Latest Contributions by BrianBaldwin

I just had a great question from a customer: "Whenever we publish or update a map service, it's a real pain to manually click 'enable pop-up' for each layer, never mind getting all of the right attributes set up and configured again". If you are constantly adding the same map service to a map and basically want the same pop-up configuration each time, you should not manually recreate the same configuration...and you don't have to. I have experienced the same pain and honestly, never thought about looking into making this a whole lot easier on myself. But, in looking for an answer, I stumbled across a fantastic tool for the job that is put out by Esri: ArcGIS Online Assistant (it also includes some great other functionality for copying items, updating urls, etc). If you have never visited the link, now is the time. After you log in to your organization, click I Want To, and then select View an Item's JSON. All of the pop-up configuration is saved on the feature layer level. So, select a web map that has a layer with some pop-up configurations that you never want to manually rebuild again. On the right hand side of the screen you will be presented with all of the web map's JSON. For this little exercise, scroll down to the Data section. Now, you can see all of the operational layers and also, any of the layers, which include a popupInfo parameter (if pop-ups were setup).   Now, just copy the entire Data field and save it out to a local text editor. Or, select specific operational layers to save. You can now restore or 'build' those custom pop-ups that you painstakingly built out at a moments notice! As noted in the ArcGIS Online Assistant tool, the JSON Editing feature is a 'Do At Your Own Risk' exercise and you should certainly use a JSON validator prior to updating any code... so proceed with caution and make sure you understand the risk. In my test, I saved the entire Data field. Next, I went back to ArcGIS Online and created a new web map with the same operational layers, but without any pop-ups enabled. After saving this new web map and going back to the AGO Assistant tools, I began editing the Data field (As always... PLEASE SAVE OUT ANY JSON YOU ARE GOING TO OVERWRITE FIRST TO ENSURE THAT YOU CAN RECOVER IF THINGS GO AWRY) and simply pasted the configured JSON in and saved it. After returning back to the new web map... all of the pop-ups were configured and ready to roll. ... View more

If you needed another reason to run off to Palm Springs this winter, Sap & Esri just announced a Spatial Hackathon event that will take place at the Developers Summit. For more details and to register, head over to the event's page: SAP | SAP + Esri Spatial Hackathon  ... View more

We can all agree, drones are pretty cool. Yet, as the 'ooo's' and 'aahhh's' start to diminish after you pull it out of the box, people start to wonder how it can provide value to your organization. Just west of LA, is an area called the Cajon Pass and it plays a critical role in Southern California. Not only does a major rail corridor and interstate travel through the pass, but there are some major transmission lines travelling through as well. Just last year (2016), there was a big wildfire (Blue Cut Fire) that ended up burning 37,000 acres. The interstate ended up getting closed, rail was impacted, and the fire burned right under 500 kVa conductor. The fire was incredibly disruptive, but could have been even more so if any of the transmission lines had been taken out. So, a few of us decided to take a road trip over to a small section of the Cajon Pass that didn't burn during the fire, which would provide a chance to see how vegetation could impact the transmission line in a future fire. Along with monitoring the vegetation, we wanted to accomplish a couple of things: Conduct tower inspections in the field using Drone2Map Build out orthomosaics to show the right of way (ROW) Create point clouds of the transmission towers Determine where vegetation could threaten the conductor The goal was also to accomplish all of this with out of the box Esri tools. Recent software releases from Esri now provide customers with the ability to process, analyze, share, and view ortrhomosaics, point clouds, and inspections within core software. Inspections The first flight that we conducted was a free flight, to capture some of the detail on the transmission tower. We wanted to see how a drone could be used to get more detail than conducting a ground based visual inspection. One of the cool things about Drone2Map, is the ability to use it as a field application. After landing the drone, we pulled out the SD card and started a new 'Inspection' project in Drone2Map.  Drone2Map takes a few minutes to pull in all of the imagery, builds out the flights lines, and places all of this over the World Imagery Service provided by Esri. There is also an inspection viewer that opens up to let users see the detail in their photos. Includes the ability to create mark-up on the photos From the ground, it would have been impossible to discern whether there were any occupants in the couple of nests that were located on the tower. Using Drone2Map in the field would have been a great way to capture avian protection information. Ca-Caw! Imagery The next flight we conducted, was a grid. We wanted to capture photos shooting straight down at the ground, while flying over the conductor and towers. This would help us build out orthomosaics and some 3D datasets. Drone2Map provides a couple different options for how a user can build out their imagery and also provides a rapid setting so that you can see how your coverage looks while in the field. Rather then running the rapid mode, we ended up processing our imagery back in the office, so that I could build out all of the output options (DTM, DSM, and imagery). Flight paths, with ArcGIS Online World Imagery Flight paths with an orthomosaic processed in Drone2Map While Drone2Map stitches together the images to build orthomosaics, it also builds a point cloud from the imagery, which is used to create the DSM and DTM. While the point cloud is not displayed in Drone2Map, users can take that LAS output and bring it into other applications (ArcGIS Pro). Point Clouds From the previous flight, Drone2Map built out an unclassified point cloud which we will use in ArcGIS Pro in a minute. But, we also wanted to conduct a 3rd flight that orbited just the towers, to see what kind of visualization we could build out for the structures. Orbit flight path Point cloud from the orbit flight in ArcGIS Pro I also just want to make sure everyone is clear that this point cloud was not collected via a Lidar scan or with a Lidar sensor, this is built from the imagery that was flown. Vegetation Lastly, we wanted to take some of the data that was built out using Drone2Map and use ArcGIS Pro to determine the impact that vegetation could have on the conductor. By using the orthomosaic that Drone2Map built out, we can use the imagery tools in ArcGIS Pro to segment and classify the imagery. This segmented image can then be used to classify our point cloud. So, now we know where all of the vegetation is... Then, we can use the 3D Analyst tools in ArcGIS Pro to see what actual vegetation is within a certain distance of our conductor. Close While drones are really cool, there are a number of great applications for there use in the utility space. In just one short morning, we were able to conduct field inspections, build orthomosaics, and create 3D data for both visualization and vegetation management.  Recent software releases from Esri now provide customers with the ability to process, analyze, share, and view ortrhomosaics, point clouds, and inspections within core software. Lastly, all of these outputs can now be shared to the web via ArcGIS Online or Portal! So, any of the point clouds or imagery that you produce can be shared with users across your organization. ... View more

UPDATE: 1/6/2022 Well, this blog had a really good run, but it's nearly 'retired' by this point. ArcGIS Online has an updated homepage editor that does not support custom code (which is basically all this blog describes). So, this blog is still relevant for installations of ArcGIS Enterprise that do not have the new homepage (older versions of Enterprise), but that's about it. If you are looking for resources on styling the NEW homepage, the help documentation has some good resources: https://doc.arcgis.com/en/arcgis-online/administer/configure-home.htm We frequently get questions from customers about how to to style their ArcGIS Online/Portal homepages, similar to the demonstration sites that we designed for our Electric and Gas sites. This blog is going to walk through the way that we styled our homepages, as well as providing all of the source code and imagery.   Westerville Power & Light Homepage, our fictitious electric utility demonstration site.    Currently (as of July 2017) the ability to customize and configure an ArcGIS Online/Portal homepage feels pretty limiting. Yet, the fact that ArcGIS Online/Portal lets you override the default CSS, apply your own styles, and link out to external content gives you the ability to start with a completely blank slate. Rather than simply hiding all elements and starting from scratch, you can restyle many of the elements that already exist, which I will be walking through in this post.   First things first, please go and download the included CSS/HTML that was attached to this post. Also, brief caveat that I am no web designer by trade, so this CSS could certainly be improved upon syntactically (feel free to roll your eyes at any point while looking at the samples). Lastly, I prefer to use a 3rd party app (Notepad++) because as the script is pasted into ArcGIS Online/Portal, all formatting is removed.   So, let's start with a blank slate:     This is what pretty much every organization homepage starts out looking like. Eek. So, how do we make this look better? Honestly, with a couple of code snippets and images, it takes about 5 minutes.   After you open the attached .ZIP file, you will find 2 HTML files: Organization Description and Banner. The sections are titled for the sections of the ArcGIS Online/Portal settings that this code can be pasted into. The standard homepage is composed of roughly 3 different elements: 1 - Top Banner, 2 - Featured Content, and 3 - Organization Description. Open up the file titled Banner.html and we will work on styling Top Banner, Featured Content, and the background.     If you are looking at the 'Banner.html' code, the first thing you will note is the ability to override many of the Esri default styles. Everything in the <style> section is pretty much overriding defaults.   #bottomContent { background: none; box-shadow: none; border-bottom: none; } #bottomContent #organizationSection .top-nav { border-bottom: none !important; } ‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍   A lot of these declarations are just overriding the box shadows, etc that Esri applies to elements. Play around with the Chome or Firebug Developer tools, and you can look at all of the default elements to see what other elements you may want to tweak. For example, you could hide the entire FeaturedMaps element and create a fully custom page if you so desired.    In the code, the last two elements you will see in the <style> section are the #topBanner and #resback. For both of these, you can see that we are simply applying a background image to the DIV and then placing the element. #topBanner is placing the header banner image and #resBack is placing the background image at a fixed position.   In ArcGIS Online, navigate to My Organization, Edit Settings, Home Page, and set the Background Image to No Image. Then, set the Banner to 'custom design', click the code view icon, and paste in the Banner.html contents.     Looks pretty good already!   Now, on to the Organization Description. Open up the OrganizationDescription.html file. All of the styles associated with this file are just applying style to custom DIV elements that we can paste into the Organization Description. So, rather than just using text, we can create custom content and styles in this space.   What we are doing here, is just taking some basic images and applying a little bit of CSS style to get a rounded corner and a hover on a mouse over. All of these images then link out to ArcGIS Online content in the organization, or any other content you may want to link to. I have also seen folks embedding StoryMaps, Dashboards, and other content directly into the Organization Description. You can get as creative with this section as you want!   .customContent { margin-bottom: 35px; text-align: center; } .groupItem img { background-color: rgba(119,119,119,.8); -webkit-border-radius: 5px 5px 5px 5px; border-radius: 5px 5px 5px 5px; padding: 8px; margin: 0 10px 0 10px; } .groupItem:hover img { background-color: rgba(210,224,255,.4); opacity: .95; } ‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍ <div class="customContent"> <p class="groupItems"> <a class="groupItem" href="" target="_blank" title="Distribution"> <img alt="Distribution" src="distribution.png" /> </a> <a class="groupItem" href="" target="_blank" title="Transmission"> <img alt="Transmission" src="transmission.png" /> </a> <a class="groupItem" href="" target="_blank" title="Generation"> <img alt="Generation" src="generation.png" /> </a> </p> </div> ‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍ Now, take all of the OrganizationDescription.html code and navigate to Organization, Edit Settings, General, Organization Description, click the code icon, and paste everything in. After you hit save and go to Home, you'll end up with this great finished product:     If anyone comes up with some great examples, please feel free to post them in the comments! I would love to see what people come up with.    Shout out to Bernie for the initial #resBack code sample. ... View more