Integrate your Geotagged Documents Seamlessly into ArcGIS with this new ArcGIS for SharePoint Feature
Why This Feature Matters
For years, users have been asking for a more effective way to manage geotagged documents in SharePoint. Geotagging is crucial for many industries such as construction, real estate, urban planning, and environmental science, where the capability of accessing documents tagged to features on the map plays an essential role in making informed decisions.
Previously, ArcGIS for SharePoint users could geotag documents and retrieve the documents by performing a “geosearch”, but the geotagged documents could only be accessed on the SharePoint platform. Now, with this exciting new feature, users can not only access their geotagged documents within SharePoint but also interact with these documents directly in ArcGIS. This integration saves time, reduces complexity, and offers a more holistic view of location-based data.
How It Works
With this new feature, ArcGIS for SharePoint has bridged the gap between document management and the ArcGIS platform. Here is how it works:
1. ArcGIS for SharePoint users will now be able to turn on the Add document URLs toggle button before they drag and drop documents on map features. By turning on the toggle button, the document links are also added to the feature table and hence the links can also be accessed in Map Viewer via the map feature’s popup. To ensure a smooth experience with this new feature, there are a few pre-requisites you need to take care of. Please make sure you have the following before you proceed:
- The Microsoft administrator can create a term group in the SharePoint termstore and name the term group “Esri” (case-sensitive). Next, create a term set under the Esri term group and name it “ArcGIS” (case-sensitive). This will ensure that all the “terms” or “geotags” created using the “ArcGIS for SharePoint” app are stored in a dedicated term group and term set and not commingled with the terms created by other SharePoint apps. This is an optional step. If you do not create a dedicated term group and term set, the app will store all the terms in the System term group and Keywords term set. In both cases, the administrator has to add the ArcGIS for SharePoint user, who is performing the geotagging as a “contributor” to the term group. Here’s some Sharepoint document explaining how to add contributors in the SharePoint termstore - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/assign-roles-and-permissions-to-manage-term-sets#add-co...
- ArcGIS for SharePoint user has signed in to the ArcGIS SharePoint web part using their ArcGIS organization credentials. The user’s ArcGIS account should have a user type of “Creator” or higher
- Only the owner of the hosted feature layer or the administrator of the ArcGIS organization which hosts the feature layer can turn on/off the Add document URLs toggle button. Once it is turned on, any other user who has “edit” permissions on the ArcGIS feature layer, will be able to continue adding geotagged document links to the ArcGIS platform. Layer owners or organization administrators can enable editing on the Settings tab of the hosted feature layer's item page. For more information, see the ArcGIS Online documentation Manage hosted feature layer editing. Also, please make sure that the Enable Sync (required for offline use and collaboration) setting is not checked.
Once you have met these conditions, you are all set to start exploring the new feature!
Step 1 - While the SharePoint page is in Edit mode, add the ArcGIS web part. Sign in to your ArcGIS organization.
Step 2 - Add the ArcGIS feature layer to the map.
Step 3 – Open the Geotag and geosearch tool
Step 4 – In the Source layer drop down, select the layer for geotagging
Step 5 – Configure an Attribute for geotagging
Step 6 – Turn on the Add document URLs toggle button
Step 7 – Select the document library which contains the documents to geotag. Next, select the documents and tag the documents to the required features by dragging and dropping the documents directly on the feature(s). Once the tagging is successful, you will see a toast message in the top right corner of the map
You can now view the document links in the feature pop-ups either in the ArcGIS web part or in the Map Viewer popup.
Note: Once the owner of the feature layer has turned on the Add document URLs toggle button in the SharePoint page “Edit” mode, geotagging can be performed both in Edit mode and Run mode. To turn on/off the Add document URLs toggle button, the SharePoint page has to be in Edit mode.
Update URLs: Once the documents are geotagged using this new feature, at some point in the future when documents are deleted from SharePoint, the document URLs on the ArcGIS platform will no longer be “in sync” with the geotagged documents on the SharePoint platform. To address this situation, you can use the Update URLs button to remove the links associated with the deleted documents from the ArcGIS platform
Conclusion
The new ArcGIS for SharePoint feature that allows geotagged documents to be accessed both within SharePoint and in ArcGIS is a powerful addition that can benefit a variety of industries. Teams that rely on both document management and GIS data can collaborate more effectively. GIS analysts can access the documents they need without switching between multiple platforms. With user requests driving this update, it is clear that ArcGIS for SharePoint is continuing to evolve, staying relevant and innovative in a rapidly changing digital landscape.
Please share your thoughts and experiences in the comments below!