Latest Contributions by BrianBaldwin

UPDATE 1/4/2022: The Esri development team has been working to standardize the way that 'floor awareness' is implemented across products. As of the latest build of Field Maps (Dec. 2021), 'floor awareness' is now recognized when it is part of the web map definition. To enable a web map for floor awareness, users need to license ArcGIS Indoors and set the properties for the Floor Field in the map settings. The use of ArcGIS Dashboard for 'floor aware' filters as described in this blog is still applicable. If you have been detrimentally impacted by this change, please reach out to me directly via e-mail: [email protected]. "Do I need ArcGIS Indoors to have an indoor GIS?" I have heard this question fairly frequently from users and the short answer is 'no'. You do not 'need' ArcGIS Indoors to create an 'indoor GIS' for your campus or university. The long answer is... it all depends on what you are trying to do. ArcGIS Indoors offers a wealth of capabilities (native mobile app, space planner app, robust data model, data importation tools, etc.), but for users that just need a very basic 'indoor GIS', it might be too much. The goal of this technical blog is to walk users through how they can start using an 'indoor basic' data model that can allow them to: Create an asset viewer/finder with ArcGIS Dashboards that is building and floor aware Use ArcGIS Field Maps with floor awareness for buildings and assets as a mobile viewer Capture floor aware asset information using ArcGIS Field Maps Automate the updating of your 'non-floor aware' features with ArcGIS Notebooks A video demonstration to accompany this blog can be found here: Basic Campus Indoor GIS Getting Started: The Schema To get started,  I highly recommend reading through this documentation. This lays out the required fields and schema for creating a basic indoor data model that will work with Field Maps : https://doc.arcgis.com/en/field-maps/android/help/indoors.htm If you are feeling really lazy, you could download this Pro Project, which has the schema described in the documentation above already built out: https://arcg.is/1ey8Ca Or - if you want something a little more robust, you can grab this ArcGIS Indoors basic data model: https://arcg.is/05PWn5 The one thing I would recommend - is adding some domains to your data. If you want to collect assets, or any additional data, ensuring that your floors and buildings are defined with domains will help a lot. Also - along with the 'LEVEL_ID' field that is required for your additional assets/features to have floor awareness. I would recommend adding individual Building and Floor fields. This will allow you to have better filtering options in ArcGIS Dashboard. This is also how we will be automating the creation of the LEVEL_ID attributes with the ArcGIS Notebook. Floor Aware Dashboard Using ArcGIS Dashboard, you can take the standard schema and layers and create a powerful and flexible, interior space viewer. The only ‘trick’ to employ, is some of the nested filtering that is possible with ArcGIS Dashboards. The dashboard below uses the selectors found as part of the Header widget, to allow filtering across buildings, floors, and assets. After adding a Header, you then have the ability to add 'Category Selectors', which can be configured to provide cascading filters for your features. So - after selecting 'Baldwin' as the building, the floors selector shows only the floors that are found in that building. Then, after selecting '2nd Floor', I am filtering for only those AED's that are on the 2nd Floor of Baldwin Science. This dashboard is obviously quite basic. Yet, the same filtering logic could be applied to multiple assets, CAD floor plans, rooms, etc., to create a robust indoor asset viewer/finder. Field Maps - Floor Aware Viewing and Data Collection Out of the box - ArcGIS Field Maps has floor awareness (as long as your schema is right). If you want to enable searching by facility name, or contact name, those options can be configured in the 'map options'. Also, if you wanted to have the ability to capture 'floor aware' asset information, this is where creating domains for both the building and floor attributes is crucial. Automate Floor Aware Feature Creation There is currently no attribute rule functionality with ArcGIS Online (as of 6/30/2021) to build out a rule that could then calculate values on the fly. Also, the 'LEVEL_ID' data is a little cumbersome to build out as a domain because it has values for both building and floor. So, the workaround is to use ArcGIS Notebooks to concatenate your building and floor values, to create the standard 'LEVEL_ID' values that are required for Field Maps. Here is a sample ArcGIS Notebook that I created to update my AED feature layer. Basically, it looks for any features where the FLOOR_ID attribute is blank… and populates it. This script is kind of lame (not very pythonic) in the fact that it updates a record at a time… but it works, and it shows you the basics of scheduling an update. ArcGIS Notebook - AED Update - https://arcg.is/zGiK4 Most of the notebook above was pulled from this excellent documentation which I highly recommend reading through: Editing Features with ArcGIS Notebooks - https://developers.arcgis.com/python/guide/editing-features/ Conclusion I am really excited to see what others put together with this basic indoor data model. There is so much that can be done with indoor GIS and the configurable tools and applications that are currently available to users. When the time comes for an enterprise solution, ArcGIS Indoors is there, but a basic indoor configuration can meet a wide range of needs. A video demonstration to accompany this blog can be found here: Basic Campus Indoor GIS ... View more

ArcGIS Pro just received an update on Friday of last week (5/14) and there are some great new features for educators and students to be aware of. The general theme is better performance and enhanced productivity. For the full list of updates, please refer to these resources: What’s New in ArcGIS Pro 2.8 (brief blog): https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/arcgis-pro/announcements/whats-new-in-arcgis-pro-2-8/ What’s New in ArcGIS Pro (full documentation): https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/latest/get-started/whats-new-in-arcgis-pro.htm ArcGIS Ideas 2.8: https://youtu.be/Yeok2KffeuI For me, there are a couple specific updates that are really exciting and I’ve decided to pull out a ‘Top 4 Updates’ to highlight a few. Search Pane While it might not seem like the most exciting enhancement, from a workflow or student perspective, the new ‘search pane’ located at the top of the ArcGIS Pro UI will help users a lot. Right at the top of the UI! I’ve always used the search tool in the Geoprocessing toolbox, but you now have that same functionality, at a more macro scale, for everything within ArcGIS Pro. File Explorer Another enhancement that might not scream ‘exciting’ for users, is the fact that ArcGIS Pro now utilizes all of your File Explorer folder views/favorites. I regularly download content onto my desktop for ad-hoc usage or have content in my standard folder structure that was prior to, difficult to navigate to. Downloads, Desktop, Documents... yay! Data Engineering View This update is a great enhancement for ‘data scientist’ users, or anyone who wants to have a better view of the distribution, summary statistics, median, kurtosis, etc. for their data. Rather than running the summary statistics tool, going to the CSV, and then looking at the outputs disconnected from the map, this view ties it all together. There are also tools that allow users to manage and clean up their data based on the outliers, null values, etc. If you right click on the feature layer in the contents pane, there is a new 'Data Engineering' option under Attribute Table   Look at the skewness on that distribution! I ran this quick sample on the Living Atlas American Community Survey (ACS) data. Very quickly, I had a spatial view of poverty, but could also interrogate the statistics of the sample set as well. Copy Python Code As workflow automation grows in popularity, it only makes sense to make it easier for users to move from a UI based tool to direct python coding. If you are using ArcGIS Notebooks, students and staff can certainly work their way through the documentation to figure out the syntax of a tool, or they can simply fill out their parameters in the geoprocessing UI and then copy the syntax directly (without running the tool first). This provides a great way to learn the tools, learn python, and start automating your work. Don't need to run the tool first anymore... nice! ... View more

“OK Esri, you just overwhelmed me with 437 app updates (Which is great! Don’t get me wrong!), but I don’t have the time to dive into each of these and understand how they could help me.” Rather than providing a recap of all the recent ArcGIS Online updates, we wanted to highlight how just 2 of them provide new ways to conduct research, teach modern GIS skills, and explore some potential avenues you could take in your courses. The workflows I’ll be walking through include: Working collaboratively with non-profits, local government, or across institutions Receiving an e-mail when your authoritative apps/maps aren’t working “Hey Anytown, USA – Your Bike Infrastructure Map Was Last Updated in 1997” While it was always possible to pick up the phone, or send an e-mail to a local city, town, or non-profit and propose working jointly on a mapping initiative. The ability for ArcGIS Online organizations to partner with multiple organizations (Partnered Collaborations), now makes this incredibly easy to do. In just a few clicks, your class can work jointly with the local transportation department and update their authoritative bike lane data, create a public application for viewing current/proposed lanes, and top it off with a StoryMap to promote the collaborative effort. We hear from non-profits, local government agencies, and even campus operations staff almost daily that would do anything for some basic (or advanced!) technical assistance. In literally 2 minutes, you can send a collaboration request to another organization, add a ‘collaboration coordinator’, and then start working together. My hometown (and 10,000 others) would love a trails map, local businesses finder, points of interest app, multi-modal transportation study, the skies the limit.  source: www.chittenango.org "Great…5 of Our ‘Authoritative’ Applications Haven’t Been Working" One of the easiest updates to overlook (or for a select audience, to get overly excited about), is the ability to schedule ArcGIS Online Notebooks. But what does this update mean for higher education users? Have you ever received an e-mail from someone letting you know that a production web app is no longer working? Or loaded up an application to then see the ‘cannot load service’ message and wonder how long that’s been broken? Many times, users pull data from the Living Atlas or another 3rd party, build an amazing dashboard, and then publish it out to the world as authoritative content. This is a fantastic use case and highlights the power of ArcGIS Online, but it’s also difficult to track, manage, and administer all of the data that an application may contain (especially when it's not yours). The ability to schedule Notebooks provides a fantastic way to ensure that your authoritative content is always working (by letting you know when it’s not!). Also – there is a sample notebook already provided that you only need to configure. Check out the great sample notebooks that are already available - and then schedule away! After you configure the notebook, you can then create a ‘task’ and schedule the notebook to run at whatever interval makes the most sense for you. New 'task' pane now visible when you have a notebook loaded up. There were another 435 updates that we didn’t cover in this post, but hopefully diving into just 2 workflows for a small subset of the recent updates provides some fodder for you to try out. We obviously missed a lot, so if there are any great ‘applied’ ways you have found to use the new updates, please let us know (in the comments below)!   ... View more