Latest Contributions by BruceHarold

Take a tour of ArcGIS Data Interoperability via the recorded technical workshop from UC 2020!  Thanks to Dale Lutz, co-founder of Safe Software, for joining me on this presentation. ... View more

Webhooks.  If you don't code you might think webhook integrations are scary or at least need extra middleware apart from ArcGIS.  Wrong on both counts.  All citizen integrators who can put together an FME workbench with Data Interoperability extension, and have the extension for both Pro 2.6 and Enterprise 10.8.1 can automate webhook-driven integrations between Survey123 surveys and anything else Data Interoperability can reach. I'll outline the scenario in case you haven't looked into this automation pattern before.  Survey123 is a form-driven data capture app that manages a feature service where each survey is a point, line or area feature with attribution you design.  The forms have rich behavior and support web and mobile devices.  There are unlimited possibilities for downstream processing of survey features.  What this blog will cover is this data flow: A Survey123 survey submission embodies a transaction for its feature service (add, update) A webhook defined for the transaction type is triggered at each submission The webhook URL is an execute call for a Spatial ETL web tool (geoprocessing service) The web tool performs an integration using the survey submission feature(s) Putting this together is all about configuration, so lets get started.  I'm going to describe the most common platform combination - Survey123 is hosted in ArcGIS Online and your integration server is an ArcGIS Enterprise portal - but if you have Survey123 on your enterprise infrastructure that will work too. Because you will be creating a web tool that reads and writes a feature service you will need to share a web connection to your server as described in this blog, so your first step is to make sure the service owner account (by default named 'arcgis') on your server can start Workbench as described and use a web connection to where Survey123 feature services live.  Don't proceed past this point until you have successfully shared a web tool that exercises the web connection, such as the test tool described in the blog. I'm going to jump ahead now to explain how to avoid what might present as a silent failure of your webhook.  Survey123 (i.e. https://survey123.arcgis.com) will be calling your server with a POST request, so it needs to be trusted.  Below is a screen grab of my browser while I submit a survey, with the debugger pane open (Firefox).  I have highlighted the POST request sent to my server - it worked.  If your server rejects a request from Survey123 you'll see error messages talking about CORS - cross origin resource sharing. See this topic about how to allow Survey123 to access your server - Cross Origin Resource Sharing. Here is how it looks in the portal settings: For me this setting wasn't enough, I also had to change HTTP response header settings in IIS.  On your server, open IIS at the HTTP Response Header control, double click to open it and Add what you see below. Now the server is set up lets get to configuring the data flow.  If you have sharp eyes you'll see my test survey is about a caviar sandwich.  If you research the coordinates its entirely possible you could actually buy one there!  My real point though is Survey123 is sending a bunch of JSON, and it can be very complex for a big survey.  If you take a look at other integration platforms you'll find that while they try and look like no-code approaches you might be forced to parse JSON in mid stream to get the data you want.  However, Survey123 is always writing to a feature service, which of course Data Interoperability natively understands, so we have the luxury of forgetting about the JSON flying around and going directly to the feature service.  Fantastic! First though, create your survey.  Here is mine: When a survey is submitted a feature is written to its feature service and then any configured webhook is triggered - you can see the applyEdits POST in my browser debug view above, ahead of the webhook POST.  To support the integration geoprocessing service finding new records, my survey contains a hidden, required question 'Integrated' with a default value of 'N', which my integration edits to 'Y'.  I created my survey in the web designer, which doesn't support hidden questions, then I edited it in Survey123 Connect to add the question, here is how it looks when edited: And when saved to the survey: You have to update and republish the survey to apply the schema change. So now my survey has a field I can use as a processing selection flag.  I created a couple of records so I could design the integration workspace, and here it is: Its also in the blog download.  It doesn't do any actual integration - that's your job - but you can see the pattern.  Read records where integrate = 'N', do your stuff, then update integrate to 'Y' and write back to the service with GlobalID as the key field.  Make sure your tool source is embedded. If you have a large number of collaborators in your survey and by chance two surveys are submitted simultaneously it doesn't matter if one execution processes two surveys and another none.  If you're worried about latency of surveys writing to the feature service then begin your process with a Creator-Decelerator-FeatureReader combination. I manually tested the processing before publishing a web tool by submitting surveys and running the tool in edit mode.  At that point I'm ready to share the web tool.  Run the tool from the toolbox to create a History item then share it.  You'll notice the service is to be public, if that can't be done at your shop then take Survey123 onto your enterprise infrastructure. Make the tool synchronous for a start.  If you find your available instances can't keep up move to asynchronous. My tool has no parameters. When it completes sharing, go to the service URL and copy the value, here is mine: So my webhook URI is:  https://dev0014223.esri.com/server/rest/services/WebhookIntegration/GPServer/WebhookIntegration/execute  Now all that remains to do is configure the webhook in my survey. Now when a sandwich survey comes in my webhook integration triggers and Integrated = 'Y'. Genuine no-code integration, courtesy of ArcGIS Data Interoperability.  If you see me at local sandwich stores I'm working - honest. ... View more

Talk about a stealth enhancement, I thought this would take a while but it arrived this morning.  The recently published ArcGISOnlineConnector now handles on-premise portals.  Now you can automate portal item management with Spatial ETL tools or FME.  Fantastic! Here is how to set it up.  First create a portal connection app with the workflow described in this blog.  Record the App ID and App Secret. Then open Workbench and the FME Tools dialog at the Web Connections view.  At bottom right you'll see the Manage Services button: Click on Manage Services, you'll see this dialog. Click on the + pulldown at bottom left and choose Create From... Then Esri ArcGIS Portal (Template)... Then fill in the details for your portal and you'll have a new connection type. Authenticate a connection of the new type and you'll have a web connection you can use with ArcGISOnlineConnector to connect with your portal. ArcGISPortalConnector is an alias for ArcGISOnlineConnector in Workbench. Enjoy! ... View more

This post is about leveraging ArcGIS Enterprise 10.8.1 with ArcGIS Data Interoperability extension to share Spatial ETL web tools within your organization.  The 'advanced' aspect is we'll be moving data using a web connection to a web platform enabled by an FME package, plus we'll throw in a webhook notification step for fun.   In my on-demand technical workshop for UC 2020 I demonstrated how to create a web tool that performs a format conversion by web service, a classic use case for Data Interoperability combined with the sharing power of ArcGIS Enterprise.  Data Interoperability however has moved on from being a format foundry to being a generic solution for no-code integration across the web, so in this post I will show how to build a web tool that takes non-native data through to a web platform.  I happen to be reading Microsoft Access table XY event data and writing to ArcGIS Online hosted features, but read between the lines and understand the data could go to any cloud platform or app equally easily.  In some ways moving data to the web is a better fit for Spatial ETL tools as FME readers and writers work with containers or workspaces, for example a geodatabase, which is not a valid geoprocessing service output parameter that can be returned to a client.  It can be done, for example by zipping file geodatabase outputs, but if you have a web platform available, then use it, data is more useful on the web than as local files.   Web tools are a new name for geoprocessing services.  The original workflow for publishing geoprocessing services using a history item and an administrative connection to a standalone server is still available in ArcGIS Pro 2.6, but I'll show the new paradigm of sharing a web tool to a portal.  You share a Spatial ETL tool as a web tool from a history item just like any other tool but with two special considerations:   The Spatial ETL source FME workspace must be embedded, and not external to the tool Input parameters should be defined as simple types like Filename (Existing), Text or Choice   The first condition helps with packaging the tool at publication time, the second helps keep the final published tool parameter behavior simple.  You may have to refactor your ETL tool at authoring time to achieve these simplifications.  For example here I'm showing before and after versions of a Microsoft Access input parameter.  The default configuration allows picking multiple files with a large choice of file type extensions, my desired behavior is a single file with only .mdb and .accdb extensions.   Default Access Database Reader Parameter   Modified Access Database Reader Parameter     Conceptually and graphically my ETL tool is simple.  My scenario is I'm working for Fako Mining who do borehole planning with an Access app and record borehole locations as latitude & longitude in a table.  Click to expand the screen capture below, or edit the tool extracted from the blog attachment.  The data flow is:   Read an Access database table that has XY value fields Write (or replace) a hosted point feature layer in ArcGIS Online Trigger a webhook that notifies a Microsoft Teams channel the new data is available   There are three bookmarks in the workspace, in the blue one any existing feature service is deleted (I'm creating services named after the processing date), in the green one the Access data is read and converted to a point feature class in a zipped file geodatabase, and in the tan one the file geodatabase is published and shared to a group and lastly the webhook sent.  The concept is Online members are members of a Teams channel and will be notified the data is available.  While you're inspecting the workspace have a think about how much code this would take if you scripted it...     The key function in this is the ArcGISOnlineConnector transformer that does the work of publishing and sharing the zipped file geodatabase.  It is an FME Hub download and needs to be provisioned on the server, plus it uses a web connection that also needs to be provisioned on the server.   First, set up your server.  Install and license ArcGIS Data Interoperability for Server, make sure your server is federated to your portal, generate and import certificates for portal and server and so on.  Do not install ArcGIS Data Interoperability for Pro on your server, you will get license and tool failures   Once you have Data Interoperability installed, log onto the server as the ArcGIS Service local account user (by default named 'arcgis') and confirm you can open the Workbench app at this path:   C:\Program Files\ESRI\Data Interoperability\Data Interoperability AO11\fmeworkbench.exe   While logged onto the server as arcgis, create a share with the below path and give full control to the domain user (presumably you) who will be publishing the web tool and owns the web connection used in the ArcGISOnlineConnector.   \\<machinename>\Users\arcgis\AppData\Roaming\Safe Software\FME   From the authoring machine and as the publishing author, open the share.  Here is how it looks on my laptop:     Never mind the files in your share are different to mine, they will soon align.   Now we're going to provision the FME Package for ArcGISOnlineConnector and the web connection used by it to the server.  Download the current release of the package to the share.  Still from the authoring machine, open Workbench and then the  FME Tools dialog Default Paths view.  Note (write down!) the profile directory for Data Path, it is the folder where web connections are stored.  You will temporarily change it next.     One way web and database connections are shared is the owner copies the files fme_connections.data and fme_publicKey.jceks from the Data Path to a shared folder (in our case the share above, which is also the default location where the arcgis user will store web connections), redirects the Data Path to use the new location, opens the Web Connections view of FME Tools and selects web connections to be made public.  Having done that revert the Data Path to the original default for the authoring user.  The arcgis server user must have write access to the copied data.  If your server is not on your network it may be easier to use the export/import methodology for credential sharing.   Now as the arcgis user logged onto the server, open Workbench from the path given above and drag the file safe.esri-agol-1.1.4.fpkg (the version may change) from the share at C:\Users\arcgis\AppData\Roaming\Safe Software\FME into the canvas to install it.  Check FME Tools>Web Connections sees the web connection to ArcGIS Online.  Create a test workspace that makes a web connection and uses an ArcGISOnlineConnector to list the contents of a contents folder - the blog download has an example TestWebConnection.fmw.  If everything works the server is ready for action!   Run your Spatial ETL tool as a tool so that a history item is created.  Then right click on the history item and share it as a web tool.  Here is my experience:     Allow uploads, make it asynchronous, set the Info message level, this will display workspace processing messages.     Don't forget to edit the tool parameter(s) - click the pen icon.  You may have to do this twice to make it 'stick'.     It will analyze with a warning, this is normal for Spatial ETL tools.     After the web tool publishes, open the Catalog pane at the portal contents and run your tool.  Mine throws a warning to do with some coordinate system handling, but I'll take the win.  By design there are no features displaying as output as there is no writer in the workspace, my data went to ArcGIS Online courtesy of the ArcGISOnlineConnector.  The log shows intermediate processing worked as expected.     Teams shows me the webhook triggered, which is the last part of the web tool processing, and it gives me a service URL so something is there....  Take a look at what is in the HTTPCaller transformer to see how I got an image into the webhook payload (its a public image item in Online).     Bingo, my data loads into my map!     So that is the round trip, I have a web tool anyone in my organization can use to publish hosted feature layers from an Access database table, with the added touch of automated notifications. ... 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