Feature Locator

[wadsonmakari]

Hi all,

I have a point table with the following columns zone_id,site_id,site_name,description and a column that has been made from concatenating all the columns to produce a string of the form "zone_id-site_id-site_name-description"

I would like to create a locator service e.g. Feature locator or POI locator that will allow users to geocode this data by typing in any part of the "zone_id-site_id-site_name-description" column and suggest all rows that match the typed string.

I have tried both locators but they are not producing the results I expect for example when I type in any part of the "zone_id-site_id-site_name-description" I am expecting the suggestions to include all points that contain the string that I have typed in but this is not case. Sometimes I get no suggestions at all or 1 or 2 when they should be more suggestions based on my data.

Is there any configuration parameter that I have missed that would allow a wildcard search on the column that I am searching on?

I am building the locators using ArcGIS Pro 2.9 and publishing to ArcGIS Enterprise 10.9.1

Any advice much appreciated.

[ShanaBritt]

Locators do not support wild card searches, that is more of a query than geocoding. Suggestions provide candidates based on the tokens (strings) that are typed at the beginning like an autocomplete of typing the beginning of the value in the data. What you have described is more like what is described in the following topic for layer search. The layer used in configured layer search can be shared as part of a web map and used for searching using the contains search mode. 

- https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/latest/help/data/geocoding/find-places-on-the-map.htm

- https://enterprise.arcgis.com/en/portal/latest/use/configure-feature-search.htm

Another option is to create multiple Feature or POI locators based on the  zone_id, site_id, site_name, description fields and add them to a composite locator. For the description field, you would need to type the exact string or the beginning of the string to get find results or suggestions. The description could be added as a custom output field for the POI locators and this value would be returned in the geocode results. Custom output fields were added to the Create Feature Locator tool in ArcGIS Pro 3.2.