Integrate your Site Scan organization with Skydio Cloud

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Overview

Esri has partnered with Skydio to create an integration that enables a fully autonomous end-to-end drone mapping workflow from capture to insights. 

Site Scan now offers an enhanced integration with Skydio Cloud, streamlining the transition from drone capture to mission processing. When a scan is created in Skydio Cloud after an automated drone flight or an autonomous drone dock mission, Site Scan automatically imports the imagery and creates a mission within the correct project using location-based matching. This eliminates manual steps and reduces turnaround time to generate analysis-ready content. This workflow improvement is especially impactful for government and infrastructure teams operating in remote or challenging environments, helping them maintain operational efficiency and data consistency. 

Requirements

• Your organization must be licensed under a Site Scan Custom Subscription to use this feature. 
• A Skydio Cloud admin is required to generate a Skydio API Token for the integration. 
• A Site Scan organization admin is required to create the integration using the Skydio API Token. 
• A Site Scan organization admin is required to configure individual Site Scan projects for the integration.

Procedure

You can configure your integration to set up automatic imports in three quick steps: 

1. In Skydio Cloud, create a Skydio API token with sufficient permissions and copy the token secret. 
2. In Site Scan, create a new integration using the Skydio API token secret. 
3. In Site Scan, enable the projects that you want as import destinations for new Skydio scans. 

After these steps are completed, new Skydio scans will automatically import to the applicable projects as new missions in Site Scan, and will be sent for processing. 

How to: Generate a Skydio API Token in Skydio Cloud 

You must be a Skydio Cloud administrator to generate API tokens. 

1. Follow the Skydio documentation on creating a custom integration to generate a Skydio API Token. When you create the token, make sure to grant it the following permissions. These are required for the integration to work properly: 
   • Alerts: Read and write 
   • Media: Read-only 
   • Scans: Read-only 
   • Webhook Validation: Read-only 
   • Webhooks: Read and write 
   • Whoami: Read-only 

How to: Create the integration in Site Scan

You must be a Site Scan administrator to create and manage an integration. 

1. In Site Scan, browse to Organization Settings > Integrations.
   Organization Settings has a new Integrations menu.
   
2. Click New Integration > Skydio Integration. 
3. Name your integration. 
4. Paste the Token Secret from Skydio. 
5. Click Create Integration. 
   To create a new integration with Skydio, paste the Skydio API Token Secret with sufficient permissions.
   
6. Optionally, enable projects that you want to begin importing scans to. You can always come back to this later. 
   A list of all projects in your organization. Enable those that you want to start importing scans to.
   
7. Click Save. 
8. If you enabled one or more projects, new Skydio scans will be automatically imported to the enabled projects that meet the import criteria. Further configure each project’s import criteria by clicking Configure. There are more instructions on configuring projects below.
   Shortcut to editing each project’s import configuration. You can also access this menu by opening the project from the project menu.
   

Organization admins can always return to the Organization settings > Integrations page to enable or disable multiple projects at once. 

How to: Configure project integrations 

Once the integration has been established at the organization level, projects must be individually enabled to begin importing new Skydio scans. Once a project is enabled, new scans will be imported to the project if the scan is within the project’s defined import area. This section details how to enable projects for the integration and configure the import location and area: 

1. Open a project that you want to configure the integration for. 
2. Click the Skydio Integration tab.
   Each project has a new Skydio Integration menu.
   
3. If the project is not yet enabled, click the toggle to enable it.
   Once enabled, a map of the import area will appear.
   The current project location is used as the default import location. Any Skydio scan whose center point is within a radius around the import location will be imported to the project.
   
   
4. To modify the import location and area, click Edit. 
   1. Expand or reduce the area to the desired size. 
   2. Drag the area on the map to change the import location. 
   3. To move the area back to the project location, click Reset to project location. This will reset the import location to the current project location. 
      
   4. When you are finished with your changes, click Save. 
      

The area and location can be modified for each project.

Once a new Skydio scan is flown within an enabled project’s import area, it will appear in the project’s mission list as currently processing. 

Imported missions will have an indication that they originated from Skydio.

Notes about the project configuration

• Disabling the integration for the project will immediately stop future scans in the import area from being imported to the project. However, the location and import area will be saved for future use. This allows you to temporarily disable the project, then re-enable it with the same configuration at a later time. 
• Deleting the integration at the organization level will disable all projects for the integration and delete any existing project configurations. 
• The project location and import location for a project are separate entities. Changes to the project location (from Settings > Project Coordinate System) will not impact the import location or area, and vice versa. 
• If multiple projects are enabled with overlapping areas, any Skydio scans flown in overlapping areas will be imported to the project whose import location is closest to the scan’s center point.  
• A single scan will never be imported to multiple projects. 
• Only Site Scan organization administrators can configure the integration, even at the project level. 

What's next?

You can start using the integration today. In the future, we are looking into adding support for new Skydio integration options: 

• Match and import a Skydio scan to a Site Scan project based on a unique name identifier (rather than by scan location). 
• Manually import previous / existing Skydio scans to Site Scan. 
• Possibly others, depending on user feedback we receive. 

Given that last point, we encourage you to reach out, comment here or post ideas on the Esri Community with feedback that you have about the feature. We are interested in learning what’s working and what could be improved with our Skydio integration.