Latest Contributions by SpatialNinja

This years Esri Users Conference was another great event for GIS users in telecommunications.  One apparent observation was that the need for GIS and maps in support of telecom workflows is growing, and not only for traditional telecom service providers but for other industries that are starting to, or have been, deploying communications networks.  Because of this growing demand for GIS in telecom, the Esri Telecom Team will be releasing a series of blogs in correlation with the ongoing Telecommunications Webinar Series to explore new ways of Geospatially Enabling Telecom.  The ongoing webinar series and these blogs will look at how GIS and maps can support all aspects of the telecom business from network planning, to fulfillment, to assurance and how GIS directly impacts today's trends and driver's in the industry. The business drivers we'll focus on and explore GIS use cases within will be Network Transformation, Resource Optimization, Revenue Growth, Customer Experience, and Digital Services. A Complete GIS for Telecommunications In order to support the above technology trends and business drivers, GIS has needed to evolve from simple mapping software to a complete GIS platform supported by geospatial infrastructure.  This geospatial infrastructure which includes a system of record, system of engagement, and system of insights is moving into the cloud and giving organizations a web GIS, opening up geospatial web services for consumption in different OSS/BSS applications.       ArcGIS is the only Complete GIS digitally transforming telecommunications that offers geospatial infrastructure and focused business offerings designed specifically for telecommunications.  In the blogs to come we'll dive deeper into Esri's focused business offerings for telecommunications and how they support today's industry drivers along with how to get started with the solution.  Some of the offerings to look out for include: Network Transformation (Watch Webinar) Strategic Planning Tools Desktop & Walkout Surveys Network Design & Asset Management Project Tracking & Monitoring Resource Optimization (Register for Webinar) Field Inspections & Surveys Network Visualization & Analytics Revenue Growth (Watch Webinar) Serviceability & High-Level Estimates Coverage Processing & Mapping Door to Door Sales Retail & Market Analytics Customer Experience (Watch Webinar) Network Ops & Analytics Damage Assessment Customer Sentiment Reporting Digital Services (Register for Webinar) IoT and Location Based Services Smart Cities Autonomous and Smart Car Network Transformation: A Strategic Investment in New Capabilities In the next Geospatially Enabling Telecom blog we’ll discuss Esri's offerings for Network Transformation and how GIS is supporting network projects around 5G and fiber deployments. For more information on all of Esri's solutions for telecommunications visit Esri.com/telecom. Thanks, - Esri Telecom Team  telecominfo@esri.com telug‌ ... View more

Updates to original script in comments below - 9/5/2019 With hurricane season upon us, I wanted to share a simple but powerful python script which locates assets that are in path of a major storm.  The script leverages the ArcGIS Python API and can be run manually or automatically from a variety of sources, which I'll cover later on.  The script also requires that your asset locations are in a feature layer within your GIS portal, along with a polygon feature layer used as a storm track, and a layer to add your alarms or vulnerable assets to. The script is attached below, but lets first break it down. First, import the necessary ArcGIS python libraries and authenticate into your GIS portal.  Since this script uses feature layers, we'll mostly use the arcgis.features module. from arcgis.gis import GIS from arcgis.features import FeatureLayer from arcgis.features.managers import FeatureLayerManager from arcgis.geometry import filters from IPython.display import display gis = GIS("https://your.portal.here/", 'username', 'password')‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍ Next we'll load in the feature layers used in the script. The script requires a point feature layer of your asset locations, a polygon feature layer of your storm track, and another point layer used as alarms or your vulnerable asset locations. Ninja Pro Tip: Leverage the Active Hurricane live feed from Esri's Living Atlas as your storm strack. #assets layer cellSiteFeatureLayer = gis.content.get('88b5acd4444343b3bdaea40918d070bf') #storm track layer hurricaneFeatureLayer = gis.content.get('6c8256c93c0e40debe46d9dcf79d0049') #alarms layer warningsFeatureLayer = gis.content.get('6f735776f0c246b1ba602a774dbc1b1d')‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍ Next, well truncate and clear out previous alarms and vulnerable assets from the alarms layers. warningsLayer = warningsFeatureLayer.layers[0] warningsLayer.manager.truncate()‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍ Then, well store the current geometry of the polygon layer or the storm track which will be used to query the assets that fall within it. hurricaneFeatures = hurricaneFeatureLayer.layers[8] queryHurricane = hurricaneFeatures.query(where='1=1') hurricaneGeometry = queryHurricane.features[3].geometry ##print (hurricaneGeometry)‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍ Now we'll the use the geometry we just stored as the spatial geometry filter for our query on the assets layer. cellSiteFeatures = cellSiteFeatureLayer.layers[0] warningsResult = cellSiteFeatures.query(where='1=1', out_fields='SiteID', geometry_filter=filters.intersects(hurricaneGeometry)) ##print(warningsResult)‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍ Finally, take the feature set returned by the query and add the features to the alarm layer. warningsLayer.edit_features(adds=warningsResult) ‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍ And that's it. The result is new point locations showing you where assets fall within a storm track. The script can be run in variety of locations depending on the experience you want for the end user.  Here some options: Locally in your own IDE Within ArcGIS Pro as a GP tool Shared as a GP service and leveraged in the GP widget of Web AppBuilder Brought into ArcGIS Notebook server Ran automatically using Windows Task Scheduler  Ninja Pro Tip: Leverage Operations Dashboard for ArcGIS to view the results of the analysis. Patrick Huls Solution Engineer Team Lead - Telecommunications‌ LinkedIn: Patrick Huls| Twitter: @SpatialNinja| GeoNet:Phuls-esristaff ... View more

I'd like to add my own layers to a vector basemap. ... View more

Add an attribute table widget that shows features within the map extent with the ability to export those features to a CSV file, similar to Web AppBuilder. ... View more

Add a measure tool as an option to add into the map view within Operations Dashboard. ... View more

Many new features and apps were released in the 10.7 version of ArcGIS. Here are my top 10. 10. Reports in ArcGIS Pro New in ArcGIS Pro 2.3 is Reports. For those that leveraged CrystalReports in ArcMap, ArcGIS Pro now supports an all Esri based report template capability. Its great for dynamically adding attributes from your data and an inset map into a PDF report.  Spatial Ninja Pro Tip: Reports in ArcGIS Pro—ArcGIS Pro | ArcGIS Desktop  9. Spellcheck in ArcGIS Pro Spelchek!!! yay!! This is one of my favorite updates to Pro in the 2.3 release. The ability to run spellcheck against your map layouts, attributes, and popups is a long awaited enhancement to Pro.  Spatial Ninja Pro Tip: What's new in ArcGIS Pro 2.3 - YouTube  8. Shared Instances in ArcGIS Server For those who have managed an ArcGIS Server, you are aware of the RAM hogging SOC processes that support all of services running on that machine. New at 10.7, shared instances allows for a 1:M relationship between SOC processes and service definitions: a shared service instance (SOC process) can service requests for multiple services.  When publishing a map service, and setting it to use shared instances, the added memory cost of the new service is effectively zero. Instead of creating a dedicated pool of service instances (SOCs) the service will be handled by the shared instance pool. 7. Distributed Collaboration Distributed collaboration allows for portals to share layers and content through a collaboration group. Items can be referenced or copied based on a set time interval. New at 10.7 is support for Insights workbooks, view layers, and the ability to pause and resume collaboration sync.  6. Cost Analysis Widget for Web AppBuilder A new widget called Cost Analysis is now available in Web AppBuilder. The Cost Analysis widget allows you to set up an editing template with a cost associated to each feature. So if I am planning a fiber network I can have the widget automatically total up the cost of the build. You'll also have the ability to add additional costs or multipliers based on territories or manual input.  5. Tracker for ArcGIS Tracker for ArcGIS is a new mobile app that allows organizations to track the locations of their mobile workers.  Tracks can be recorded while online or offline, and Tracker can be scheduled to record location only during business hours. The location tracks can be viewed in the Tracker web application or brought into any web map as a layer.   4. Collector for ArcGIS The latest version of Collector, code named Aurora, was released in November on 2018. This new version enabled better mapping with support for vector tiles and labeling, a new interface for collecting data, a better offline experience for users, and smarter forms to support barcode scanning. Grouping of fields and snapping are coming later this year.   3. ArcGIS Notebooks ArcGIS Notebooks is a web-based, interactive, computational environment for you to write, document, and run code all in one place. It is based on the is a popular open source notebook environment, Jupyter. Python is the main scripting language for ArcGIS, and can be accessed and run in many locations across ArcGIS. ArcGIS Notebooks provides a more integrated experience within the Web GIS. 2. in_memory workspace in ArcGIS Pro In the 2.3 release of ArcGIS Pro the ability to have an in_memory workspace was added. This means you can now write the output results of a geoprcoessing tool to memory for use as intermediate data.   Spatial Ninja Pro Tip: What's new in ArcGIS Pro 2.3—ArcGIS Pro | ArcGIS Desktop   1. ArcGIS Indoors ArcGIS Indoors allows your organization to create 2D/3D indoor maps and mage indoor assets. These indoor maps can be generated from CAD and BIM and indoor routing can be configured through ArcGIS Pro. Spatial Ninja Pro Tip: Indoor Mapping System | ArcGIS Indoors  Patrick Huls Solution Engineer Team Lead - Telecommunications‌ LinkedIn: Patrick Huls| Twitter: @SpatialNinja| GeoNet:Phuls-esristaff ... View more