Latest Contributions by GregBonynge

I'd like to see a new feature introduced to ArcGIS Online that allows users to easily share AND update bookmarks between the web mapping apps created using this website.  For instance, if I make a map (let's call this "Map A") with a number of bookmarks, I know I can duplicate these bookmarks by just creating a copy of the map (let's call this "Map B").  Easy enough. BUT if I want to add new bookmarks or make corrections to the bookmarks in Map A, I'm out of luck if I want to have these automatically updated in Map B.  It looks like the current process is to go in and manually tweak the bookmarks in Map B instead. As a solution, perhaps introduce a true map template ability to ArcGIS Online for Organizations.  All maps associated with the template will be automatically updated if the bookmarks in the template change, or other features such as the initial extent, base layers, etc.  Give users the option to toggle on & off which settings spill down from the template whenever the template is changed.  Anyone who has used templates in Macromedia/Adobe Dreamweaver software will know what I'm talking about here... ... View more

ArcGIS.com's basic map viewer has a great feature where the map author can customize pop-up windows that share the attribute description of any given map service. Two updates to this feature would be incredibly useful:   1) Allow the display of numeric attribute fields of up to six decimal places.  Currently this is limited to four.   2) Allow URL's to be dynamically generated from an existing field from the source map service.  This has been implemented with ArcGIS Explorer Online, but the ArcGIS.com viewer doesn't seem to have this yet (e.g. when creating a custom attribute display for a pop-up window, currently the user cannot map to an attribute field for the URL itself, only the description of the URL.) ... View more

To facilitate publishing map service records to ArcGIS.com, it'd be useful if a new "Access and Use Constraints" field were added to ArcMap's map document properties interface.   Currently if I want to document any Access and Use Constraints for my map services and associated MXD's, I need to include them in the map document properties' "description" field.  This is OK until I want to publish any given map service on ArcGIS.com.  After publishing a new map service to ArcGIS.com, I feel compelled to go in and manually edit the ArcGIS.com description so that the Access and Use Constraints from associated with my MXD appear in the correct ArcGIS.com field, rather than leave it blank.   If this idea were implemented, it may subsequently help to implement an idea submitted earlier that addresses synchronizing ArcGIS.com map service descriptions with their parent map services hosted by any given ArcGIS.com contributor. ... View more

To facilitate publishing map service records to ArcGIS.com, it'd be useful if a new "Access and Use Constraints" field were added to ArcMap's map document properties interface. Currently if I want to document any Access and Use Constraints for my map services and associated MXD's, I need to include them in the map document properties' "description" field.  This is OK until I want to publish any given map service on ArcGIS.com.  After publishing a new map service to ArcGIS.com, I feel compelled to go in and manually edit the ArcGIS.com description so that the Access and Use Constraints from associated with my MXD appear in the correct ArcGIS.com field, rather than leave it blank. If this idea were implemented, it may subsequently help to implement an idea submitted earlier that addresses synchronizing ArcGIS.com map service descriptions with their parent map services hosted by any given ArcGIS.com contributor. ... View more

It'd be incredibly useful if ArcGIS.com contributors were given the option to automatically synchronize the descriptions of their ArcGIS.com-published map services with the descriptions associated with their respective ArcGIS Server map services. Right now if I were to make a change to the map document properties associated with the source MXD for any given ArcGIS Server map service, save the MXD, then refresh the service and clear the REST cache, the updated description is updated automatically via my ArcGIS Server array's REST interface.  However in order to institute the same edit to the map service's ArcGIS.com record, my choices currently seem to be either to 1) delete and re-add the record to ArcGIS.com, or 2) go in and manually edit the description ArcGIS.com record.  Granted this process is not very time-consuming as it stands now, but it'd help further streamline the process of keeping ArcGIS.com records up-to-date. ... View more

Currently in ArcGIS.com, ArcGISExplorer Online users have the option of opening another user's app, copying it (aka saving it under another name to their account), then customizing it by adding new map services, markup, tweaking layer transparency, etc.  It'd be helpful if a user could sync, or compare, their customized app against the original app to see if the original author has added/dropped any map layers, changed the URL for a map service, etc. On a side note, it'd be really interesting if ArcGIS.com could report to an ArcGIS Explorer Online app author how many copies of their app are made over time, giving the author a sense of how heavily their app is used. ... View more

Currently in ArcGIS Explorer Online, if you'd like to choose which layers that're queried when using the Identify tool, you open up the Identify tool's options menu.  At this point, by default the user must go through and click off the checkbox for each layer you don't want to be included to the group of layers that're queried by the Identify tool.  This gets tedious if you have more than a few layers in your app.  It'd be really great if select all/none buttons were added to this interface to make the process choosing which layers you'd like to be queried by the identify tool easier to use. ... View more

It would make administering ArcGIS.com groups more convenient if owners could choose to be notified via email when someone requests to join their group.  Likewise, it would be useful for group members to learn via email when a fellow member has shared new content with a group, rather than having to actively log into the site to review the latest changes. ... View more