Esri Training Blog

Utilities are essential services--we all rely on the water, electricity, gas, and telecommunications services they deliver. For utility organizations, GIS has long been essential infrastructure. And for many, ArcGIS is the GIS infrastructure of choice. 

With the introduction of the ArcGIS Utility Network, a lot of utility organizations want to take advantage of new capabilities to model their data in detail never before imagined, more quickly detect network disruptions, and easily share network visualizations and status in real time.  

We understand that, for longtime customers, adopting the ArcGIS Utility Network may require a significant level of effort. That's why we've created a variety of training resources to help you manage the effort and prepare GIS and IT staff for new workflows. Our top three training recommendations are:

• What's New in the ArcGIS Utility Network — a one-hour training seminar that's free to all customers with maintenance. The presenters highlight the major new capabilities and provide a road map of what's coming.

• Configuring Utility Networks in ArcGIS — a two-day instructor-led course for GIS administrators and technical leads who will be involved in deploying ArcGIS Utility Network. Get hands-on experience building a utility network, adding data, and tailoring options to fit your needs.

• Working with Utility Networks in ArcGIS — a two-day instructor-led course for the GIS editors and other professionals who will be maintaining network data over time, performing analysis, and identifying the source of network disruptions and locations of impacted customers.

Because ArcGIS Utility Network is designed to work with ArcGIS Pro and ArcGIS Enterprise, some organizations want a more holistic training solution. Our ArcGIS Courses for Utilities collection includes the courses above plus our top instructor-led courses for professionals who are migrating from ArcMap to ArcGIS Pro and ArcGIS Enterprise. 

All Esri courses are available online in multiple U.S. time zones and as private group events. All instructors are certified in Esri technology and technical facilitation. They specialize in delivering engaging, collaborative classes that support individuals with diverse learning styles.

For utility organizations that are not ready to move to the ArcGIS Utility Network, we offer a recorded version of our now-retired Working with Geometric Networks for Utilities instructor-led course, which supports ArcMap 10.6. This option is self-paced and includes recorded instructor presentations; hands-on exercises; downloadable exercise data for water, electric, and gas utility scenarios, a digital coursebook; and an exam (participants need to pass the exam to earn a course certificate of completion). Participants will need to use their own ArcMap software to complete the hands-on exercises. If you are interested in this course, please email GIStraining@esri.com for details.

In a year that’s seen many changes, the 2020 Esri User Conference exemplifies a positive response to change—pivoting to a virtual event and embracing new ways to provide a venue for our amazing worldwide community to learn, collaborate, and share their important GIS work.

This year’s conference continues the longstanding emphasis on educational opportunities, including postconference seminars on popular topics after the main conference activities conclude.

Change is not unique to 2020; it is always happening. Technology advances are changing how organizations collect, manage, visualize, analyze, and share data using ArcGIS software. This in turn creates change for the people collecting, managing, visualizing, analyzing, and sharing data.

Preparing for Change Workshop is a postconference seminar that supports attendees who are modernizing workflows using ArcGIS apps and capabilities, expanding ArcGIS access to new groups within their organization, or planning other GIS-related projects that will significantly impact how members of the workforce perform their jobs.

Where and When

Online following the 2020 Esri User Conference

July 16-17, 2020

8:30 a.m.-5:00 p.m. Pacific time

This is an interactive workshop that includes discussion and activities. Certified Esri change management practitioners cover practical steps to increase awareness and acceptance of new technology-driven workflows and gain buy-in for the change up and down the organization. Attendees will start building a plan to

• Document the strategic value of ArcGIS adoption at all levels of the organization.
• Gain a comprehensive understanding of impacted stakeholders.
• Establish a support and sponsorship framework to ensure successful adoption.
• Communicate effectively by understanding the impacts of new technology from the perspective of executives, managers, and employees.

Who Will Benefit from Attending?

Organizational leaders, GIS managers, influencers, and change agents who want to increase the overall adoption rate of geospatial capabilities and plan a people-focused change management effort.

Research shows that when organizations apply people-focused change management to support employees (and managers) through times of change, they are six times more likely to achieve project goals (Prosci 2016). Workshop materials include templates that attendees can use to start actioning people-focused change-management immediately.

If your organization is planning a technology project that will impact existing workflows, take this opportunity to learn how to prepare your people to more quickly pivot, embrace change, adopt new workflows, and together achieve the intended business results.

Updated June 25, 2020

Over the last few months, many organizations and ArcGIS users have transitioned to remote work environments. Here in Esri Training, our team members are also working remotely. While individuals' geography may have changed, the need to support business operations remains the same.

In fact, the demand for GIS resources (and GIS skills) is in high demand. Likewise, the need for GIS training is in high demand.

We know this because we've been fielding questions. Individuals who registered for an instructor-led class weeks ago are wondering if their class will take place as scheduled. Managers who want their team to quickly learn specific ArcGIS workflows ask if classes are available. 

We want to assure everyone that instructor-led classes are available now and going forward. Our team has all the resources needed to seamlessly support your training needs and, as always, a strong commitment to helping our customers be successful with ArcGIS.

Over the last decade, the popularity of our instructor-led online classroom has exploded. Many people like the convenience of learning from their own workspace. Many managers like that they can stretch their training budgets farther by eliminating travel costs. 

Given these advantages and our responsibility to ensure safety and compliance with reopening protocols, all public instructor-led classes will be taught in the online classroom for the remainder of 2020.

If you've never attended an Esri online class, know that it is an excellent option used by thousands of GIS practitioners each year. All instructor-led courses are designed and delivered with the online classroom in mind. In addition to Esri technical certifications, all instructors achieve CompTIA CTT+ (Certified Technical Trainer) certification. They are experts in the technology they teach and have validated skills to present technical concepts in a meaningful way.

We host the Esri software needed to complete course exercises on virtual machines. The online learning environment is active and engaging. Instructors and course attendees use the phone, chat, and virtual whiteboards to talk and collaborate in real time. Group breakout sessions and interactive content reviews happen just as they would in a physical classroom. Tour the online classroom.

Of course, all Esri customers with a current maintenance subscription have unlimited, organization-wide access to e-Learning on the Training site.

Also available through the Training site, learning plans are popular and useful tools that support individual skill-building and professional development goals, as well as organizational workforce development plans. Managers (and educators) can assign learning plans and track progress through them.

However you like to learn, whatever your GIS training needs, wherever you're working from—we've got you covered.

Esri Technical Certification Testing

To ensure the safety and health of certification candidates and staff worldwide, our testing partner Pearson VUE is limiting test center availability and cancelling existing appointments as needed. If you registered to take an Esri technical certification exam at a Pearson VUE testing center and receive a cancellation notification, or you would like to proactively reschedule an exam appointment, please access your Pearson VUE account to choose another exam date.   

You may also choose to take your exam using Pearson's OnVUE option (available in most regions). This exam delivery model allows you to test from home or your workplace, as long as you meet the system requirements.

If you have specific exam-related questions, please email certification@esri.com.

March 24 Update: The live broadcasts of this training seminar have been cancelled. The seminar recording will be available for viewing on or before March 26 at the link below.

If your job involves managing or working with network data for an electric, gas, water, telecommunications, or other utility organization, mark your calendar for our March 26 free live training seminar. Over one hour, Esri presenters Remy Myers and Hussein Nasser will share current utility network capabilities you may not be aware of and preview new features planned to be released later this year.

Learn how the utility network has evolved since its release two years ago, and see how product advancements in 2020  will help utilities even more effectively manage, visualize, and analyze network data and address key business needs. 

Three sessions will be broadcast live, and each session includes Q&A with the presenters. View more details and get a calendar reminder at the link below.

What: What's New in the ArcGIS Utility Network

When: Thursday, March 26, 2020 — 9:00 a.m., 11:00 a.m., and 3:00 p.m. Pacific time

Where: Online at the Esri Training website 

Updated June 25, 2020

So you heard about one of our upcoming free massive open online courses and you're interested in the topic. As someone who's always on the lookout for opportunities to grow their skills and develop professionally, you take the plunge and register for the course. You add the course start date to your calendar and even block off time each week to attend. Nice! All you need to do now is wait patiently for the course to open.

Or is it?

Taking an Esri MOOC is a low-risk strategy to explore a new topic, feed your curiosity, and live out a lifelong learning goal. Courses are free, Esri provides the software, and if it turns out that work/life responsibilities are eating up all your free time, you don't have to keep attending. You're in complete control of the experience.

And there are a few things you can do before the course opens to help ensure your experience is excellent. Such as...

Understand the course setup. 

A MOOC includes multiple sections, each of which includes videos, discussions, quizzes, and one or more hands-on exercises. A new section opens each week. Completing a section takes about 2-3 hours, though individual time will vary.

To watch the videos, participate in discussions, and take quizzes, you go to the Training site, sign in with the ArcGIS account you used to register for the course, and start or resume the course.

To complete the hands-on exercises, you access the course as above, but then you'll open a second (incognito) browser window and sign into a different account than the one you used to register.

• In a MOOC, you use two accounts: your own ArcGIS public account or ArcGIS Online organizational account to access the course itself, and an ArcGIS account that we provide for your use in exercises. 

Understand the software setup.

Everyone who joins an Esri MOOC is given a temporary ArcGIS Online organizational account that's been assigned the software licenses, permissions, and credits needed to complete the hands-on exercises. This account is intended for use in the course and is active only while the course is open.

Some courses use ArcGIS Pro. If you're attending a MOOC that uses ArcGIS Pro:

• The first course exercise will step you through the process to download ArcGIS Pro and install it. Your computer must meet the ArcGIS Pro system requirements. 

• If you want to complete the exercises using a school or work computer that has ArcGIS Pro installed, you can as long as you're able to use a Named User license and sign in using your temporary ArcGIS Online organizational account. Talk with your IT administrator to confirm you can do this.

Two screens are better than one.

In course exercises, you follow the step-by-step instructions and work with ArcGIS software at the same time. You can certainly navigate between two windows on a single screen, but many MOOC participants find it easier to view the instructions on a separate monitor (or tablet/smartphone) and complete the ArcGIS project on their primary monitor. If you don't have the luxury of two screens, printing the instructions may be a good alternative.

Be on the lookout for the green check mark. 

To earn a certificate of completion, you need to complete all content in the course (except for optional activities). In the table of contents inside the course, a green check mark will display when you've completed an item. 

If you don't see a green check mark next to an item, take action and complete it before the course closing date. Your hard work should be rewarded with a certificate, and we can't extend course access after the closing date.

Have fun.

Esri MOOCs are designed to extend your knowledge of the topic, and everyone learns better when they're engaged and having fun. Consider this: Any time you're in the course, thousands of other people are too. Someone may be watching the exact same video at the exact same time as you from a desk (or couch) on the other side of the international date line. A little mind-blowing.

Visit the discussion forum, share your thoughts, help fellow learners out by answering questions when you can, and enjoy the feeling of community that's a hallmark of Esri MOOCs.

This is a great year for anyone who loves numbers, especially the numbers 2 or 20.

February 20, 2020 is a date to circle on the calendar if you're an analyst, researcher, or GIS professional who wants to do more with analytics this year. Python is the scripting language of choice for many ArcGIS users. As in the GIS world, Python is hugely popular in the data science world, with an active and ever-growing community of users. 

On February 20, join our free live training seminar to discover which Python libraries are essential for spatial data science and analytical workflows. Esri presenters Shannon Kalisky and Atma Mani (experts on the topic) will break down the capabilities and give pointers on how to determine which library is most suitable for your project needs. Demos will show how to access Python libraries in ArcGIS Pro and ArcGIS Notebooks and put the power of scripting to work.

This is a fairly advanced topic, but if you're just getting started with Python, you're welcome to attend. You may enjoy discovering what's possible with scripting in general and Python in particular.

Three, one-hour sessions will be broadcast live, and each session includes Q&A with the presenters. You can view more details and get a calendar reminder at the link below.

What: Python Libraries for Spatial Data Science

When: Thursday, February 20, 2020 — 9:00 a.m., 11:00 a.m., and 3:00 p.m. Pacific time

Where: Online at the Esri Training website 

Why is it that a new year combined with a new decade somehow quadruples the sense that new possibilities for “living your best life” have opened up? If living your best life involves growing professionally or seizing opportunities to feed your curiosity, you may be interested in our new, no-cost MOOC (massive open online course), which starts February 26 and runs for six weeks.

Spatial Data Science: The New Frontier in Analytics introduces a term that may be new to some. Most people are familiar with “data science,” not as many with “spatial data science.” If you’re wondering if this is just a new term for spatial analysis, the answer is, “Spatial data science includes spatial analysis, AND it’s much more than that."

Spatial data science refers to the application of spatial data, analysis techniques, and methods that account for spatial properties, like shape, distance, area, and direction. Spatial data science also incorporates Tobler’s Law, something GIS professionals know like the back of their hand, and (simplified) states: “Things that are close to one another are more related than things that are farther apart.”

When you’re analyzing massive amounts of data, taking a spatial approach often reveals patterns that aren’t obvious with nonspatial approaches. Visualizing these patterns on a map often raises questions that spark further analysis, which leads to more insight.

Spatial data science also incorporates things like machine learning models, scripting, and statistics. Most importantly, like data science, spatial data science helps analysts solve problems and make predictions that may lead to breakthroughs on some of our toughest challenges related to the environment, human health, and more.

If you've never participated in an Esri MOOC before, know that they're a hybrid learning model—they contain elements of e-Learning and instructor-led training.

Like e-Learning, MOOCs are self-paced. But like an instructor-led class, they have a defined duration (in this case, six weeks). A new section opens each week, but there are no formal class times—the logistics of holding a set class time would be difficult considering the number of times zones involved in a MOOC. Participants are literally all over the map.

You attend the course when it’s convenient for you. If you want to pull an all-nighter and complete every section on the last day the course is open, you can (though we don’t recommend it). Based on six years of offering MOOCs, participants tend to be more successful when they complete each section during its opening week (or at least start the section).

In the discussion forums, participants can interact and learn together in real time if they choose, just like in an instructor-led class. Sharing questions, ideas, and solutions is a key part of the MOOC experience.

Course videos are recordings but you’ll see Esri experts discussing topics, having real conversations, and sharing valuable information—also just like an instructor-led class.

Participants get free access to ArcGIS software products for use in the course, including ArcGIS Pro. This is cool because not only do you get to try out some of the latest and greatest tech, you get to apply the software in the context of guided exercises—no need to figure out how to get started or which tool does what.

Instead, you’ll be introduced to realistic scenarios and stepped through the workflows to solve a problem. If you’re someone who prefers learning without a lot of hand-holding, there will be opportunities to challenge yourself by extending an analysis or performing a similar analysis on your own.

• Note: We provide the software licenses, but participants need to download the software and run it on a machine that meets ArcGIS Pro system requirements.

If the new year finds you wanting to expand your professional horizons and explore new technology possibilities, join us and see for yourself what spatial data science is all about. View course details and register at http://bit.ly/2QUlq3f.

Oh, and MOOCs have one more similarity to an instructor-led class: completing all course content earns you a certificate of completion from Esri.

Update on December 6, 2019: Yesterday's live training seminar was recorded and is available at the same link below. The recording will be available to everyone interested in the topic until January 4, 2020. After that, all customers with a current maintenance subscription may access the seminar at any time.

If your job involves regularly performing GIS analysis, you're probably familiar with sharing analysis workflows as Python scripts or geoprocessing models. Both of these options allow you to quickly repeat an analysis workflow using different data or parameters and easily share your workflows with colleagues. Sharing, unlike starting from scratch every time you need to do an analysis, saves a lot of time and effort—a win for analysts and the organizations where they work.

A sharing option in ArcGIS that you may be less familiar with is called a web tool. On December 5, join our free live training seminar to learn what web tools are and how they support enterprise-wide analysis capabilities.

Esri presenters Jian Lange and Monica Joseph will give an overview of how web tools work and show the steps to publish a web tool from ArcGIS Pro to ArcGIS Enterprise.

Three, one-hour sessions will be broadcast live, and each session includes Q&A with the presenters. View more details and get a calendar reminder at the link below.

What: Sharing Analysis Workflows on the Web

When: Thursday, December 5, 2019 — 9:00 a.m., 11:00 a.m., and 3:00 p.m. Pacific time

Where: Online at the Esri Training website

How do organizations achieve the promise of GIS technology? A simple question, but one that may inspire a multitude of answers.

From saving money by eliminating inefficient workflows to enabling smarter, data-driven decisions, the business benefits of GIS are huge—enormous when the technology is deployed at enterprise scale.

While GIS apps have become much easier to use in recent years, a learning curve remains, especially for those with no previous exposure. This is to be expected since GIS provides numerous and powerful capabilities. One doesn't develop the skills and stamina to summit Mount Everest in a day, but the view is magnificent when you get there. (Don't take this metaphor to mean that producing impactful results from GIS requires years of training—it doesn't. It's just a metaphor.)

A simple answer to the simple question is that achieving technology's promise requires skilled humans. And this explains why so many organizations using ArcGIS software have embraced Esri learning plans.

The learning plan concept is simple too.

For us, it started with listening to our customers to understand how they use our products (for what workflows? to support what business objectives?). Then drive collaboration between product and educational experts to define the skills and knowledge needed to efficiently perform those workflows. Build training content that provides context and guidance through the best practices to perform the workflows and produce valid results.

Here's the really simple part. Take multiple pieces of content, in various formats, all related to the same focused topic, all contributing toward defined learning goals, group them into a learning plan, and make the plan easily available from the web.

This is the essence of what we're doing in Esri Training, but there's more. Learning plans are a tool for individuals to build skills and advance their professional goals, and they are also a tool for organizations to build geospatial capabilities and manage workforce development.

We've built tools that allow managers to create learning plans tailored to their specific workforce training needs, assign learning plans to one or many individuals (and set due dates if desired), track progress through learning plans, and easily see when learning plans are completed.

Esri learning plans and the tools to manage them are completely free to anyone. Some plans may include instructor-led courses (which have a cost), but many contain only e-Learning options. All customers with a current maintenance subscription enjoy unlimited access to all e-Learning on the Training site. With hundreds of e-Learning options, all developed by Esri experts, this is an amazing benefit we want all customers to take advantage of.

When organizations encourage a culture of learning and align GIS skills acquisition with GIS-enabled business objectives, technology delivers big time. Esri learning plans are here to help.

Want More on This Topic?
Read Learning Plans 101 for details on how to create and manage Esri learning plans.