In ArcGIS Pro the default behavior of the locate functionality is set to use an organizations locator which is configured in ArcGIS Online. However, there are some concerns that I have. There are some non user friendly workarounds for these problems.
*What if one department has a different locator need than other departments.
*What if we want to automatically use a locator that is on a local network.
*What if we want to "contains" layer search on the GIS data and forgo the locator right away? (ArcMap behavior)
*what if a user is offline.
There are ways to work around these issues by manually adding or deleting locators. but I would like to see the following options that may be configured in the ArcGIS Pro settings:
1) Allow us to add favorite locators in the Catalog View.
2) Allow us to add the locator to new projects. (similar to how we can add Folder connections to new projects)
3) Add a yes or no option to use the organizations locator by default. (similar to how we can use the organizations default basemap)
4) Add an option to select if the "locate" or "layer search" should be the default search method.
5) Allow an option in the layer search to use a contains or exact match search by default. (ArcMap uses a contains search by default)
6) Make it easier for new users to create locators. We can create locators in the catalog view but it may be daunting for new users. ArcGIS Pro allows us to create an add-hoc locator that will search by a layer or table which is burred within the provider settings. (I have been using ArcPro for over a year and I was not aware of this function)
Why not:
a) Make it easier to find this "create layer locator" in the locate menu.
a) Allow us to save this add-hoc locator for a project and save it as a favorite so that it can be reused in other projects.
b) When creating a locator the first step should be ask if a user wants to search by an address (current) or by an existing layer or table. (similar to locator for a Layer or Table)
Hopefully some of these settings will encourage users to adopt ArcGIS Pro.
Thanks!
