Latest Contributions by JohnDye

‎01-15-2017

Currently, the SoftwareAuthorization.exe that ships with ArcGIS Desktop and is installed at <InstallDir>\bin can be used from the command-line to activate software silently. This is great except for the fact that it doesn't support installing Data Licenses. To do that, the only choice you have is to either invoke ArcGIS Administrator with elevated permissions to install the data license manually with the GUI interface or to double-click on the data license itself which will in turn invoke the ArcGIS Administrator application with Administrator permissions and automatically install the data license. There are two big problems with this: 1. You shouldn't have to be a system administrator to install a Data License 2. If you write a script to invoke the Data License directly which will in turn invoke the ArcGIS Administrator with elevated permissions and install the Data License, it leaves the ArcGIS Administrator application open, giving the end user full access to the ArcGIS Administrator app. It would be great if I could use the SoftwareAuthorization.exe to silently install a data license during installation to avoid all of this nonsense.

‎01-07-2017

I would like to be able to batch create Insights workbooks and cards to create KPI Dashboards for some of my organization's retail locations. Doing this manually through insights is burdensome when there are 800-something stores. Please add support for Insights workbook and card creation to the Python API so that this can be automated.

‎01-07-2017

Esri Insights is an awesome data exploration and visualization tool. A real Tableau killer, imho. There's one thing it lacks that prevents me from being able to adopt it in our organization. No support for connections to TeraData 13. I get that TeraData 14 is the first version where spatial indexes are supported and obviously being able to visualize data on a map makes Insights really shine. However, even Dr. Beal stated in her "10 Questions for Esri" video that insights is intended to visualize both spatial and non-spatial data. If that's the case, then supporting connections to TeraData 13 shouldn't really be an issue other than you won't get the mapping capabilities out of data coming across that connection. I think that's a fair compromise. Please add support for TeraData 13 connections.

‎12-30-2016

I would love to see the following things at UC: Support for Office 2016 on macOS Support for Office365 Web Apps Support for inserting webmaps (both static and dynamic) into an Outlook Email Import an existing web map into Excel 1. Sign into AGOL or Portal. 2. Browse for and select an existing web map. 3. Open selected webmap. 4. Receive a popup dialog listing all of the feature service layers in the webmap. 5. Multi-select from this list of feature services which of said feature services I would like to load attribute tables for. 6. A new worksheet is created for each selected layer, with the name of the worksheet matching the name of the feature service, and is populated with the attribute table of the feature service 7. Web Map appears as normal. 8. Selecting features in the map selects records in the corresponding worksheet and selecting records in the worksheet selects features in the webmap. 9. Ability to save each worksheet locally. I don't expect any of this to actually be implemented, but I'd love to just hear that these things or something very similar are on the roadmap somewhere. Also, FYI - I couldn't comment until I joined the ArcGIS Maps for Office group.

‎12-29-2016

RJ, this is such an incredibly valuable write up. Thank you so much for posting it.

‎10-12-2016

Are you expecting to see the photos in a folder of some sort? If so, that's not how it will work. Inside of the File Geodatabase, you should see your feature class, a table that has _ATTACH in its name, and a relationship class. If you load the feature class into ArcMap and then use the identify tool to click on a feature, if that feature has attachments then the Identify Window will display a paperclip. You can click on that paperclip to view the attachments. What is the ultimate goal of what you're trying to accomplish?

‎10-08-2016

THIS!!! To the power of 100!!! We have point features that are very close in proximity and its just awful in Portal and ArcGIS Online to not be able to cluster by proximity and show a nice circle with the number of features in that area until the user zooms in enough to be able to display them clearly.

‎10-08-2016

When enabling Editor Tracking on a Feature Class or Table, it would be nice if there were a checkbox or parameter that would also allow me to enable Editor Tracking on the Attachment Table for that Feature Class or Table. This would allow me to look at the attachments and know who created an attachment and when. Additionally, if a user leveraged the Update Attachment rest endpoint on a Feature Service to update a given attachment, then that would allow me to know who changed/replaced an attachment.

‎10-08-2016

When you Enable Editor Tracking on a dataset, the tool creates four new fields; "Creator", "Creation_Date", "Last_Editor" and "Last_Edit_Date". You have the option of creating these fields ahead of time and passing your custom fields as parameters to the tool, but if you don't do that the tool will create the fields for you using the above default field names. The problem however is that when you run this tool, if your custom fields do not already have values or you allow the tool to create the fields for you, all of the fields will contain <Null> as the value. While the "Last_Editor" and "Last_Edited_Date" fields will eventually get populated with a value whenever someone edits that record, the "Creator" and "Created_Date" fields would never be populated with a value under this situation and you cannot calculate a value into Editor Tracking fields. As a workaround, you can create the fields on your own, calculate values into them and then run the enable editor tracking tool on the dataset and pass in your custom fields - but that's an extra step that just adds unneccesary overhead to the workflow. Please create an option in the Enable Editor Tracking tool to use the executing user's login id and current date and time to populate the "Creator", "Created_Date", "Last_Editor" and "Last_Edit_Date" fields in the dataset when running this tool.

‎10-08-2016

Over the years, many ArcGIS users have requested that ArcGIS support allowing field order to be changed on a dataset permanently. One example of this is ArcGIS Idea 1362: ArcGIS should allow the ability to permanently reorder fields in a table. With that idea being 6 years old and having over 28,000 points, I would try and give Esri the benefit of the doubt and assume that the idea would implemented if it were feasible. If that is the case, I believe I have an idea which offers a decent compromise - Allow the field order of a Feature Class and Table to be specified within a Layerfile. Currently, you can specify field order for these items in an MXD, but the field order does not persist after the session has ended. Layerfiles offer users the capability to save their display customizations of a feature layer to disk. This is why you can add a feature class to your Table of Contents (which is what creates the feature layer), set up your symbology, popups, display tips, label expressions, etc. then save it to a Layerfile (*.lyr), close ArcGIS Desktop then add that layerfile back to an MXD later and all of your customizations are still there. One thing the Layerfile specification does not support however is Field Order. If it did, I think the need for a capability to permanently reorder fields at the database level would be significantly reduced as you would be able to create a layer file which gave you all of the display customizations and settings you wanted. That's the only place field order really matters in the first place - when its time to display the table. So if the Layerfile could capture that Field Order configuration and persist it between sessions, and ArcGIS Online, Portal and all of the other client solutions honored it - then, IMHO the need for a capability to permanently reorder fields at the database level would be pretty well taken care of.

‎10-07-2016

I don't know what you mean when you say "How do I download these photos to a local geodatabase on my server machine (not AGOL)?" Were you serving the Feature Service from your own ArcGIS for Server instance and don't know how to pull the attachments back down? Is the Feature Service on AGOL and you want to download it and then upload it to your own ArcGIS for Server instance? Can you be a little more descriptive with your problem statement? Where is the service being hosted, AGOL or your own Server? Here's the workflow to download a layer to a local file geodatabase on AGOL. If it has attachments, they'll come with that File Geodatabase. Go to the Item Details page of the layer in the Web Map which you were editing through Collector and adding attachments to. You should see an Export Data button. Click it and select the option Export to FGDB. Enter a Title, Tags, Summary and select the folder in your My Content directory you want the File Geodatabase saved to, then click Export. Once the Export is complete, you will be redirected to the Item Details page of that new File Geodatabase. Click the Download Button Open your new File Geodatabase in Desktop and enjoy. Now, if you want to them deploy that to your own server as a service, then it would just be a matter of loading up the feature class in ArcMap and publishing a new service.

‎10-07-2016

Yeah, I get that the current ArcMap/Globe/Scene/Catalog products couldn't be upgraded to 64-bit - either technically impossible or so complicated that creation of a new product was likely easier and would deliver better results. So I do agree that the creation Pro of was necessary in order to bring about 64-bit Desktop GIS. I think the biggest challenge Pro faces and why it has disenfranchised so many users is because it radically changes every, single GIS workflow. Almost nothing remained the same. Going from ArcGIS for Desktop 9.x to 10.0 for example, Esri made some pretty big changes; feature templates, python addins, catalog, python, search and toolbox windows, etc. Those were all pretty radical advancements at the time. I recall tons of users griping about the change to the editing workflows with the introduction of feature templates. Eventually though, everyone was able to wrap their head around those changes because the rest of the product and workflows pretty much remained the same. It was incremental progress. Pro however, has flipped everything on its head. The two products might look somewhat similar but in terms of how you get things done, the workflows are so different that it's incredibly hard for seasoned GIS folks to wrap their heads around. I think Esri would have done better to just start off with 'ArcMap Pro' and 'ArcCatalog Pro', then little by little worked in ArcGlobe and Scene functionality or continued with the paradigm of a suite of applications. Alas, it is what it is. It's Pro or Bust for Esri and that's fine. I suppose we'll either all get used to it or slowly start spending more of our GIS budgets with Boundless instead of Esri.

‎10-06-2016

Robert LeClair wrote: To my knowledge, there is no plan for a Pro "ArcCatalog" as Pro is the fusion of ArcMap, ArcCatalog, ArcScene, ArcGlobe, and City Engine Runtime. I realize that was not your decision to make Robert and that you likely had nothing to do with it at all, but in the 12 years I've been using Esri software, I don't think I even heard anyone, ever, ask for ArcMap, ArcCatalog, ArcScene, ArcGlobe and City Engine Runtime to be fused into a single product. I can kind of see the logic behind merging Map, Scene and Globe, but Catalog doesn't make a bit of sense to me. All we ever wanted was a 64-bit ArcGIS Desktop. It is what it is though. Pro isn't going away and 64-bit Desktop isn't coming, so we'll all just have to learn pro. It's no so bad, but it still has a ton of catching up to do.

‎10-06-2016

that's funny

‎10-03-2016

This may have been mentioned already in the many, many comments on this item, but one solution is to Export your Geodatabase to an XMLWorkspace Document (Schema-Only). You can then open the document in an XML Editor and rearrange the fields as you desire. Personally, I favor XML Notepad since it makes working with specific sections of the XML easier since you can drag and drop entire fields to order them. Once you have your fields rearranged in your XML Workspace document, you can then import the XMLWorkspace Document to create a new Geodatabase. This will create an empty Geodatabase containing all of the domains, subtypes, feature datasets, etc. that you've defined in your Geodatabase as well as empty shells of the feature classes within it. The new field order you specified in the XMLWorkspace Document for a given feature class will now be in place in this empty feature class shell From there, you just use the Simple Data Loader to load each feature class in your new Geodatabase back up with data in the corresponding feature class in your legacy database. Provided you haven't made any radical schema changes and just reordered fields, everything should line up 1:1 since the field names and datatypes would all be the same. If you do make changes beyond reordering the fields, you'll likely need to match the source field from the legacy feature class to the target field in your new feature class I know this works for File Geodatabases and personal Geodatabases. I've never tested it on an SDE Database so I'd recommend some extensive testing before doing it there. Realistically, this is only practical for small changes that you need to make because if your Geodatabase contains hundreds of feature classes, then using the Simple Data Loader to go through each and load it up will become pretty tedious. It is one possible workaround though. Unfortunately, with over 28,000 points on an idea that is 6 years old, I wouldn't count on this capability ever being delivered. I would try to give Esri the benefit of the doubt on this. Reordering fields at a Database level is not a capability that most databases offer (that I am aware of), so their options of implementing this might be a bit restricted. Update: I created an idea which I feel is a nice compromise if Esri is actually limited in their ability to allow reordering fields permanently. It involves updating the layerfile specification to capture the field order to that the displayed order of fields can be persisted between ArcMap sessions. Allow the field order of a Feature Class and Table to be specified within a Layerfile. https://community.esri.com/ideas/12679

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Date Last Visited	‎11-11-2020 02:23 AM

My Ideas

Latest Contributions by JohnDye

Allow Silent Installation of Data Licenses through SoftwareAuthorization.exe

Add support for Insights to the Python API

Add Support for TeraData 13 database connections in Insights for ArcGIS

Re: What do you want to see at UC?

Re: System scalability and performance considerations

Re: Downloading photos taken in Collector?

Re: Support point clustering in the Map Service properties

Enable Editor Tracking on Attachments

Enable Editor Tracking should not create fields with Null Values

Allow the field order of a Feature Class and Table to be specified within a Layerfile

Re: Downloading photos taken in Collector?

Re: What is the future of ArcCatalog in future Pro versions?

Re: What is the future of ArcCatalog in future Pro versions?

Re: What is the future of ArcCatalog in future Pro versions?

Re: ArcGIS should allow the ability to permanently reorder fields in a table

Re: Authenticating to Portal

Getting 498: Invalid Token from AGS Server after p...

Re: ArcGIS Data Store Under the Hood

Re: ArcGIS Data Store Under the Hood

Re: ArcGIS Data Store Under the Hood