topic Re: If you’re using the Attribute Assistant, we need your help! in Water Utilities Questions

If you’re using the Attribute Assistant, we need your help!

MikeMillerGIS — Tue, 23 Feb 2016 15:37:40 GMT

We’re doing some research into how the Attribute Assistant is being used. We’d like to see what rules you are using and how you configured your dynamic value table.

This information will help us plan for the future. We want to know what are the most common rules. We also want to see your gnarly and complicated rules to see how far the Attribute Assistant is being pushed.

So please share your dynamic value table along with any comments you have in this thread. We appreciate your help on this effort!

Thanks,

Mike

ArcGIS Solutions

PS: If you don’t know what the Attribute Assistant is (or aren’t sure if you are using it already) no worries. You can learn more about Attribute Assistant on the ArcGIS Solution site here.

Re: If you’re using the Attribute Assistant, we need your help!

TimWitt2 — Tue, 23 Feb 2016 15:43:07 GMT

Hey Michael,

first of all, I love AA! It makes my life so much easier!

I wrote an article about it for the ArcUser magazine in 2013. In it you can also see my DynamicValue table.

http://www.esri.com/esri-news/arcuser/fall-2013/~/media/Files/Pdfs/news/arcuser/1013/attribute.pdf

Tim

Re: If you’re using the Attribute Assistant, we need your help!

ShanePavlak — Tue, 23 Feb 2016 16:54:59 GMT

Hi Mike,

At Ottawa County, we use the Attribute Assitant all the time when editing. We use it extensively on our street centerlines and address related data.

I have attached our Dynamic Value table.

Thanks,

Shane

Shane Pavlak

GIS Supervisor

County of Ottawa | Innovation & Technology
spavlak@miottawa.org | d 616.738.4602 | f 616.738.4610

42⁰ 56' 23.69” N, -86⁰ 5' 14.51" W

12220 Fillmore St, Suite 320

West Olive Mi, 49460
gis.miOttawa.org

www.miOttawa.org/Departments/GIS/

Re: If you’re using the Attribute Assistant, we need your help!

ShanePavlak — Tue, 23 Feb 2016 16:58:54 GMT

Tim,

I found your article very helpful when trying to set a rule calculating the Full Street Name from the various fields found in the Centerline table.

Thanks,

Shane

Re: If you’re using the Attribute Assistant, we need your help!

AZendel — Tue, 23 Feb 2016 17:17:13 GMT

This may be a slightly off topic, but I think an auto-number, auto-increment or user-defined sequence field type should be available at the geodatabase level, not just at the application level or UI level (like Attribute Assistant).

Here's a case: I programmatically insert some rows into a table that contains certified address certificates. The ArcMap user selects address points, enters some more information into a form and then prints the certificate. Before the print happens, I insert the certificate data into the certificate able using ArcObjects. AA seems to be hooked into the ArcMap interface, so even though I had set up AA auto-number, it didn't populate the field. So I worked around it by writing code to do just what AA does for autonumber: read the last number used in a setup table, add the next number to the target table and then increment the set up table by 1. That's a considerable amount of coding and testing that could have been eliminated by an auto-number field. Even the more 'lightweight' databases (Access, SQLite) have auto-number fields.

A third-party consultant once told us that ObjectID fields are not guaranteed to always be unique, especially in multi-editor environments, though duplicates are probably very, very rare. (That was ~8 years ago, maybe that has changed). But the problem with ObjectID's is that they'll likely get reset when a table or feature class is moved to a separate database (or copied within one database). That can make it hard to migrate to new versions of ArcGIS, create backup and testing databases and do regular GDB maintenance.

I know a number of people who find AA very handy and there's probably going to be some AA use cases for me in the future. But I think that auto-number should be available at the DB level. If I have misunderstood anything about AA or GDB's, then please correct me.

Re: If you’re using the Attribute Assistant, we need your help!

TimWitt2 — Tue, 23 Feb 2016 17:24:56 GMT

Did you ever look into GlobalIDs?

Add Global IDs—Help | ArcGIS for Desktop

Re: If you’re using the Attribute Assistant, we need your help!

TimWitt2 — Tue, 23 Feb 2016 17:25:22 GMT

Glad I could help

Re: If you’re using the Attribute Assistant, we need your help!

MikeMillerGIS — Tue, 23 Feb 2016 17:30:45 GMT

Great question. You should be able to trigger the AA through ArcObject, but your edits need to be wrapped in an Edit Operation and an Edit Session. Since the AA is just listening to edit events, anything that raises that event should work.

Re: If you’re using the Attribute Assistant, we need your help!

AZendel — Tue, 23 Feb 2016 17:43:41 GMT

I did. I just didn't want to have "Certificate Number: ad58-ger6-s8ff-g265-87s56d" on our certificates. Some day there may be a need to label a map with the unique numbers. "10053" would look much better on a map.

Also, this blog post says: "This should not be used for a Unique ID. These values can change if you have to reload the data at some point or if you drop the Global ID field and re-add it. " I don't really follow that or am having trouble interpreting it......

Re: If you’re using the Attribute Assistant, we need your help!

AZendel — Tue, 23 Feb 2016 17:50:38 GMT

Good to know. I'll look into that.

But it'd still be nice if we could do the following when creating a table or feature class:

AA isn't too hard to set up, but the above is just so much more convenient.

Thanks.

Re: If you’re using the Attribute Assistant, we need your help!

ThomasBaxter — Tue, 23 Feb 2016 21:38:36 GMT

Mike - I've attached ours, its a work in progress (it will expand over the next few weeks as we bring more datasets online into our new editing environment)

I may have a few more suggestions a little bit later, but one that I have now - would it be possible to create a method to connect or disconnect a feature from a geometric network based on an attribute change? (Disconnecting would be good when we set a feature to be 'archived')

Im sure there are other annoyances/idiosyncrasies that i've found, i'll see if i can find the list

Thomas

Re: If you’re using the Attribute Assistant, we need your help!

PaulStephenson — Wed, 24 Feb 2016 15:32:53 GMT

Mike,

I've made plenty of use of the Attribute Assistant over the last couple of years, so thanks!! Usually I use AA for simpler tasks, but the example attached is probably the wildest in my experience. It was more or less a pilot project to target a paper form for permitting overweight trucks. I'm a big fan, but the one thing besides cross-platform support that I think would be helpful is stronger documentation, especially for beginners.

Paul

Re: If you’re using the Attribute Assistant, we need your help!

ChrisRumig — Wed, 24 Feb 2016 18:02:06 GMT

Mike,

We've been using the Attribute Assistant at the Region of Waterloo for about 3.5 years now. We had it set up by a local consultant (Steve Grise) for our Roads and Addresses data remodel. Since then we've also set up tables for four other groups of GIS editors who are editing data in our corporate database. Three of the four groups just use the attribute assistant for the generation of uniqueID's. However, our Transportation Engineering group is using it for creation and editing of their stormwater data.

It's a very powerful and useful tool to automate data entry, if you are not using it you need to ask yourself why!

Re: If you’re using the Attribute Assistant, we need your help!

DarinVanDeBerg — Wed, 24 Feb 2016 19:40:49 GMT

Does anyone here have troubles assigning a new incrementing value in the Facility ID field when your editors are in different versions? I have three editors all in their own versions and when using the AA, the generate id function is now unique to each editor. any suggestions?

Re: If you’re using the Attribute Assistant, we need your help!

MikeMillerGIS — Wed, 24 Feb 2016 20:38:38 GMT

Are you using Generate ID or autonumber? You will need to use Generate ID and make sure the Generate ID table is not versioned. If it is versioned, it will make duplicate IDs.

Re: If you’re using the Attribute Assistant, we need your help!

SteveBoege — Wed, 24 Feb 2016 22:40:53 GMT

We don't version our GenerateID table and the ID numbers generated by different edit sessions are unique.

Re: If you’re using the Attribute Assistant, we need your help!

MichaelHamrick1 — Wed, 24 Feb 2016 22:42:30 GMT

Mainly addressing and facilities now, but testing out water/sewer infrastructure for future

Re: If you’re using the Attribute Assistant, we need your help!

CassidyKillian — Wed, 24 Feb 2016 22:43:51 GMT

Outside of the address workflow set up in the address management solution, we assign our sanitary line id's based off of the upstream and downstream manhole id's. Nothing too extravagant but it saves a lot of time.

Re: If you’re using the Attribute Assistant, we need your help!

SteveBoege — Wed, 24 Feb 2016 22:48:59 GMT

We use attribute assistant for most of our editing systems. I have attached an example of our Dynamic Value Table for Water.

Re: If you’re using the Attribute Assistant, we need your help!

JeffWard — Wed, 24 Feb 2016 23:12:29 GMT

I am a big fan of the Attribute Assistant. I agree with a previous poster that the documentation could be beefed up a bit especially with the EXPRESSION method.

It took me a while to figure out how to configure the add in but once I did I started using it in most of my data entry workflows. I wouldn't say I am pushing any envelopes with it but I have saved hours of typing and stopped numerable errors from getting into my layers.

I primarily use GENERATE_ID, TIMESTAMP, CURRENT_USER, NEAREST_FEATURE, LAST_VALUE and PROMPT. Best add-in to come out of Esri.