Latest Contributions by Kevin_McIntyre

@Amanda__Huber  You're right that tracks alone won't completely solve your problem, and I understand what you are trying to accomplish by using the auto-orient tool as @RhettZufelt pointed out.  What I'm suggesting is this, let's say you sit behind the pilot of the helicopter and you're looking out the left side window of the helicopter and the helicopter is flying east-west transects. You would then open up your map on Field Maps with the location tracking layer on to show your tracks. When you zoom out on the map and pan it slightly, Field Maps stops following your location (the map stops panning as your position changes.). So now if the helicopter is heading straight east, and you're on the left side of the helicopter, you'd be looking north. You would determine that you're looking north by looking at the map and watching the direction the helicopter is traveling by using its current location and the tracks layer. So while you're looking north, let's say you see a group of deer directly north of you, you would then look on your map and then look directly north of the helicopters position, and then try line up what you're seeing in the field with the imagery on the map to determine their location. Then you'd long press on that location to drop a pin which offers the option to collect a point at that location. Once you've submitted that location, the orientation of your map remains the same and you can continue collecting points. If the helicopters starts heading west, then you just orient the map so that it points south and do the same thing.  So what I'm suggesting is just abandon the collect (+) button and the GPS location/auto orient button all together and deduce the helicopters location and direction of travel from the helicopters location on the map and its flight path (via the tracks). This method would likely be more accurate than a paper based collection and require less zooming in/out and panning than trying to use the auto orient tool.  Either way, I think the auto orientation tool is more so meant for navigating to an existing point than it is for aiding in the capture of a point which is why it's not functioning as you'd hoped. The other reason is that if the direction the receiver is facing is important, then that data would just get captured in the GPS metadata anyways. I apologize if this workflow doesn't work for you, but it's the best workflow I can think of that would aid in your data collection without having to rely on the auto orientation feature which is clearly not suiting your needs. Good luck! ... View more

I think that is the intended purpose of using the orientation tool, but the issue is that they would lose that azimuth as soon as they hit the collect button which would throw off their sense of direction on the map and lose the location they were aiming for which isn’t good when they’re trying to collect quickly.  I agree with your other suggestion. They could then just punch in estimated range information and use the gps metadata to get the azimuth and just offset the points. ... View more

Correct!  But it seems as though the reason they're using the auto orientation tool is to keep their sense of direction while in the helicopter. With the location tracks turned on and the map zoomed out, it should be easier to manage their sense of direction. Basically, with Field Maps open, you'd be zoomed out and watch the helicopters location relative to the path it's taking/has taken and using that information to determine orientation. So if the helicopter is flying east to west, you can have the map oriented north or south depending on what side of the helicopter you're on.  ... View more

Thanks for that info. Best solution then is going to be while the map is open, long press on the location you want to collect at to drop a pin and then select "Collect Here." See this tip for more information. Doing it that way would at least allow you to retain the correct orientation of the map as you're collecting. I would also suggest turning on location tracking and turn the tracks layer on to be able to see the path the helicopter has taken and it's current direction of travel. This way, you could have the map zoomed out where you can see the tracks and direction of travel which would allow you to drop pins and collect the locations without worrying about your your collection points snapping to your location and messing up the orientation of the map.  ... View more

To better understand your workflow, why is having the auto orientation tool important? One other thing I noticed in your post was this line: this project requires rapid data collection (helicopter aerial deer collection). While Field Maps is perfectly adequate for collecting data, if rapid data collection is a key factor in this project, have you explored Quick Capture as a more suitable app for this project?  Either way, if your compass heading is important at the time of data collection, you can add in GPS metadata to your project to collect your heading at the time of capture. You can see how to configure a Quick Capture project to collect this information by configuring a project here as well as creating the necessary GPS metadata fields.  ... View more

Another option is to use Quick Capture which would help mitigate your concerns considerably, but at the expense of how much attribute data you can collect in the field. ... View more

Does it need to be a shape file or can it be in another format like json or csv? Exporting to other formats would be much quicker and easier IMO. If not, you can always just add an extra line of code to delete the resultant shape file that was added to AGOL after its been downloaded. Regardless, I don't believe there is a way to just download a shape file without having a copy created in AGOL. ... View more

I believe this is what's in store for the Field Maps app as they integrate Workforce into Field Maps.  You have a couple of options here in the interim: Create a related table for routine maintenance that users can add records to for each feature to request maintenance. Then have a separate map with the tree layer and maintenance table joined to show the locations and type of maintenance to be done.  Set up a workforce project that integrates with your trees layer. If you don't have the points of your trees in a database, you can use quick capture and workforce. Esri did a write up on this method here.  Use a combination of the previous two methods and use python + web hooks to automate work order creation in workforce when a new record in the routine maintenance related table is created. ... View more

@JonathanMcDougall  Notebooks will definitely help you out with automating some of the more mundane data tasks at first, and would be a good introduction to using Python with your GIS.  However, notebooks will only get you so far, and if a full-fledged asset management experience is what you want, you'll want to switch on over to using Webhooks to automate your services but I'm also aware that ArcGIS Enterprise may have extra features that help with automation without having to learn to code. If you are interested in learning to code, I've used a website called codecademy that was pretty good at teaching basic Python syntax, but probably any code education website will be more than adequate... especially considering Python is probably one of the most popular languages to learn right now.  Once you learn how to code, you can implement something similar to what I have setup. What I have going is a Flask application that receives the Webhooks, and then I used a factory design pattern to serialize the data and push it to the proper functions to manipulate the data in the feature service. Doing it this way allows the code to be very modular, adding in new features is wicked easy, and it can support multiple feature services. It also wouldn't be a bad idea to ask your employer if they'll pay for your training or to let you learn on the clock. It's well worth it considering you'd be making your organization/business more efficient.  ... View more

Are you querying Feature Layers or Feature Services or both? Your code originally searches for Feature Layers but then searches for Feature Services. You're going to get different counts because you're searching for different items essentially.  ... View more

Like you, I've had to create a join layer which is used to symbolise inspected/not inspected objects - I have to reset this join every cycle.  Could you not create the joined layer as a hosted feature layer and have it only join the most recent record in the inspection table? This would allow you to symbolize based on the most recent inspection date. The downside to the joined layer is that you can't access the related tables from that layer specifically. What you can do though is have both your joined layer and main asset layer both active on the map. Then, symbolize the joined layer to show which assets need to be inspected. Then I'd disable popups for the joined layer, and make the transparency for the main asset layer 99%. This allows you to select on the symbolized joined layer, but get the popup for the main asset layer. It's a crude approach but has been mentioned other times in this forum and is a workaround for the issue you're describing.  I agree that ESRI should definitely start to implement more useful asset management features into their products. However, and this is only my opinion, but ArcGIS and AGOL to me has always been a platform that is to be developed upon by the end user to fit their needs instead of it being a total solution out of the box. They have been making things much easier however in terms of asset management with the introduction of Field Maps, which considerably simplifies many workflows and doesn't require you to have 4 different apps on your phone to complete a single workflow. ... View more