Latest Contributions by LynnCarlson__GISP

Apologies if this has been covered recently elsewhere - I did search..... Our campus' dedicated GIS and Remote Sensing computer lab (10 high performance workstations used for both teaching and research) has been in existence since 1998.  Funding hardware replacements has been a haphazard exercise of requesting money from disparate sources.  Once again, the lab is in need of a hardware update and I've been tasked with budgeting for the new PCs. I am curious to know how other mid-size universities fund routine hardware upgrades?  Is it a line item in someone's budget?  Lab fees?  Is this model of having a dedicated physical computer lab space for geospatial technologies totally out of date? Based on  a webinar last week (esri), I sensed many / most campuses have their IT department build a virtual lab, rather than using this (antiquated ?) option of replacing PCs every 5 years or so.  For these virtual labs, how do IT depts. fund / recapture the costs they incur for supporting GIS / Remote Sensing?  Do students taking GIS / Remote Sensing classes, and researchers using these technologies, then rely on their personally owned computers (or other campus computer clusters with potentially even older hardware) to access the virtual lab? Thank you in advance for any advice / recommendations / references to white papers / etc. ... View more

Using Survey 123 Connect to ask survey takers to delineate areas of interest using a geoshape.  When the map loads in the Survey, the survey taker will first need to search for their aoi typically using a lot of panning and zooming over a large initial extent. It is non-intuitive that, in order to Pan using cntrl-left click , the survey taker must first "turn off" the geoshape drawing tool.  Is there an option / method / parameter to have the geoshape icon be "off" when the map loads so the survey taker can immediately use cntrl-left click to pan? Thank you! ... View more

Upon entering a geofence, a text message is sent, and an Event Volume Controller is triggered to not send another text message for some time duration - say an hour.  This is done to avoid “random” text messages being sent by GPS “drift” which occurs as someone stays in one place and their signal, over that hour, exits and re-enters the fenced area.  However, if someone truly exits the geofence (for example after a half hour)  and enters a different geofence before the hour is up, they will not receive another text message.  It would be great to have a processor that, upon exiting a fence would trigger a countdown to say something like “if an exit” lasts for some time interval, reset the EVC to 0. ... View more

Is there a best practice for editing a Dashboard while it is shared publicly? I have data for maps and charts in the dashboard which are being updated on a daily basis.  If the dashboard is viewed while the data are in the process of being edited, are viewers seeing the edits take place if they happen to hit the URL?  Maybe the best practice is to unshare the dashboard until the edits are complete?  Just wondering how others handle this situation. Thanks in advance for suggestions / references to links that discuss. ... View more

Hello, I have a project requiring a text message be sent to an end user upon entering any geofence "assigned" to them. Problem:  The Enter spatial filter is not working Geofence set up: Geofences are polygons originally digitized in ArcGIS Pro 2.4 as a feature class.  WGS1984 is set as the coordinate system in order to avoid on the fly projection once imported to Geoevent. There is a different feature class to “become” geofences for 8 individuals (so there are 8 feature classes).  Each feature class has fewer than 10 polygons. All polygons in each feature class are simple – at most 6 vertices. Each polygon in each feature class is given a unique name (text/string) in an attribute “fencename”. The feature classes are each published from ArcGIS Pro to ArcGIS Online as hosted feature layers.  I can see and interact with (open the table, identify the fencename, etc.) these hosted feature layers by adding them to a Map Viewer in ArcGIS Online. From within GeoEvent Server Manager, I import each hosted feature layer from ArcGIS Online into Geoevent from the Sites > Geofence panel.  I select the attribute containing the unique identifier for the fence name, and enter the category manually (not from an attribute as I do for the fence name).  (I understand entering the category name manually is allowed based on the documentation and the Best Practices blog by Christopher Dufault). The geofences are static; I do not need synchronization so am performing a one-time import for each feature service. The default setting of Active is set to true.  I am not using a Time Start / Time End.   Geoevent Service set up:   ArcGIS Enterprise 10.6.1 with Server and GeoEvent on the same server.  It is unfederated. Input connector is a rest-json-in.  Incoming data is from an iOS app called SensorLog. The app has been installed on each of the 8 end users’ cell phones and runs in the background of their phone.  The SensorLog app has a place to enter the Custom URL generated by the GeoEvent rest-json-in input connector.  Each person is using this same single, custom URL on their phone so everyone’s data is coming into GeoEvent in one “place”.  The Geoevent Definition created for the incoming data was modified to include the tags for TrackID (the app sends this as the serial number of a given cell phone) and Geometry (constructed from cell phone GPS x y, also sent by the app). There are three separate GeoEvent Services set up to process the incoming data (points). 1) A geoevent service to send incoming points to an ArcGIS Online hosted feature layer via a Add A Feature output connector so the data can be analyzed.  This works as expected.  Points are constructed and I can download, examine the data for each end user collected in this single hosted feature layer. 2) A geoevent service to send incoming points to a stream service (on the ArcGIS Enterprise Server - not ArcGIS Online) so I can see the data stream for each end user in real time.  This works most of the time (although I frequently have to re-start the Stream Service, this is not critical) 3) sent to an output SMS connector.  This is the critical piece that is not working. A graphic of this GeoEvent Service is attached. The SMS text messaging GeoEvent Service first filters the incoming data by the TrackID tag (which in this case is the serial number of each individual’s cell phone as set in the Geoevent Definition)  In the graphic, these first filters are "kristie, nancy, angee, lynn" respectively for each TrackID.  Next, I have placed a spatial filter for each filtered TrackID (cell phone) based on the Geometry Tag. In the graphic these are "kristiefencing, nancyfences, angeefencing, lynnfencing" respectively. When the Spatial Filter is set to Within or Inside the individual’s GeoFences (CategoryName/.* ), the text messages are sent to each person and received by the end user on their cell phone.  Based on the success of the text message delivery, I know that the output SMS connector is set up properly.  I also know that the xy coordinates are being recognized as having a relationship with the geofence.  In the graphic the SMS output connectors are,"sms-kristie, sms-nancy, sms-angee, sms-Lynn" respectively for TrackID. However, as soon as I set an individual’s Spatial Filter to Enter their respective GeoFences, the text messages are no longer sent or received, despite situations in which the incoming events are clearly outside the geofence and then entering the geofence. I understand that in order for an Enter to be recognized, there must be previous coordinates (events) recognized by Geoevent as being outside the fence.  I can see that this is in fact the case, as I can view the events via the stream service and as points in the hosted feature service.  I can literally watch the incoming events as they travel from outside the geofence (from quite a distance), and then enter the geofence.  See attached notextmessages.mp4.  Multiple troubleshooting methods have been attempted: rebuild and reimport the geofences; separate the individual text messaging Geoevent Services so each person has their own Service; grouped them together into one Geoevent Service; set a GeoTag Processor instead of a Spatial Filter (which I didn’t think would work because that is just meant to enrich the output with the name of the fence, but saw this setup in one of the tutorials); set a GeoTag processor Spatial Filter combo, both set to Enter; and tried to employ an incident detector instead of the spatial filter. (Note: In the graphic, the file-json-out* output connectors are being collected for use by esri tech support ongoing).   Does anyone have ideas on what to try next?  Do I need to set a separate input connector for each person (a unique incoming URL Rest Endpoint?).  This would seem to defeat the purpose for having the ability to filter the data by an attribute / TrackID, and increase the load on GeoEvent…).  What is the missing piece of the puzzle?  Thanks in advance for any clarification / ideas / etc. Lynn ... View more