Latest Contributions by TonyHowser

Hi Folks, As of today and absent any unanticipated issues, we’re currently expecting Business Analyst Desktop/Pro/Server customers to be notified of the 2018 U.S. on-premises data update (with licenses and download info) this week via email.  If we are unable to contact you (e.g. due to bounced/rejected emails), a member of the Esri customer service team will reach out. We understand how important this updated content is to your workflows and organizations.  That said, we thank you for your continued patience and understanding. On behalf of your Esri account, product, customer service, data development, and release teams, thank you for being valued Esri customers. Tony   ArcGIS Business Analyst Team  ... View more

Hi Jeremy, Our current release estimate for the 2017 U.S. local/offline demographic data update for Business Analyst is the mid-October time frame. We’re currently working on some final testing and certification, and we sincerely appreciate your patience.  In the interim, there are some options* available to BA Desktop customers for accessing the data prior to its release for local/offline installation and use: Esri currently includes 10,000 ArcGIS Online Service Credits with each BA Desktop license. With these Service Credits, you can connect to ArcGIS Online from BA Desktop and access the updated data through supported tools and workflows.  Details describing this option can be found here. In addition to accessing the updated data hosted on ArcGIS Online through BA Desktop, you can also leverage your license to the BA Web and Mobile Apps (Android, iOS) and access the updated data through their BA-based workflows and tools. I hope this information is useful to you.  On behalf of the Business Analyst Team, thank you for checking in and for being a valued Esri customer. Tony   * In most cases, the Service Credit entitlement and the BA Web/Mobile App license entitlement are available to BA Desktop customers who have licensed the U.S. or Canada versions and are current on maintenance.  These entitlements are not included with the BA Desktop seats that are included with the BA Server Solution.  Please note that the BA Web/Mobile App license entitlement requires an ArcGIS Online Level 2 Named User which is not included with BA Desktop. Service Credit costs can be found under “Demographic & Lifestyle Maps” here (as an example, 10,000 Service Credits will support the generation of 1,000 demographic reports or the enrichment of 100,000 site/area features with 10 demographic variables). ... View more

Greetings. To license and use Esri Maps for SharePoint, you will need to be a 'named user' of an ArcGIS Online Organizational Plan or Portal for ArcGIS.  Please contact your Esri sales rep or account manager if you have any questions regarding pricing/licensing. Thanks, Tony ... View more

Greetings! We intend to support SharePoint Online for Office 365 with our JavaScript-based app architecture in a major release in 2013 or 2014.  Many of our customers are looking to the Microsoft �??Cloud�?� (Office 365) to host their solutions because of the economic benefits associated with being able to offload the maintenance and administration of the platform; the ability to scale up or scale down as needed; the ability to access SharePoint Sites hosted on the infrastructure from a variety of supported platforms and hardware form factors; the benefit of having the latest SharePoint features and capabilities (and bug fixes) after each release without needing to upgrade hardware or software; and the increasing trust they have in the platform with numerous certifications and even a dedicated �??Cloud�?� solution with SharePoint Online for Office 365-Dedicated (which we will also support with some additional customer engagement). As you can imagine, there are several feature requests which are compete for priority in our development backlog.  To "escalate" this particular request, I would recommend registering/logging your support for it at Ideas (http://ideas.arcgis.com) or through Esri Support (http://support.esri.com) by creating an enhancement request (which you can track). Cheers and thanks for your questions! Tony ... View more

Hi Carsten, As of writing, Esri Maps for SharePoint v3.0+ requires a connection to the ArcGIS platform because of the way it has been architected and the direction we are taking our SharePoint mapping offering as a Location Analytics solution moving forward. e.g. New global geocoding services, new publishing and sharing capabilities, new spatial analysis options, ability to enrich external databases with geo-context, etc. A general discussion of this transition and re-launch was described in Jack's Q&A from the 2013 Esri International Users Conference which concluded last week. This licensing requirement can be satisfied by one of the following: a. An ArcGIS Online Org Subscription b. license to Portal for ArcGIS v10.2+ We are expecting Esri Maps for SharePoint v3.0 to be available to licensed users by the end of this month (July 2013). Thank you for your question! Thanks, Tony Hello, you obviously have to have an ArcGIS Online Subscription to get the files. Does that imply it´s no longer a free add on that you can run if you have ArcGIS Server? Is there a new licensing model behind that? Best regards ... View more

Greetings Rahul, The beta has concluded and Esri Maps for SharePoint v3.0 is now available for licensing.  It includes major new capabilities that were not in the beta including bi-directional BCS connectivity to your external data warehouse and web part connections support. Please contact Esri Sales or your account manager to request a quote or evaluation. Here is some summary product info: http://www.esri.com/software/esri-maps-for-sharepoint Thanks, Tony Hi, Can anyone provide the download sdk link for Esri Maps for SharePoint 3.0? Thanks in advance -Rahul Ranjan ... View more

First, a disclaimer: I am sharing some product roadmap/envisioning here and the capabilities in the released product may vary or may not be immediately available.  That said, BCS support and, similarly, Web Part-to-Web Part connectivity support are key initiatives for Esri Maps for SharePoint for connecting to and working with external data sources. BCS stands for Business Connectivity Services and is a basically standard set of interfaces to "connect" SharePoint to external data sources via a variety of options (Web services, WCF services, .NET assemblies, database connectors, etc.).  Our goal is to geo-enable external business data sources (e.g. SQL server databases) by providing our users with seamless access to the Esri platform (hosted or on-premises content, services, and infrastructure for sharing, collaboration, visualization, analysis, etc.) without the need to create custom workflows to import/export data between SharePoint Lists and these external sources.  Initially, we will likely support BCS connections to SharePoint External Lists which are, essentially, an external (and "abstracted") version of SharePoint Lists except that the data sources may be SQL Server databases, Oracle databases, etc.  Bi-directional connections are meant to imply that these BCS connections to External Lists are not merely read-only views into the source data.  For example, you may want to geocode a bunch of records from your External List (e.g. table on your SQL Server instance); create and customize a map; and share/publish the map/layers with members of your organization through the Esri platform however; you may also want to create a workflow which leverages Esri Maps for SharePoint's forthcoming support of new global Geographic Data Enrichment services on the Esri platform to "enrich" or append attributes to your External List  associated with geographic context, demographics, lifestyle, and other categories that may subsequently used as a basis for additional mapping, analysis, visualization, charting, modeling, presentations, etc. (for better insights into your business or organization's data). I can't really say whether your specific use case (displaying images from your external data source in the Silverlight map web part-based popups) will be supported "Out of the Box" or if will take a little tweaking here or there but; it may simply entail providing source data in your geo-enabled External Lists which include image URLs as attributes. 🙂 Thanks for your questions and enthusiasm! Tony Very excited about the BCS implementation! Could you talk more about this? BCS - what does it stand for? Bi-directional: meaning that if you were to update a mapservice or the gdb directly it would create a new list item or edit an existing?                    that if you update the list item the gdb gets updated                    how will it handle photos - both ways (where would the photos get stored?) would these photos then show up in the                       silverlight pop-ups no problem? ... View more

Esri Maps for SharePoint allows you to create point-based layers based on addresses or coordinates (and other attributes) contained in the records of a SharePoint List.  That said, I would recommend having two separate point layers (visitor residences and visitor vacation destinations) because each record should only be associated with a single location or area. There are several ways in which you can populate SharePoint Lists with data.  You can leverage out-of-the-box SharePoint tools (e.g. Import Spreadsheet, SharePoint List Data Connections, etc.) or rely on programmatic options. After you have your address records in the SharePoint Lists, you will need to run the Esri Locate Workflow on each of the Lists to geocode or convert the addresses to mappable points in a layer.  Please see this documentation which describes it in detail. After you have geocoded your Lists, you can add the lists (as map layers) to your map.  This documentation describes this process in more detail. The beta for Esri Maps for SharePoint 3.0 just opened a week ago.  Please apply for the beta here: http://bit.ly/getemfspbeta . Thanks for your question. Tony ... View more

Hi Julie, All Esri Business Analyst or Community Analyst products, including the Desktop, Server, Online/Web, and API, essentially rely on the same data apportionment methodology through common business components "under the hood."  That said, the Desktop documentation that Jason has provided should be a good reference for you. Additionally, I wanted to call out an independent data accuracy study which compared our projections and estimates (which are computed with the underlying methodology we have been discussing in this thread) with those of major competitors: Data Vendor Study Overview Data Vendor Study Summary & Findings Thanks, Tony ... View more

Hi all, I have checked the API reference and the Concepts reference for the Community Analyst API, but I can't see anything that describes the geoprocessing routine that generates the reports. In order to use the API, I need to know what assumptions are being made. For example, in this sample: http://help.arcgis.com/en/communityanalyst/apis/flex/samples/index.html?sample=SummaryReports are the values merely a summary of the census geographies that fall under the selected polygon, or is a clip taking place? If the latter, is there an assumption that population is regular across the entire census polygon, or is population apportioned based on other variables, e.g., land use. I suspect I'm just missing a key reference that documents how BA works - can someone please point me in the right direction??? TIA, Julie Hi Julie.  This is a very good question and I can see that you are doing your due diligence.  I am happy to say that the overall discussion revolves around one of Esri's distinctive competencies with respect to spatial analysis and data apportionment. At a high level, this essentially leverages the concept of dasymetric interpolation in order to provide very accurate estimates of population/households and their associated demographics, lifestyle, consumer characteristics, spending, market potential, etc. Our underlying methodology goes way beyond what a simple polygon intersection may provide because we support truly variable study areas (which may only cover a part of a standard geography/administrative boundary area like a ZIP code, county, Census tract, Census Block Group, Japanese prefecture, Russian oblast, UK postal code, etc.  e.g. What if my single study area crossed over multiple ZIP codes and only a part of each of them? ).  On top of this, we also take into account the variability of population/household distributions within these administrative geographies because households and populations are not uniformly distributed across areas (e.g. The urban core of metropolitan area may have a far greater population density than its outlying suburbs even though they may be in the same county or jurisdiction so...If my custom study area covered 50% of a county, I can't simply say that 50% of the population of the county lie in the queried study area because that assumes a uniform distribution of population---regretfully, many third-party solutions make this assumption which generally results in less accurate results.)   These represent some of the enhancements in our underlying data apportionment "engine" which enable us to quickly and accurately provide estimates and projections for ad hoc or arbitrary study areas such as drive time polygons, manually digitized/drawn polygons, and custom regions or areas. Hope this was helpful and sheds light on why we believe our content and analysis represent an extreme value add to your use cases and workflows. Thanks, Tony ... View more

1. Generate a token with your username and password with the GetToken service (http://help.arcgis.com/en/businessanalyst/online%20apis/services/rest/reference/GetToken.html).  Doesn't matter if your credentials are for the BAO API of the CA API---the service methods are the same but; the content (variables and reports) may differ slightly.  Copy the resulting token value. 2. Using your token, retrieve the list of datasets you have access to with your subscription with the GetDatasets service (http://help.arcgis.com/en/businessanalyst/online%20apis/services/rest/reference/index.htm?GetDatasets.html).  Copy the dataset IDs. 3. Using your token and a dataset ID ('USA' dataset is based on Census 2000-based US administrative boundaries.  'USACensus2010' is based on Census 2010-based US administrative boundaries), retrieve the list of reports which you have access to with your subscription with the GetReportTemplates service (http://help.arcgis.com/en/businessanalyst/online%20apis/services/rest/reference/index.htm?GetReportTemplates.html).  You will get a list of several reports (depending on your subscription level) and their supported output formats and customizable header fields.  Use the report IDs (their 'names') in other services. 4. Using your token and a dataset ID ('USA' dataset is based on Census 2000-based US administrative boundaries.  'USACensus2010' is based on Census 2010-based US administrative boundaries), retrieve the list of variables which you have access to with your subscription with the GetSummarizations service (http://help.arcgis.com/en/businessanalyst/online%20apis/services/rest/reference/index.htm?GetSummarizations.html).  You will get a list of several thousand variables depending on your subscription level.  Use the summarization variable IDs (their 'names') in other services. Thanks! Tony ... View more

How about the 3.0 beta release? Greetings Jeff. I am happy to announce that the Beta of Esri Maps for Office v3.0 went live over the last weekend at the Esri Partner Conference and International Developer Summit in Palm Springs.  If you haven't done so already, please apply for the beta here: http://bit.ly/getemfspbeta. Some of the highlights of this beta include the following: Support for SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint 2013 (on-premises) Updated Silverlight-based map web part (SP2010 & SP2013) and initial release of a brand new HTML/JavaScript-based map web part (SP2013 only) Updated to support the ArcGIS for Silverlight v3.1 and ArcGIS Extensibility v3.1 SDKs (Silverlight-based map web part only) Tighter integration with AGOL [INDENT]Ability to share/publish web maps and layers to ArcGIS Online[/INDENT] [INDENT]Geographic Data Enrichment via map enrichment (access to new premium demographic and & lifestyle maps)[/INDENT] [INDENT]Geographic Data Enrichment via interactive InfoGraphics[/INDENT] Some major items on the roadmap (subject to change) for our July v3.0 release (final): Updated Portal for ArcGIS v10.2 support Additional Geographic Data Enrichment options Bi-directional external data connectivity via BCS External Lists Bi-directional external data connectivity via web part-to-web part connections SharePoint Online for Office 365 support (via the HTML/JavaScript-based map web part only) The reasons why we added (this initial) support for a HTML/JavaScript map web part include the following: To support compatible browsers on multiple platforms (tablets, smartphones, etc.) and OS's (iOS, Android, etc.) To support SharePoint Online for Office 365 To leverage a common User Experience and User Interface which is similar across all Esri Location Analytics (Esri Maps for ...) clients Thanks, Tony Tony Howser | Product Manager | Location Analytics Team ESRI | 5465 Morehouse Drive, Suite 140 | San Diego, CA 92121 800-795-7483, ext. 5601 | thowser@esri.com ... View more