Latest Contributions by Suzanne-Boden

The Esri Technical Certification team recently released version 10.5 exams for seven certifications, including the popular Desktop series: ArcGIS Desktop Entry, ArcGIS Desktop Associate, and ArcGIS Desktop Professional. At version 10.5, ArcGIS Desktop includes ArcGIS Pro and ArcMap. Desktop certification exams test knowledge of both applications. Exam releases are purposely timed to occur several months after a software release. After all, earning a technical certification requires significant hands-on experience with the technology. Sometimes the timing of an exam release and a software release poses a challenge. For example, ArcGIS Pro 2.0 was released just as we were releasing ArcGIS Desktop 10.5 exams, which measure ArcGIS Pro 1.4 proficiency. When preparing for an exam, it's important to review the software applications and versions that will be tested—you want to be sure your preparation work is focused on the right content. The help documentation is a popular resource for individuals preparing to take a certification exam. ArcMap help documentation is available both offline and online. For version 1.4, ArcGIS Pro documentation is available offline using the help files that are installed with the product. Many of the help topics in the ArcGIS Pro 2.0 documentation apply to 1.4 as well, but of course there have been changes between the releases, including the renaming of the Project pane to the Catalog pane. Developing a certification exam is a rigorous, months-long process that involves subject matter technical experts, psychometricians, and others. The group spends long hours in discussions (and debate) to ensure that every single question is accurate, valid, and directly aligns with the skills measured by the exam. Passing a certification exam is a significant accomplishment that has intrinsic professional and personal benefits. Are you ready to demonstrate your ArcGIS expertise? ... View more

The Friday before User Conference is always interesting, and this year is no exception. The excitement is tangible, as everyone scrambles to finish their presentations and get prepared to contribute to the largest gathering of GIS professionals in the world. San Diego is about to hum with thousands of people who love maps and apps, and know that location is a springboard to gaining insight and solving problems. Those of us who will be stationed at the Lifelong Learning area in the Expo are looking forward to talking with many of those people. We love to hear stories from the trenches—how individuals are applying GIS in new ways, hacking their way through bureaucratic barriers, working around legacy technology, and pushing the limits of the latest technology. Those eureka moments when the right tool for the right job is discovered and mastered. And the less pleasant times when lack of skills or knowledge is holding up a project.  That's where we can contribute the most. We know that a commitment to learning and workforce readiness is the key to success in any industry. When it comes to GIS and ArcGIS, Esri offers hundreds of options to build skills, grow knowledge, and keep all kinds of projects humming.     Visit the Lifelong Learning area Tuesday through Thursday to talk with us about resources that will meet your individual learning needs, prepare your teams to successfully complete upcoming projects, or geoenable your entire workforce with ArcGIS capabilities and unlimited access to Esri e-Learning. Find out how Esri technical certification supports your professional development goals and your organization's strategic goals.    Next door, in the Esri Services area, along with our partners in Professional Services and Support Services, every 30 minutes we'll be giving short lightning talks on a wide variety of topics. Stop by to learn software tips and best practices, strategies to enable the people that engage with your ArcGIS platform, and proven processes to optimize an enterprise ArcGIS deployment.   Also in the Expo, Esri instructors will be managing the popular Hands-On Learning Lab. With two dozen lessons to choose from, the Lab offers a fantastic opportunity to explore software up close and build new technical skills throughout the week as you get inspired by the Plenary, Map Gallery, paper sessions, and technical workshops.         Connect with us. We're ready to contribute and we can't wait to hear your stories. ... View more

Digital transformation is a hot topic these days, and here in Training Services, we’re in the process of implementing a new digital initiative. For thirty years, we’ve been producing printed coursebooks for students attending traditional instructor-led classes. Starting in September, we’ll be providing only digital course workbooks in our training center classes.   Digital coursebooks are actually the latest in a long line of digital moves. In 1997, we released the Esri Virtual Campus, one of the first commercial websites devoted to teaching GIS topics and technology on the web. Web courses were a relatively new phenomenon back then but they quickly gained a following, especially in the higher education community. Virtual Campus web courses were so popular, we decided to virtualize the in-person seminar experience. In 2001, we launched live training seminars—hour-long, free, online seminars on technical topics. Those also proved to be (and continue to be) very popular. In 2004, we took digital to the next level with the introduction of the Instructor-Led Online Classroom. Shortly after, the Great Recession hit and many GIS professionals found themselves grounded, unable to travel to attend a training class. For several years, the Online Classroom was the only viable option for many Esri customers to attend instructor-led training. Today, the Online Classroom is just as popular as our traditional classrooms. Last year we released a redesigned Training website and doubled the size of our e-Learning collection to include new formats and durations.   So digital is a huge part of what we do, and we’ve actually been producing digital course workbooks for thirteen years—Online Classroom students have always received digital course workbooks. Their feedback has helped us understand which digital features are most valuable, both during class and after class back at the office.   Digital books have several benefits, including   Color: For years, one of the most frequent enhancements requested by students has been to replace black and white coursebooks with color books. When you’re working with maps, you want to see them in color—makes sense, we get that. However, producing thousands of printed color coursebooks every year is expensive. With digital books, we can finally provide color materials and fulfill this customer request. Productivity tools: Printed books are wonderful to hold in the hand and flip through, but digital books have great features too. For example, you can use the provided bookmarks to jump directly to lesson pages, you can quickly search the content for specific words and phrases, and you can highlight text and add digital notes, which makes it easy to find exactly the information you need after class when you’re trying to remember the steps to complete an ArcGIS task or workflow. Currency: At one time, a new Esri software release arrived every couple of years. Today, releases come quarterly. This cycle is great for providing new and improved functionality to our customers, but it presents a challenge to keeping training materials up to date. With digital books, we’ll be able to more quickly get updated content into the books and into the classroom. Reduced environmental footprint: As a company committed to sustainability and smart planning, we feel a responsibility to conserve resources wherever possible. Digital books allow us to significantly reduce paper use and the energy and chemicals required by the printing process. Digital books also eliminate the fuel usage associated with shipping printed books to each Esri training location. Cost savings: Recognizing that many organizations have limited training budgets, we strive to offer affordable, competitively priced products. As with all organizations, our costs go up each year. Adopting digital coursebooks will produce savings that will help us keep the cost of instructor-led training as low as possible.   To ensure students continue to have an excellent classroom experience, we're adding a second monitor to each classroom workspace. Students will view the digital coursebook on one monitor while following the course presentation and interacting with Esri software on the other monitor. Early testing feedback has been extremely positive, and we’re excited to introduce this new digital dimension to our real-world classrooms.  ... View more

As technology continues to transform the ways organizations use the ArcGIS platform, are your teams prepared to make use of the new capabilities? Are your teams prepared to achieve your organization's strategic, GIS-enabled objectives? The Esri User Conference is right around the corner, and it presents a unique opportunity to talk in person with Esri experts on the topics that matter most to you. If one of your conference goals is to get information that will help expand your organization’s use of ArcGIS, we invite you to stop by the Esri Services area in the Expo and talk with a Training expert. Training addresses the human aspect of a technology deployment. The right training delivered to the right people at the right times directly supports your organization’s ArcGIS-enabled goals. Tuesday through Thursday, Training experts will be on hand to discuss your organization’s ArcGIS-enabled workflows, roles, and strategic goals. We can recommend training options that support your upcoming projects, timelines, and objectives. You'll even get a complimentary training plan tailored to your organization’s workforce training needs that you can reference back at the office. The Esri Services team is presenting technical workshops on key topics throughout the week and short, focused lightning talks every half-hour in the Expo. Here's a selection related to workforce development topics: Technical Workshops Tuesday, 3:15-4:30 — Best Practices for Technology Change Management Thursday, 1:30-2:45 — Workforce Development Planning: A People Strategy for Organizations Lightning Talks  Tuesday, 4:00 — Engage the Entire Enterprise with GIS Wednesday, 1:00 — Train for Now, Train for the Future Thursday, 10:30 — The Strategic Impact of a Training Plan Get details about all the Esri Services and workforce development activities at http://go.esri.com/UCservicesTB. If you're going to the conference, enjoy the excitement and amazing activities that will be happening each day of the week. We’re here to help you make the Plenary inspiration come to life and benefit your organization long after the conference ends. ... View more

Updated January 16, 2019 Geodata Academy is an Esri program that brings complimentary in-person ArcGIS training to cities across the U.S. The program's mission is to help Esri customers acquire practical skills they can apply right away to increase their organization's geospatial capabilities. Geodata Academy is also a place to meet other ArcGIS users in the area, build new skills together, and forge connections that support ongoing learning from one another—much like the Esri community here on GeoNet. Since its launch in late 2016, we've held events in 5 cities around the U.S. Here are some fun facts that have cropped up along the way. 1. The very first Geodata Academy was held in New York City on November 14, 2016. The topic: Expand the Reach of Your GIS with Web Maps. The weather: Sunny with a high temperature of 63 degrees Fahrenheit. A beautiful day to escape the office and add new skills to one's professional toolbox! 2. Three U.S. cities that have hosted Geodata Academy events have a combined population of 11,923,801. Here's how the cities rank based on 2016 U.S. city population:  New York (1) Chicago (3) Washington, D.C. (21) 3. Geodata Academy events traditionally were held on a Monday or a Friday, with Monday being the most popular. Washingtonians, however, preferred Fridays. Getting a head start on the weekend perhaps? Tuesday is now a standard offering in New York City. New Yorkers seem to prefer mid-week training sessions. 4. Every Geodata Academy event is facilitated by two Esri staff, usually the dynamic duo of a solution engineer and an instructor. This combination is by design—together the facilitators offer extensive product knowledge and teaching experience. 5. To accommodate different schedules and city commute patterns, each event includes a morning session and an afternoon session. 6. Snacks are included! Geodata Academy events are held at MicroTek training facilities, which provide snacks in the room for easy grazing throughout the sessions. Observations indicate cookies are the most popular item on the buffet table. 7. All attendees get two weeks of complimentary access to a configured ArcGIS Online Organization following the event. This is a great opportunity to practice applying new skills in a sandbox without the pressure of a real-world project. 8. Topics include making web maps and building web apps using ArcGIS Online, field data collection using Survey123 for ArcGIS, and getting up to speed with ArcGIS Pro workflows. 9. More than 95% of attendees say they're likely to attend another Geodata Academy session. 10. Geodata Academy sessions are open. Anyone can register and attend, assuming space is available (each facility accommodates about 30 attendees). Interested in attending Geodata Academy? Our next event is April 5 in New York City. The topic is web app basics—a super-popular topic. Registration will open soon via the Geodata Academy web page. ... View more

Updated June 8, 2023 The Hands-On Learning Lab (presented by Esri Training Services) is found at many Esri and user group conferences throughout the United States. Hugely popular, the Hands-on Learning Lab helps attendees squeeze maximum learning out of their conference experience. How? By providing a dedicated space where you can take free lessons on a variety of GIS and ArcGIS topics. Each self-paced lesson takes about 45-60 minutes, and includes a video lecture and a step-by-step exercise that mimics a real-world workflow. We provide all the software needed. The Lab is always staffed by one or more Esri instructors, who are happy to answer questions and recommend lessons. Or just chat. The next time you attend a conference, be sure to seek out this great venue to learn something new, build up your existing ArcGIS skillset, and enjoy access to an Esri expert. Bonus: You can escape the conference hubbub, relax in a quiet atmosphere to recharge your batteries, and be productive all at the same time. Experience the Lab for yourself at one of these upcoming events. 2023 Hands-On Learning Labs Esri User Conference and Education Summit | July 8-13, 2023 | San Diego, California 2023 Central Florida GIS Conference | September 10-12 | Daytona Beach, Florida Oklahoma South Central Arc Users Group (OKSCAUG) Conference | September 25-26 | Oklahoma City, OK Kentucky GIS Conference (KAMP) | October 2-6 | Lexington, Kentucky Minnesota GIS LIS Conference | October 4-6 | Duluth, Minnesota 2023 Fall Northeast Arc Users Group (NEARC) Conference | October 15-18 | New Haven, Connecticut 2023 Illinois GIS Association (ILGISA) Conference | October 16-18 | Lisle, Illinois 2023 Arkansas GIS Symposium | October 16-20 | Jonesboro, Arkansas Texas GIS Forum | October 23-27 | Austin, Texas 2023 GIS of Alabama (GISA) Conference | November 13-16 | Gulf Shores, Alabama 2023 Indiana GIS Day Conference | November 15 | Indianapolis, Indiana ... View more

Microsoft Excel is a popular format for storing and analyzing tabular data. While you can't edit Excel data in ArcGIS Pro (worksheets are read-only), it’s easy to view Excel worksheets and do things like Join an Excel table to a layer attribute table, then use the Excel data for queries, field calculations, feature labels, or map symbols. Use Excel data as input to geoprocessing operations. Export Excel data to a geodatabase table so that it can be managed with and related to GIS data stored in the geodatabase. ArcGIS Pro supports XLSX files (Excel 2007) and XLS files (Excel 2003 and earlier). Before working with Excel data in ArcGIS Pro, there are a few things you need to be aware of. Here are some common things to check.  Note: If an Excel file is password-protected, you will not be able to access it in ArcGIS Pro. Column Names ArcGIS Pro converts the first row of Excel worksheet data to field names, so the first row in your Excel worksheet should contain column names. If the first row contains other content, modify the worksheet so that the first row contains column names. Depending on your organization’s data requirements, you may want to make a copy of the worksheet and modify the copy. Column names must be 64 characters or less. ArcGIS Pro field names can contain only letters, numbers, and underscores (no special characters). Best practice is for Excel column names to begin with a letter, especially if you want to join the Excel table to another table. Note: Column names that begin with a number will have an underscore appended in front of the number in ArcGIS Pro. Spaces and hyphens in Excel column names display as underscores in ArcGIS Pro. Column Data Types  ArcGIS Pro scans the rows in each column to determine the data type. If there are mixed data types within a column, the ArcGIS Pro field data type will be text. Tip: Before opening the worksheet in ArcGIS Pro, in Excel, select the column, then use the Format Cells dialog box to apply the same data type to all the cells. If your Excel column stores numeric data with decimals, in ArcGIS Pro the field will have a data type of double-precision floating-point number (AKA double). ArcGIS Pro assigns the data type for a column containing only numbers to be numeric. This makes sense, but suppose you have a column of ZIP Codes? Items such as ZIP Codes, U.S. FIPS codes, NAICS, and SIC codes should be treated as text, since mathematical operations don’t apply to this data. In the table below, the Area field has been assigned the long integer data type. In fact, this field contains ZIP Codes. If the data type assigned to a field is not desirable for your data, you can join the Excel table to another (editable) table in ArcGIS Pro, then add a new field of the desired data type to the joined table and calculate its values to be the data from the source Excel column. Learn about field data types in ArcGIS Pro. Learn more about working with table fields in ArcGIS Pro. How to Access an Excel worksheet in ArcGIS Pro Start ArcGIS Pro, open a project, and insert a map if necessary. In the Catalog pane, navigate to the folder containing the Excel file. Click the plus sign next to the Excel filename to expand it and display one or more worksheets. A dollar sign symbol ($) displays at the end of worksheet names. Drag the worksheet into the map area. The worksheet displays in the Contents pane as a standalone table (this means it’s a nonspatial table that contains only tabular data). To open the Excel table, in the Contents pane, right-click the table and click Open. You can sort fields, turn fields off and on, assign field aliases, and export the data to a geodatabase table or CSV, DBF, or TXT file. If you edit the data in Excel while the table is open in ArcGIS Pro, you’ll need to close ArcGIS Pro and restart it in order to see the updated Excel data. Want more on this topic? For more information about working with Excel files in ArcGIS Pro, see this help topic. For hands-on practice with ArcGIS Pro, check out these training options: Getting Started with ArcGIS Pro Integrating Data in ArcGIS Pro Cartographic Creations in ArcGIS Pro ... View more

Updated June 24, 2026 The use of ArcGIS maps and apps has expanded well beyond traditional GIS roles. Business analysts, data scientists, researchers, operations managers, and many other non-GIS professionals find value in using ArcGIS to streamline field data collection, conduct advanced spatial analytics, create compelling visualizations, and share information that leaders, policy makers, and the public can easily understand and act on. Any organization that wants to get results with technology has to prepare its workforce to confidently apply the technology. All Esri customers with current maintenance receive unlimited access to e-Learning on Esri Academy. Organization-wide access to e-Learning enables the entire workforce to build skills and gain confidence with ArcGIS tools at any time, from anywhere. The e-Learning benefit is not tied to product licensing or user type status—all employees, interns, contractors, faculty, and students at customer organizations are eligible to take e-Learning. It is up to the organization to decide whom to enable and how to enable access. We realize that enabling e-Learning access at an enterprise scale requires planning. Below are considerations for managers and others who will be supporting e-Learning access at their organization.  1. Whom do you want to enable for e-Learning access? This is the most important question to consider. To get the full value of your maintenance benefit, your organization may want to provide e-Learning access to employees outside the core ArcGIS user group. Perhaps you'd like to support professional development paths for individuals in other departments. Perhaps you've received requests from these individuals to use ArcGIS tools. E-Learning is a great tool to ignite enthusiasm and build practical skills related to mapping and analytics.  Step 1 in crafting your plan: Determine the approximate number of users you want to enable and the organizational roles that will participate. 2. Where do you want to manage e-Learning access?  Location, location, location—everything always comes down to where. There are two places where you can manage e-Learning access: ArcGIS Online — Members of an ArcGIS Online organization can access all e-Learning as soon as Esri access is enabled for them in ArcGIS Online. These individuals will need to sign in to Esri Academy with their ArcGIS Online organizational account. If they're logged into the ArcGIS Online organization when they visit Esri Academy, their access to e-Learning is seamless (no additional sign-in is required). Benefits: It's easy. ArcGIS Online administrators routinely enable Esri access so that members can access this community and other Esri websites. Members can use the same username and password they already use for ArcGIS Online.  Disadvantages: Only organization members will be enabled for e-Learning access. Members who have taken Esri training previously may want to use their existing ArcGIS public account so that all of their learning activity is associated with a single account. When members are removed from the ArcGIS Online organization, their e-Learning access terminates and they will need to contact [email protected] to have their training history transferred to an ArcGIS public account.  If the ArcGIS Online administrator disables Esri access before removing members from the organization, their training history may be difficult to recover.  Tip for Administrators: Do not disable Esri access before removing members from your ArcGIS Online organization. What about ArcGIS Enterprise? While members of an ArcGIS Online organization can seamlessly access e-Learning while logged into their organizational account, we are not able to validate ArcGIS Enterprise organizational logins. Members of an ArcGIS Enterprise organization will need to be connected in My Esri to access e-Learning on Esri Academy. My Esri — Anyone who is not a member of an ArcGIS Online organization must be connected to your customer organization in My Esri. Once connected in My Esri, e-Learning access is automatically enabled. Benefits. Individuals who are already connected to your My Esri organization have e-Learning access enabled by default. No additional setup is required. My Esri administrators can invite many people at once to connect (up to 1,000 at a time). Individuals can use their existing ArcGIS public account for e-Learning. If they don't have a public account, it's easy and fast to create one at https://accounts.esri.com. Administrators can limit e-Learning access to a specific time range if desired. Disadvantage: If you have many e-Learners, your My Esri organization will also have many connected users. Administrators may not like seeing a long list of connected users. Tip: From Manage Users, you can filter your user list to view only those with e-Learning permission. Use the column heading filters to view the user list based on other criteria. Step 2 in crafting your plan: Decide where you want to manage access—ArcGIS Online, My Esri, or perhaps both. After this decision is made, consider implementation details. 3. How will you enable e-Learning? ArcGIS Online: An administrator simply needs to enable Esri access for each member and notify members to use their ArcGIS Online organizational account for e-Learning on Esri Academy. It's important to explicitly tell members to use their organizational account because many people have multiple ArcGIS accounts. If members of your ArcGIS Online organization sign in with a public account, they will not be able to access e-Learning that requires maintenance. My Esri: Connect new users to your My Esri organization by using the Invite Users option on the Home > Users menu. You can type or copy/paste email addresses into the tool or upload a file (XLSX or CSV). The file should contain only one column of email addresses and no header row. XLS files are not supported. Do you have a large number of users (hundreds or thousands) who need e-Learning access? Designate one or more individuals to be My Esri Training administrators by granting them the "Assign training permissions" permission, which allows them to invite and manage users. Tip: If Training administrators will need to view e-Learning activity reports, they will need both the "Assign training permissions" and "View training information" permissions. You can also use tags to categorize connected users (by department, role, location, academic course, etc.). Using tags, it's easy to filter the Manage Users table view and perform administrative tasks from there. Do you want a specific account used for e-Learning? Individuals that receive a My Esri invitation can connect with any Esri-enabled ArcGIS account. If you want a specific account used for e-Learning, add a custom message to the invitation with instructions. 4. How will you manage e-Learning access over time? Many organizations have internal approval processes that regulate how employees and contractors request and take training. If yours does, integrate Esri e-Learning access into the existing processes. Decide whether an administrator should proactively enable all approved users (by enabling Esri access in ArcGIS Online or connecting them to your My Esri organization). As individuals are hired or end their association with your organization, make sure that adding and removing them from the My Esri or ArcGIS Online organization is part of your existing new employee/departing employee administrative processes. After you've decided whom will be enabled for e-Learning access, where you will manage the access, and how you will manage access over time, you have a great start to a good plan to get the most value from your organization's maintenance benefit. All you need to do is execute. ... View more