Latest Contributions by AmyNiessen

Article written by Amy Niessen with contributions from Ciara Rowland-Simms On Wednesday, May 15th the Cardiff R&D Center co-hosted a Rust and C++ birthday party at Yolk Recruitment to celebrate Rust's 4th Birthday! Despite short notice, we were able to get the word out in time for a nice mixture of full-time freelance and hobbyist programmers as well as a few students to join us. Quite a few people expressed interest in helping out with future events while demonstrating a lot of enthusiasm for a Rust/C++ community in Cardiff!  To begin, you can't have a party without cake, and to celebrate the birthday properly, you can see the cake and Ferris the crab, which was made from icing by Jack Kelly's partner, Sofia.   We then began to introduce our speakers. We had Dan Morgan from DevOpsGroup, Ciara Rowland-Simms from Esri, Chris Light from Esri, and Jack Kelly from DevOpsGroup, with Chris doubling as MC for the event.   The first two talks were about learning new languages, specifically Rust and C++. Dan had never done C++ before until that week and spoke on the confusion you face when trying to find best practices and up to date learning materials online. His talk will be part of series documenting his journey into C++, driven by advice from the audience about what resources to use next!   Ciara did a talk on learning Rust, having also never used the language. By contrast, there is very coherent documentation story for Rust as it is a very modern language. The learning experience was therefore comparatively painless and she was able to cover install and setup, including debugging, along with discussing some cool and some controversial Rust language features (such as the heavy use of macros, the ability to do shadowing of variables, and implicit returns).   Chris’s talk was Modern C++: ACCU 2019 revelations and covered some of the cool new features of C++ 20. He also discussed C++ 17 and more broadly the modernization of the language. The talk provoked some really good discussion on some of the network capabilities that are lacking in the standard library and provided a great space for talking about where the language is moving.   The final talk was a dive in Rust best practices, helpful tips, formatting and linting tools, and how easy CI/CD can be with Rust. He really highlighted why people are so excited about Rust and how easily it can leveraged to hit the ground running even with only limited experience in the language.   In the end, we had some specific language questions, which is always good. It seemed there were a lot of really good discussions taking place during the event and, of course, people already sharing excitement in the anticipation of future meetups.    Going forward, we also hope to bring in more speakers – which hopefully won’t be difficult given the enthusiasm from audience members at our first event! We really liked having talks which were a mixture of beginner accessible and provoking good discussion for more experienced developers. We struck that balance pretty well this time and hope to do so again in future meetups. Overall, we were really pleased with how the event went and are really excited to see the beginning of a Cardiff C++/Rust community where we can all learn from each other and grow! We look forward to the next meetup and will be sure to announce it on the Meetup.com page. Be sure to follow it to stay in the loop on our next adventure! ... View more

Last month we hosted a unique GeoDev Webinar when we had Manushi Majumdar share her presentation on "Thinking Spatially and Statistically". Manushi introduced types and characteristics of spatial data and advanced GIS analysis techniques. She was able to cover a few basic concepts of statistics and show how they differ in a spatial context, advancing towards Spatial Machine Learning with ArcGIS.  Here are the questions that were received during the webinar along with their respective answers:   Q: What is the difference between machine learning and statistics? For example, with regression, is there a difference? This always puzzles me! A: Here is a resource to understand the difference: https://www.kdnuggets.com/2016/11/machine-learning-vs-statistics.html Q: Is there any geo-processing tools in built in ArcGIS for running machine learning algorithms? A: Yes, ArcGIS has support for several Machine Learning techniques. We would suggest looking this blog post to learn more about ML support within ArcGIS Desktop. https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/arcgis-pro/analytics/machine-learning-in-arcgis/ Q: Can you provide the link to the notebook again? A: Hub-Tutorials/GeoDev_ServiceRequests.ipynb at master · esridc/Hub-Tutorials · GitHub  Q: Are there any other good resources for finding examples of utilizing Machine Learning with GIS? A: Here are just a few ArcGIS blogs demonstrating examples: https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/product/analytics/density-based-clustering-exploring-fatal-car-accident-data-to-find-systemic-problems/ https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/arcgis-pro/analytics/using-forest-based-classification-and-regression-to-model-and-estimate-house-values/ https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/arcgis-enterprise/analytics/the-science-of-where-seagrasses-grow-arcgis-and-machine-learning/?rmedium=redirect&rsource=blogs.esri.com/esri/arcgis/2017/09/18/the-science-of-where-seagrasses-grow-arcgis-and-machine-learning   Q: Spatial Join: I see the tool has capability to join two layers with out common attributes . But can this be done on multiple layers in a single shot? The built-in tool has only option to select two layers. What are the options? A: Join works on a 1:1 principle, you can only join one layer to another. That said you can use the concept of table 'Relate' to join one table to many using a common attribute in those tables (does not work spatially). Q: Is it possible to integrate ArcGIS with machine learning software like Jupiter notebook? A: You can use ArcPy as well as the ArcGIS API for Python in Jupyter notebooks.  Q: Is there a way to use machine learning to predict or project possible future incident locations without assigning a z-value? A: Z-score (standard score) denotes the number of standard deviations from the mean a data point is. Simply put, it conveys the distribution of a point around the mean. Prediction or Classification does not need z-scores for input variables. Q: Could you walk us through the hotspot analysis? How do you access these tools? A: Read through this https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/tool-reference/spatial-statistics/h-how-hot-spot-analysis-getis-ord-gi-spatial-stati.htm to learn more about HotSpot Analysis. It can be accessed within the Spatial Statistics (Mapping Clusters) toolbox in ArcGIS Desktop and under the Analyze Patterns category in ArcGIS Online. Q: Can we do the machine learning analyses using 10.6 geoprocessing tools? A: Yes, apart from the usual, ArcGIS Desktop 10.6 comes with two new tools Deep Learning Model To End and Export Training Data For Deep Learning.  Q: I have a GIS online account. How can I access the data demonstration in ArcGIS online? A: The data I used for my examples is publicly available. Once you add it to your ArcGIS Online account, you can use the Summarize Center and Dispersion tool there to generate spatial mean, median and standard dispersion for your data. Q: How can I use ArcGIS for linear regression or logistical regression analysis? A: Support for regression, both linear and logistic, is available in ArcGIS Desktop Spatial Statistics (Modeling Spatial Relationships) toolbox. Click here https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/tool-reference/spatial-statistics/an-overview-of-the-modeling-spatial-relationships-toolset.htm to learn more. Q: Is machine learning part of programming, or is it remote sensing? A: Machine Learning involves concepts of statistics as well as algorithms to solve problems based on patterns or inferences drawn from data. Remote sensing, on the other hand, involves studying the planet using remote instruments. Machine Learning can have applications in the field of Remote Sensing, for instance, to detect buildings, roads using satellite imagery data. Q: Is the Jupyter environment embedded directly within Esri ML module? A: ArcGIS Enterprise 10.7 comes with Hosted Notebooks, that lets you perform spatial analysis and data science workflows in a notebook within your portal. Other than that, you can use ArcPy or ArcGIS API for Python in an external Jupyter Notebook too. Q: Which interpolation techniques suits best when you are dealing with underground water data? A: While it depends on your sampling size and distance, Kriging might be a good Interpolation technique. Q: Please suggest out-of-the-box tools provided by ArcGIS for machine learning algo. A: Yes, ArcGIS has support for several Machine Learning techniques. I'd suggest looking this blog post to learn more about ML support within ArcGIS Desktop. https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/arcgis-pro/analytics/machine-learning-in-arcgis/ For more information, Manushi shared her presentation: GeoDev Webinar - Thinking Spatially and Statistically Also, for the full recording of the webinar, click here. ... View more

Article contributed to and authored by Satish Sankaran, Max Payson, and Amy Niessen Last week, the FOSS4G community landed in San Diego for its 2019 North American conference. Esri participated in the event as a silver sponsor and, given its proximity to Esri’s home base in Redlands, many employees were able to attend. FOSS4G is an amazing event for developers and GIS geeks interested in emerging technologies, so we were excited to share our projects and to engage with thought leaders in the geospatial community.   The event kicked off with lightning talks and networking events, which dovetailed into devoted presentations and workshops. While it had a developer focus, many of the presentations provided gentle introductions to hot topics – AI/ML, blockchain, microservices, containers, and serverless computing were all covered. Presenters discussed how these buzzwords can help scale storage, compute, and insight to solve increasingly complex challenges. Many presentations were also grounded by real-world projects, from disseminating 14 trillion USGS LIDAR points to achieving the UN’s sustainable development goals.   Colleagues from Esri shared their work with presentations at the event from Atma Mani presenting "Let's Take the Machines House Hunting" using Python and Jupyter Notebooks, Thomas Maurer presenting "LERC - Fast Compression of Images and Tensors", highlighting low-level libraries like LERC for raster compression, and Tamrat Belayneh presenting "I3S - An Open Standard to Bring 3D to Web, Desktop, and Mobile Platforms", introducing the OGC community standard I3S spec. We also appreciated hearing Howard Butler acknowledge our contributions to the GDAL Coordinate System barn-raising effort in his presentation. As an important vendor in the GIS space, we are happy support fundamental initiatives like these that help build core libraries used extensively by the community.   While many attendees were familiar with Esri software and some even active users, at the Esri booth, the conversations extended beyond traditional ArcGIS workflows often discussed at Esri events. We enjoyed learning from others’ diverse perspectives and expertise, and it was reassuring to see community validation regarding steps we are taking in the areas of 3D, interoperable data science, and with our Developer program. Esri continues to push forward on its Open Platform vision – a vision that includes support for standards, interoperability, open data and open source. And, we are constantly looking for better ways to engage with developers and support their work.   While large software business may share complex relationships with the open source world, Esri’s role in the GIS realm has always been community focused. We hope to continue to grow the community of GIS users and developers and FOSS initiatives are an important subsystem contributing to this growth. ... View more

If you missed out on DevSummit this year, or are just looking to re-live it, the following are the Top 20 technical sessions you may want to check out. First… what does "Top” mean really? Well, some we included due to them being some of the most popular sessions of the week, and some we chose because of the session room was really full, or flat out overfull. But then, some of the sessions below introduced some new products and capabilities, and we wanted to take one more shot at ensuring you know about them. Ok, here we go, in no particular order:   0 – Real Software Engineering It's not uncommon for some to assert that software development isn't, or should not be considered "engineering". We were lucky to have as a Keynote Speaker, Glenn Vanderburg, the VP of Engineering at First.io. Glenn gave an interesting talk exploring the concept of "engineering" and how it applies to the pursuit of building powerful software applications. Glenn does a clever job exploring this idea--showing that, while software engineering has aspects that are fairly unique compared to other engineering fields, there are other aspects that not only show that it can be considered engineering, but that when it comes to designing, testing, scaling, deploying good software, and collectively learning from what we all do, for us to get the most from technology it should be treated as, and practiced as an engineering discipline.   1 - High-End 3D Visualization with CityEngine, Unity, and Unreal GIS and Game Engines--interesting combination. And the future is here today. Game-like interactive experiences, whether on the screen or in VR/AR, are the next big step in 3D GIS. In this session, you will get an introductory guide to Unity and Unreal, the leading game engines. You will learn to load your map data up into a virtual world, one where you can walk through realistically rendered city models or to explore interactive storytelling of your 3D project.   2 – ArcGIS API for JavaScript: What's New This was THE most heavily attended session at DevSummit this year (that didn't have "Road Ahead" in the title). Web developers make up the largest part of the global developer community building with ArcGIS, and the developers and engineers at Esri responsible for growing this API continue adding many new capabilities each release. For web developers, hitting up the annual What's New session is near the top of their lists of things to do. And now you can too.   3 - Using Insights for ArcGIS with Python and R New this year, Insights has been enhanced so that developers and data scientists can now extend the capabilities with both Python and R for analysis and visualization.   4 - ArcGIS Runtime SDKs: Everything (or Anything) You Wanted to Know But Were Afraid to Ask Live Q&A session. No slides, no demos, just all of the ArcGIS Runtime SDK developer leads. They all covered topics such as Metal, Vulkan, React Native, editing, snapping, Arcade, samples, styling 2D and 3D, and more. And here is the full list of questions that were answered by the panel of developers and engineers on the ArcGIS Runtime teams.    5 – ArcGIS Enterprise: Architecting Your Deployment "This is not a very GIS-y presentation, and I'm not doing any live coding...", says ArcGIS Enterprise product manager Philip Heede. Despite that caution, this session continues to be very popular in Palm Springs year after year. The title says it all. Optimizing your resources, storage, and performance starts with a solid architecture that fits the needs of your organization, apps, databases, and users.   6 - Extending Survey123 for ArcGIS Sure, Survey123 has been one of the most popular end-user apps for a couple years now, but given this is DevSummit, this session looks into ways developers can now extend the app, to customize it further to make it more closely fit your workflows, such as writing JavaScript functions, creating Add-ins, using Webhooks, and rebranding the app.   7 - Using Webhooks in ArcGIS Enterprise This. Demo. Theater. Was. OVERFULL. All chairs taken, standing room only, spilling out into the Showcase. This was easily the most popular demo theater of the week. If you got there too late, then today you're in luck. Here's the 30-min video... enjoy! Webhooks: They're Better Than Polling!   8 - Integrating Machine Learning and Deep Learning with ArcGIS During the Plenary session, Rohit Singh invited everyone to follow him into "the exciting world of pavement cracks". 🙂 Well, this session here is a more complete version. This was the second most highly attended demo theater of the week. Also standing room only. In this session, Rohit demonstrated how organizations can detect deep and complex spatiotemporal patterns in their data, and use that to predict geospatial events of interest – at scale, and in real-time. And if you like this 30-min session, don’t miss the 4+ hours of machine learning "deep dive” here.     9 - ArcGIS Data Store Management: Best Practices This was a new session this year, but with almost 300 attendees in the room, its popularity is clear. We bet you will find this information useful as well. In this session, after a brief intro about what the Data Store is, how it works, and what it can do for you, the presenters dig into how to install and configure it, followed by techniques for backing up, restoring, moving, and upgrading the Data Store.   10 - Using Webpack and React with the ArcGIS API for JavaScript Modern frameworks continue to make robust and powerful web app development better. In this session, you'll learn to integrate the ArcGIS API for JavaScript via the ArcGIS webpack plugin or esri-loader, and then use React to build a fast and responsive application that uses some of these modern tooling and techniques.   11 - Network Management with ArcGIS: Introduction to the Utility Network We put this session in the wrong room--way too small. If you tried to get in, and couldn't, then this is what you missed. Next year, the update to this session will be much better placed.   12 - What's New in Collector for ArcGIS One of the most popular apps over the past several years, the Esri Apps team gave a rundown--to a full house--on all the new capabilities of Collector, and what their plans are for the future, so that you can get the most from your field data collection. As they say "Accurate Data Collection Made Easy!"   13 - Interacting with Hosted Feature Layers through the ArcGIS REST API Yet another overfull demo theater session. Although ArcGIS Online has a rich user interface for working with Hosted Feature Layers, there are some advanced features that developers can use for interacting with these web services using the ArcGIS REST API.   14 - Tools for the Modern Web Developer When pulling together this session, Josh and Gavin from Esri Professional Services ask themselves: "What tools improved our workflows the most over the past year?”. So in 30 minutes, they went and covered helpful techniques for using Postman, Visual Studio Code, and open source tools from Esri for working with Calcite Maps, React, Angular, and Ember.   15 - Building Native Cross-Platform Apps with AppStudio: Advanced Topics DevSummit attendees really like sessions with the word "Advanced" in the title. In this talk, we dig into some new capabilities, such as leveraging other geolocation tech with your apps, using Bluetooth, Beacons, and high-accuracy GNSS receivers. Also demonstrated is the new extension for developing AppStudio apps with the Visual Studio Code development environment.   16 - Roadmap for BIM-GIS Interoperability As soon as GIS introduced 3D capability, users started experimenting with putting one of the most widely created 3D data types in GIS context, Building Information Modeling (BIM) data. This session covers best practices and techniques for using BIM data in ArcGIS, along with a road map for where things are going.   17 - Continuously Delivered Scalable Geoservices on Kubernetes Containerization is hot. It’s a sharply growing trend in the IT industry, improving the automation, scalability, and management of apps, services, data, users, and organizational workflows. In this session, developers from Esri's Washington DC R&D Center cut to the chase on how to use Kubernetes and Jenkins, and their useful abstractions, for automating and managing the creation and use of containers, so that you can continuously deliver scalable web services.   18 - ArcGIS Pro SDK for .NET: Understanding the CIM, a Guide for Developers CIM == Cartographic Information Model. While the Pro SDK provides classes and methods for the most commonly used aspects of rendering layers and managing map layouts, the CIM opens that box up all the way. Access to the CIM gives ArcGIS Pro developers access to all of these much more advanced capabilities. This session digs right in, showing you techniques you'll find useful right away.   19 – Improving your Web App through UI/UX Best Practices With so many great GIS tools around, why isn't map app design a slam dunk? This session teaches you that great UX is more than the sum of its parts and explains how to design more compelling User Interfaces. We'll cover fundamental building blocks of successful applications and introduce ways to improve the total experience.   Tied for 20 - 242, all of the other videos that you can find here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaPDDLTCmy4Y0GMTl0O4V6LF3EmxIAivv Let us know what you think! ... View more

In March, Chris LeSueur, Erwin Soekianto, and James Tedrick presented the GeoDev Webinar, "Extending Survey123 Field App Using AppStudio for ArcGIS". Coming fresh out of DevSummit, they had a lot of new information to share and thought it would be great to do so in a webinar.  There were a lot of great questions to come out of the webinar, which are shared below. You can also find a link to the recording of the webinar, along with a slide deck of their presentation after the Q&A section. Q&A Q: When using Survey123, will we always be using QML? A: If you are going to customize the code of the Survey123 app, then you will be writing in QML & JavaScript. Q: A complaint I have had for the past two years is that the buttons when you close a survey are so small. I am usually in the field with sun in my eyes, and with and huge fingers, it is difficult to choose one option to save/discard/close. Is there anything that can be done about this? A: Thank you for the feedback. This is something that could be customized using AppStudio. Q: Does it need to be driven by ArcGIS Online or Portal? Or can we connect directly to ArcGIS Server Services? A: Survey123 for ArcGIS is designed to work with forms that are stored in ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Enterprise. Q: How do I modify a Survey123 app for any time I create a new version of it? Do I put a version number or something like that? A: With AppStudio, every time you make changes and upload your apps to your organization account, the version number will increase. You can always save previous versions for your archives. Q: Does AppStudio honor smart form functionality of Survey123? Mine does not; am I doing something wrong?  A: The Survey123 Template features the full smart form capabilities of Survey123. Q: AppStudio puts image and geopoint questions first no matter what the order in the Survey123 form - how do we change this? A: By default, the Quick Report template has this behavior, but Survey123 honors the question ordering in the form. Q: Using the Survey123 template goes through the app gallery instead of opening the survey directly - how do we bypass this? A: Yes, you could customize the code of Survey123 using AppStudio to directly open a survey when the app is opened. Q: With the live "Compass" info, what if you have a high accuracy GPS connected via bluetooth? Will the app use the GPS or the device's compass? A: That would depend on how the Compass was implemented. It could either always use the mobile device's compass or be configured to use the current location provider. Q: Can I set up my own template for creating sites? A: Yes, AppStudio lets you create your own App Template that you can reuse to build your own apps. Q: Is it recommended to delete the forms not used in your custom app to improve performance? A: The number of forms shouldn't have an impact on performance. Q: How is AppStudio different from Survey123 Connect? A: AppStudio is an environment for creating custom applications; Survey123 Connect is an environment for authoring and publishing forms. Q: I have some faculty who want a form that will re-order a checklist based on counts of other reports nearby, similar to eBird's checklist app, but for non-avian observations. Would this be possible to create using AppStudio? A: Yes, this would be possible, but it would definitely require some customer code in the Survey123 app and most likely a custom geoprocessing service that queries a feature. Q: When are you expecting the Add-in capability to be available? A: The Survey123 add-in capability will be added to the Early Adopter Community in the near future; we anticipate a formal beta release around the Esri User Conference (UC). Q: Can I display previous data into a new Survey123 so, for example, previous data + new collected data = new sum? A: Yes, this is possible with out of the box Survey123 using the Inbox feature. Q: Can you show where you would add the printer info? A: This gets into some advanced development that, unfortunately, we cannot fully address here. You can start by looking at some of our samples in AppStudio desktop that works with hardware devices such as the "GNNSInfo" and BarcodeReader" Samples. Q: Is Survey123 now able to display custom maps on the web? Currently we are able to load our custom map on the surveyConnect but it doesn't show up on the browser. A: Thank you for the feedback; this enhancement is something we are considering for a future release. Q: With this AppStudio, can we customize the base maps to suit our need or change them to use our customized maps? A: You can set the maps in the out of the box Survey123 by manually configuring map settings; please see http://doc.arcgis.com/en/survey123/desktop/create-surveys/includemap.htm. Q: How can we prepare maps by Collector apps? A: Please see http://doc.arcgis.com/en/survey123/desktop/create-surveys/includemap.htm for configuring custom maps with Survey123. Q: Can you customize time/location stamp with fonts and placement of text on the image? A: Yes, you can customize the time-stamp on the image. Q: Can you use this to add view only data to the basemap used in a geopoint question of a survey? A: Yes, this is a possible customization of the Survey123 template. Q: I am having trouble with white-labeling the Survey123 app. I keep getting an error for invalid redirect URI when trying to connect to our Enterprise Portal. I have tried adding the http and https urls to the redirect properties but cannot get it to work. Our portal url is https://gis.kelleynetowrk.com/portal. What would be the correct format for the redirect URI? A: Please see the documentation on the ArcGIS Developers site concerning mobile redirects: https://developers.arcgis.com/documentation/core-concepts/security-and-authentication/mobile-and-native-user-logins/. Q: Can the new Survey123 work with sso IWA on Portal?  A: Survey123 can work with IWA. Q: Can AppStudio work with the report(beta) functions in survey123.arcgis.com? A: The report functionality is a REST-based service; it would be possible for an AppStudio app to trigger a feature report request. Q: Since we have to upload the code who owns the IP of the code? A: Esri maintains ownership of the original code, but you will own any modifications you make to the code. When you distribute the app, you must acknowledge Esri somewhere within the app. Q: What kind of documentation for development and API is available outside of the blog shown? A: AppStudio has an extensive documentation with a examples and API documentation. See: https://doc.arcgis.com/en/appstudio/.  Q: How do you measure the length of a pipe? A: For doing things like measuring the length of a pipe, you may want to investigate the Spike GPS product; it can integrate with Survey123: https://www.esri.com/esri-news/releases/18-1qtr/esri-releases-survey123-for-arcgis-with-new-spike-integration. Q: What licensing conditions apply to apps created with AppStudio? For example, what restrictions would apply to a Survey123 app created using the template?  A: The Survey123 template is licensed under the Apache 2 open source license; no additional encumbrances apply from it. Q: Is there a reason to incorporate Collector along with Survey123? A: There are several customers who use both Collector and Survey123 in their workflow, for example, using a Collector map for overview and asset inventorying while using Survey123 for asset inspection. These applications can also be linked to open the other at appropriate points; see http://doc.arcgis.com/en/survey123/reference/integratewithotherapps.htm. Q: How compatible is Survey123 with ArcGIS Pro? A: Survey123 and ArcGIS Pro can both work with feature services, allowing both to operate on the same data. Q: Can you share a customized app in ArcGIS Online using groups? A: Yes, with AppStudio you can create apps and share them with other users in your ArcGIS Organization, which they can download and run in AppStudio Player. Think of it as similar to how you can share a web map with someone in your ArcGIS Organization, except this time you are sharing a native app and they are running in AppStudio Player instead of a browser. Q: Can you collect data via app player? A: Yes, you can run an app inside of AppStudio Player that collects data. Q: What's the cost to further enhance Survey123 in AppStudio?  A: Customizing the Survey123 template with AppStudio requires an AppStudio Standard license. The AppStudio Standard license is included with a paid ArcGIS Developer Subscription (Builder level or above). Review more information here: https://developers.arcgis.com/pricing/compare-plans/. Q: Will this solve the issue of not being able to capture images on existing feature service data? We do inspections of existing features, but Survey123 does not allow for capturing. A: Yes, it would be possible to customize Survey123 to support image attachments while editing existing features. Q: What would be the best way to auto-populate fields in Survey123 from feature layers in a Web App? A: To populate data from a web application into Survey123, you would use URL parameters to load the data. See http://doc.arcgis.com/en/survey123/reference/integratewithotherapps.htm for more information. Q: Can you bring in Feature services from your own organizational ArcServer? A: Survey123 works with ArcGIS Enterprise, and through it, can connect to a feature service on an organizational ArcGIS Server. Q: Earlier you mentioned add-ons as a future feature. Can you provide more details on this? A: The Survey123 add-in capability will be added to the Early Adopter Community in the near future; we anticipate a formal beta release around the Esri User Conference (UC). Q: What would you say are the main differences between WebApp builder and AppStudio? What might be some examples of when you would want to use one over the other?   A: Web AppBuilder gives you a widget-based experience for building web applications that run inside a browser. AppStudio is for developing apps that get installed as standalone applications and can be published to app stores or distributed as installation files. Q: Is QML accessing the native APIs of iOS and Android? A: When you write in QML, you are not accessing the native APIs directly, but you are accessing them through Qt/QML components. This allows you to write an app once in QML and have it work on multiple platforms. Also, with AppStudio, you get the AppStudio Framework, which is a set of QML components that give you cross-platform access to things like biometric authentication, barcode scanning, and more. Q: Is Esri planning to make the photo branding as an option in a future release without needing to code it yourself? A: Thank you for the feedback; this enhancement is something we are considering for a future release. Q: Can you change the lat long to UTMs? A: Survey123 can display UTM coordinates out-of-the-box via both the Map Settings and by using the pulldata() function; please refer to the "Coordinate Format" section of http://doc.arcgis.com/en/survey123/desktop/create-surveys/geopoints.htm#ESRI_SECTION1_0C78C5A67E824AC9A4EB47693D47D151. Q: Do developers need a paid license? What is the entry level price for a developer? A: The AppStudio Standard license is included with a paid ArcGIS Developer Subscription (Builder level or above). You can read more information here: https://developers.arcgis.com/pricing/compare-plans/. Q: Without customization, can Survey123 fetch data from a database at runtime and display in a drop-down menu? A: Thank you for the feedback; this enhancement is something we are considering for a future release. Q: What level of accuracy do you get from the photo coordinates? A: Photos taken in Survey123 will inherit location accuracy of the GPS receiver connected to Survey123 at the time. Q: What is the cost of the Survey123 app? A: Survey123 is included in the Fieldworker, Creator, and Pro user roles; it is also available for purchase as an added license on top of the Editor role. Please refer to the ArcGIS Online Pricing page for additional details. Q: When a survey is resubmitted, is it possible to get an API trigger to be used in Microsoft flow?  A: Support for an 'editing data' (resubmit) event is coming in the next version of Survey123. Q: Is xForms the area where you could make fields required to be filled out before they are submitted? A: Yes, required questions are part of the xForms/XLSForms form definition. Q: Can you load previous surveys created in Connect into here and change those settings? A: When creating a custom version of the Survey123 app, it will have support of the full XLSForm standard shown in Survey123 Connect; any customization made may not show in Survey123 Connect, but can pass through to the custom application without problems. Q: Is AppStudio considered to be a mobile native or hybrid application? A: AppStudio apps are native mobile applications written in QML and JavaScript. Q: Is it possible to combine the Augmented Reality app with survey options (take pic, record voice, and answer survey question, for example)? A: Yes, this is possible with customer code. Take a look at the "AuGeo" template included with the "Enterprise Templates" in AppStudio Desktop. You could combine AuGeo with the functionality from the Quick Report template or Survey123. Q: Would the image attachments work in ArcMap 10.1 from Survey123? A: Survey123 stores image data as standard attachments readable by ArcMap. Q: Can the Inbox be customized to show pictures from a submitted form?  A: Yes, this could be a possible customization enhancement. Q: Can the Inbox be customized to increase the limit beyond 1000? A: Yes, this could be a possible customization enhancement. Q: How can we record time in the correct time zone? It shows the right time zone when collecting, but writes in UTC. A: ArcGIS Online stores database time in UTC, which may cause an issue when viewing times in software that is not time zone aware. A Survey123 form can be designed to store the device's offset from UTC, which could be used to calculate the local time. Q: Can this (record time in correct time zone) be done in Survey123, or does it have to be customized in AppStudio? A: Yes, this could be a possible customization by pre-adjusting the time, though technically, the data would be stored at the wrong time. Q: If I want to submit data to a different database, does AppStudio use the webhooks with Microsoft Flow or is Flow no longer needed? A: There are two different options described for writing data to a different database: 1) Use a webhook and webhook provider to create a copy of the data in another data system, or 2) use AppStudio to customize where the data is sent to. These are independent; the customized application would not need to use a webhook provider like Microsoft Flow. Q: Is there a AppStudio template for Collector? A: No, we do have a data capture template that does all that Collector for ArcGIS can do, but take a look at the Quick Report template; it is a good example of editing Feature Layer data (points/lines/polys). Q: What would the main customer base be for this service within Google Maps platform? A: Survey123 and AppStudio are designed to work with Esri's Geospatial Cloud. Q: Is it possible to read the bearing from the sensor on the device rather than manually inputting it?  A: Yes, this could be a possible customization enhancement. Q: Is it possible to work with geometry like line polygon? A: Polygon and line capture support are now in beta testing in Survey123; please visit Survey123's Early Adopter Community (https://bit.ly/S123beta) for more information. For additional questions that came up at the end of the webinar, please be sure to view the recording: https://www.esri.com/en-us/landing-page/product/2018/geodev-webinar-series/extending-survey123-field-app-using-appstudio-for-arcgis You will also see useful links and tips from our presenters at the end of both the recording and the presentation.  So that was March's GeoDev Webinar! What would you be interested in seeing put together in a GeoDev webinar? We are always looking for great developer topics to incorporate, so we're all ears! Comment your suggestion below! ... View more

In the month of September, Rene Rubalcava and Noah Sager hosted a GeoDev Webinar on "Using TypeScript with the ArcGIS API for JavaScript". This webinar was focused on helping developers to get started with using TypeScript when building web applications. At the end of the webinar, we had a lot of great questions come in, which you can check out in the GeoDev Webinar video that was recorded. But there were also quite a few questions that came in that did not get addressed during hte recording, so we'd like to address them here: Q: So this is with ArcGIS JavaScript + typescript + React? A: We only showed one sample with React https://github.com/odoe/ts-webinar-examples/blob/master/ts-features/app/dynamic-imports.tsx. Q: So can we do this with Angular CLI ArcGIS JavaScript + typescript and maybe React? A: Angular CLI 6 does not have eject, this might be possible in a future Angular-CLI release. This does work with React. Q: Can we use Angular CLI + ArcGIS JavaScript Cli A: Angular CLI 6 does not have eject, this might be possible in a future Angular-CLI release. Q: Which framework should be used? Vue, React, Angular or Knockout? A: The JSAPI has no preference. You can see various guides here - https://github.com/Esri/jsapi-resources/tree/master/frameworks. Q: Can you intermingle the use of the Angular CLI and the Esri CLI? A: Angular CLI 6 does not have eject, this might be possible in a future Angular-CLI release. Q: Did you discuss 4.9 features? A: Yes Q: Is there support for multiple ArcGIS Portal use? Ie Webmap from one portal item, Featurelayer from different portal, portal item? A: Yes, you can instantiate multiple Portals in a single application. Q: Using the ArcGIS/CLI, is there a cache to clear or some way to ensure that an updated version works correctly? A: You can run npm update to see if there are newer modules you can use. Q: When will 3.x features (like SnappingManager, etc.) be migrated from 3.x to 4.x? Is there any performance difference between 3.x and 4.x? A: These features are planned in iterative releases over the next few releases in the JSAPI. Performance with larger amounts of data will scale better in 4x. Q: Is it necessary to use esriloader to import modules of the API? A: No, it is not. Q: Do you know if the angular esriloader is also importable vs. require?  A: You should be able to import it for use in applications as well. Q: Sometimes I struggle with getting access to the current map via child components, so I am always looking for advice on best practices or patterns for sharing map instances across components in angular (I know this isn't really an angular webinar, but I thought I'd throw this out there anyways). A: This can be handled via some form of state management, possibly with injectable services in your components. Q: I'm using const[EsriMapViw] = await loadModules([esri/views/MapView] to load modules. Is this now obsolete? A: You can continue using esriLoader if you want to in certain instances, but is not required in most applications. Q: Is ArcGIS API compatible with Angular ? A: Yes. Q: What is  CLI? A: Command Line Interface Q: Can my JQuery functions run in a Type Script project? A: Yes Q: In Tsconfig.json >> module: "AMD".  What are the options besides AMD? A: None, "CommonJS", "AMD", "System", "UMD", "ES6", "ES2015" or "ESNext" Q: Using promis is the most difficult part of ArcGIS Api for JavaScript. Do you mean using Typescript makes it easier? A: You can use async/await. I don't think it's much easier. It is a good idea to get more familiar with Async and Promises in JavaScript. It is not unique the JSAPI. Q: Will you have any big change on ArcGIS API for Javascript 5.0 like 3.x to 4.x? A: We currently have not made plans for a 5.0. Q: Is Typescript more relevant than JavaScript? A: TypeScript is a superset of JavaScript. I wouldn't call it more relevant. In our experience, it scales well and helps us write safer code. Q: How can we load base maps using TypeScript? A: It works the same as loading them in JavaScript. Q: What is the different between JavaScript and TypeScript? A: TypeScript provides type safety. Q: I've noticed that you use export = foo and at other times export someFunction. I know export = allows you to workaround the ClassName.default issue in vanilla JS. Do you have an internal rule for when and how to use the type of export functions? A: In writing applications we do either export const foo = something or export default Foo. No need to do export = foo. Usually I export default classes and export other helper functions. No hard and fast rules. Q: Is there a link to the cli documentation? A: GitHub - Esri/arcgis-js-cli: CLI to build a template application and widgets using the ArcGIS API for JavaScript  Q: How easy it is to use the JavaScript API with bootstrap and jQuery? Because I have encountered some issue while using it with Dojo. A: I've used them before and they work fine. Be aware that any CSS framework may overwrite CSS for native DOM, such as table, header, span, that could impact the widgets of the JSAPI. Q: Did we install a node package for ArcGIS? A: Yes. Q: Why do we want to watch viewmodel with an assessor? A: Accessor allows the ability to watch for property changes. https://developers.arcgis.com/javascript/latest/guide/implementing-accessor/index.html Q: Can you use ES6 and ArcGIS for JavaScript without TypeScript? A: Yes. Q: Could you please explain decorators? Are they part of ES6 or Typescript? And when do you apply them? A: Decorators are a stage 2 proposal in JavaScript https://tc39.github.io/proposal-decorators/ TypeScript provides them and so do other JavaScript tools like Babel. Q: Is TypeScript working with ArcGIS JavaScript 3.x? A: Yes. Q: What version of ArcGIS API for JavaScript support TypeScript? A: 3x (https://github.com/Esri/jsapi-resources/tree/master/3.x/typescript) and 4x (https://github.com/Esri/jsapi-resources/tree/master/4.x/typescript) If you have additional questions from this webinar, please leave your question in the comments section. We'd love to hear from you! ... View more

Last week Rohit Singh and Alberto Nieto hosted a GeoDev Webinar on "Integrating Deep Learning with ArcGIS Using Python". We had a lot of great questions come out of the webinar and will be updating this post to add the Q&A that were not addressed during the webinar.  Many viewers requested to have access to the PowerPoint presentation, and the presenters were more than happy to share. In their presentation, they offered access to their demos and resources that may be helpful for those developing in Python.  Webinar - DL Python Integration Did you miss the webinar? No worries! We've got you covered, as you can view the video here: Integrating Deep Learning with ArcGIS using Python  We look forward to the next GeoDev Webinar in September, "Using TypeScript with the ArcGIS API for JavaScript" with hosts Rene Rubalcava and Noah Sager. Stay tuned! ... View more