three Esri Community MVPs through the annual Esri Community Contest - Elite level award. Selected based on the number of accepted solutions contributed to the community, these honorees represent the highest standard of peer-to-peer support and technical excellence.
Cody Patterson (@CodyPatterson) | Joink LLC
Dan Patterson (@DanPatterson) | Independent GIS Professional
Ken Buja (@KenBuja) | USDOC NOAA
2026 Special Achievement in GIS (SAG) Awards — MVP Organizations
The 2026 SAG Awards recognized 197 organizations worldwide for outstanding GIS innovation. One MVP-affiliated organizations appear among this year's honorees:
Alfred Baldenweck (@AlfredBaldenweck) | U.S. Bureau of Land Management
Alfred's organization, the USDOI Bureau of Land Management, was recognized through the U.S. Bureau of Land Management - Cadastral SAG Award, honoring their leadership in land records and cadastral GIS innovation.
How They Helped Me Series — Q2 Feature
Esri Community's "How They Helped Me" series spotlights members who share meaningful professional accomplishments made possible through the support of fellow community contributors. In Q2's story, "How They Helped Me Speed Up Manhole Inspections with Clickable Attributes", Teresa Gregory shared how a few MVPs' guidance directly accelerated real-world infrastructure work.
Teresa Gregory @Teresa-AZ, Enterprise GIS Administrator for the Town of Marana, AZ, shared how MVPs @Neal_t_k and @abureaux helped her unlock a critical Survey123 capability — automatically pulling a unique manhole ID from an ArcGIS Field Maps layer into an inspection form using a getAttribute calculation, a solution she had been unable to crack on her own ahead of the Town's 2025 inspection cycle. The result: field crews moved faster through inspections, freeing workers to focus on other important tasks across the municipality.
"Thank you @Neal_t_k and @abureaux! Your expertise and willingness to help made this solution possible."
MVPs with President of Esri, Jack Dangermond at Esri User Conference 2025 Esri Awards event. From left: Amanda Huber, Robert Phillips, Jack Dangermond, Chelsea Rozek, and Chris Counsell.
Every MVP started as a Community member who asked questions, shared knowledge, and built relationships. Interested in the Esri Community MVP Program? Learn more about recognition criteria and benefits. Stay tuned for Q3 2026, where we'll continue highlighting the incredible work happening across Esri Community.
