Latest Contributions by SpatialNinja

Welcome back to another episode of TGI5. In this episode we focus on building a customer centric digital twin by geoenabling Snowflake's Data Cloud and bringing data from Snowflake into ArcGIS. How to add a cloud data store: https://enterprise.arcgis.com/en/portal/latest/use/add-items.htm#ESRI_SECTION2_39B2CCBE12CA4F269E3EA19106352376 Adding a query layer: https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/latest/help/mapping/layer-properties/what-is-a-query-layer-.htm   Until next time, we're out. Patrick Huls ... View more

In this week's episode we offer some ideas for monitoring and visualizing logical fiber circuits.  The circuit viewer application highlighted was built using ArcGIS Experience Builder. The relationships between the physical fiber paths, the logical circuits, and services were all set up during the configuration of experience builder. Since a lot of this data is stored in different systems today, this simple way to pull all the data into a map based application provides real-time situational awareness.  ArcGIS Experience Builder - https://www.esri.com/en-us/arcgis/products/arcgis-experience-builder/overview ArcGIS Living Atlas Live Weather Feeds - https://livingatlas.arcgis.com/en/browse/#d=2&categories=Environment%3A0001000000 Until next time, we're out.  - Patrick Huls ... View more

In this week's episode we highlight an enhancement coming to the Communications Utility Network Foundation that allows for deployment of different configurations of the asset package data model.  For the July release we've built out the configuration table of the communications asset package to allow you to deploy a utility network with different configurations of the data model. You'll be able to deploy a fiber only data model, or wireless only data model, and remove other asset classes that are irrelevant for the networks your organization manages.  Access the Communications Utility Network Foundation: https://www.arcgis.com/apps/solutions/index.html?gallery=true&industry=Telecommunications&solution=b09dcfc483114ba29961341ffd97501b&sortField=relevance&sortOrder=desc#home More info on the Utility Data Management Support toolbox: https://github.com/Esri/Utility-Data-Management-Support-Tools  Until next time, we're out.  - Patrick Huls ... View more

  Welcome back to another episode of Telecom GIS in 5 Minutes. This week we provide a preview of the upcoming Esri UC and discuss some telecom specific sessions and activities to attend. For a complete guide to the Esri UC, check out this Story Map: https://arcg.is/1u9uzG Until next time, we out. Patrick Huls   ... View more

Welcome back to another episode of Telecom GIS in 5 Minutes. This week we show you how to get wireless coverage maps into the field and enable field techs to collect fixed wireless antenna receiver locations.  What was used? ArcGIS Pro - https://www.esri.com/en-us/arcgis/products/arcgis-pro/overview ArcGIS Image - https://www.esri.com/en-us/arcgis/products/arcgis-image/options/arcgis-online ArcGIS Online - https://www.esri.com/en-us/arcgis/products/arcgis-online/overview ArcGIS Field Maps - https://www.esri.com/en-us/arcgis/products/arcgis-field-maps/overview   Until next time, we out. Patrick Huls ... View more

Welcome back to another episode of Telecom GIS in 5 Minutes. This week we show you how to use ArcGIS Hub and ArcGIS Enterprise Sites to create a role based home page for your portal or organization.  ArcGIS Hub - https://doc.arcgis.com/en/hub/get-started/what-is-arcgis-hub-.htm ArcGIS Enteprise Sites - https://enterprise.arcgis.com/en/sites/latest/get-started/about-this-application.htm Until next time, we out. Patrick Huls   ... View more

Welcome back to another episode of Telecom GIS in 5 Minutes. This week we take a look at a few of the new capabilities and widgets in the latest release of ArcGIS Experience Builder. For a full list of new features, check out this blog: https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/experience-builder/announcements/whats-new-in-arcgis-experience-builder-march-2022/ For testing of the new ArcGIS Utility Network Trace Widget, you can use the web map referenced here: https://developers.arcgis.com/javascript/latest/sample-code/widgets-untrace/ The web map ID is provided as well as the username and password. Until next time, we out. Patrick Huls ... View more

Welcome back to another episode of Telecom GIS in 5 Minutes. This week we do a deeper dive into how to configure an ArcGIS Instant app for communicating broadband availability.    The ArcGIS Solution used to manage the service territory layer - https://doc.arcgis.com/en/arcgis-solutions/latest/reference/introduction-to-communications-data-management.htm   Arcade Expression for presenting an image if service is available -     var imageUrl = ''; if ($feature.Internet == 'Yes') { imageUrl = 'https://telecomrc.maps.arcgis.com/sharing/rest/content/items/3ab7d2bc3e8d42c7b6e9f1f877acd87c/data'; } return imageUrl;       HTML for Text section of pop-up -      <figure> <figure class="table" style="float:none;"> <table> <tbody> <tr style="display:{expression/expr0};"> <td style="background-color:#323232;border:1px solid white;padding:5px;width:400px;"> <p style="text-align:center;"> <span style="color:#d5dcdc;">Service Connection</span> </p> <p style="text-align:center;"> <span style="color:#FFAA00;font-size:18px;"><strong>{techcode}&nbsp;</strong></span> </p> </td> </tr> <tr style="display:{expression/expr1};"> <td style="background-color:#323232;border:1px solid white;padding:5px;width:400px;"> <p style="text-align:center;"> <span style="color:#d5dcdc;">Max Internet Speeds</span> </p> <p style="text-align:center;"> <span style="color:#FFAA00;font-size:18px;"><strong>{maxaddn} mbps</strong></span> </p> </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background-color:#323232;border:1px solid white;padding:10px;width:400px;"> <p style="text-align:center;"> <a rel="nofollow ugc" href="https://web.bd.esri.com/utilities/telco/Apps/HomePage/index.html"><img src="{expression/expr0}" alt="" width="50"></a> <a rel="nofollow ugc" href="https://web.bd.esri.com/utilities/telco/Apps/HomePage/index.html"><img src="{expression/expr1}" alt="" width="50"></a> <a rel="nofollow ugc" href="https://web.bd.esri.com/utilities/telco/Apps/HomePage/index.html"><img src="{expression/expr2}" alt="" width="50"></a> <a rel="nofollow ugc" href="https://web.bd.esri.com/utilities/telco/Apps/HomePage/index.html"><img src="{expression/expr3}" alt="" width="50"></a> <a rel="nofollow ugc" href="https://web.bd.esri.com/utilities/telco/Apps/HomePage/index.html"><img src="{expression/expr4}" alt="" width="50"></a> </p> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </figure> </figure>     ArcGIS Instant App used for Service Lookup - https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=8f483bc1de854f7783495ffe96ef1ea8   ***Publishing the Solution Template and configuring the ArcGIS Instant app requires a Creator Level User Type license.   Until next time, we out. Patrick Huls ... View more

Welcome back to Telecom GIS in Five Minutes. We started our video series back in March 2021, and now as we are in March of Year 2022, I want to bring to you our 50th episode for this One Year Anniversary. I would like to use this opportunity to recap what we have covered in the last couple episodes. Now let's get it. Starting off with an episode (episode 41) focusing on how GIS can support 5G deployments and NextGen network management, not only does engineering want to be able to design against and see all of their physical networks in one location, but so does network operations. Digital twins allow you to model your physical networks, no matter the network technology, OSP and ISP, as close to reality so that you can visualize and analyze network information in real-time. In episode 42, I have shown how we are able to quickly and easily generate preliminary service boundary. And pave the road for your engineering and fielding team, who could further determine the accuracy of the boundary in the next design process. Jumping into episode 44, we have showcased ArcGIS ModelBuilder, which is our visual programming language for building geoprocessing workflows. And we showed Geoprocessing models automate and document your spatial analysis and data management processes. The next two episodes elevated our digital twin story to the next level. Starting with episode 43, where we demonstrated ArcGIS GeoBIM, which delivers an innovative, easy-to-use web-based experience for project teams to explore and collaborate on BIM projects and issues using data from multiple systems in a geospatial context. In episode 45, we were trying to invite you to explore the unlimited possibilities with the our Geospatial technologies, along with virtual reality modeling and immersive user experience with game engines. With episode 46, we presented the components of a geoinformation model, where your organization can ensure that content being shared via this geospatial system of engagement is up-to-date, shared securely, and provides a consistent framework for using web maps and shared geospatial services throughout your organization. And then we showcased how Arcade is such a great tool that allows users to bring creativity your web map pop-ups and to further improve a viewer's experience. In episode 48, we put our focus on how ArcGIS can help users build an indoor GIS that empowers everyone in the organization with indoor maps. Employees and other stakeholders can then use those maps to find indoor places and assets, navigate to on-site locations, improve situational awareness, manage space use, and book available space. Last but not least, in our last episode, we walked through the concept of how Internet providers and local jurisdictions can communicate and facilitate Broadband availability in simple steps with ArcGIS. And we are thrilled to see all these comments and suggestions regarding our future episodes, what do you want to see and want us to talk about, we will get that on our list. Till the next time, we out. -Patrick Huls ... View more

Welcome back to Telecom GIS in Five Minutes. We have spent a lot of time putting a focus on building and managing network assets in the field. But wait a second, there is another component that we haven't touched on in this video series - the indoor features. For a telecom company or any company, it means more than the network assets or equipment, but also the most valuable assets within your organization, the people. In the past, managing indoor features involves multiple complex systems and people are spending too much time on finding information that should be easily accessed, identified, and located within one geo-enabled system.  So today, we want to take a few minutes to show you, how ArcGIS could help you establish a system of record for your indoor features and deliver a better user experience throughout your day-to-day operation. ArcGIS can help users build an indoor GIS that empowers everyone in the organization with indoor maps. And with ArcGIS Indoors, GIS users can convert CAD and BIM floor plans into indoor maps. Employees and other stakeholders can then use those maps to find indoor places and assets, navigate to on-site locations, improve situational awareness, manage space use, and book available space. Untill next time...we're out.   Patrick Huls ... View more

I wanted to spend a few minutes talking about the ArcGIS geoinformation model and the different building blocks of a geospatial system of engagement that make up the geoinformation model. But before we get into that, let's talk about the ArcGIS system and break down ArcGIS into 3 tiers. The first tier is the geospatial infrastructure, web services and data tier. This tier is where systems of record are managed, including geospatial databases, and where the web services are hosted, either by geospatial servers or by external systems. Those geospatial data and map services are then made accessible and managed through the second tier using an ArcGIS portal technology. And the third tier on top is where users of ArcGIS interact with the system though applications in a variety of patterns. These patterns of use as we call them range from field mobility to sharing and collaboration to mapping and visualization to planning and design, and so on. Now, the ArcGIS technology at the heart of all of this that allows for that access and management tier is the ArcGIS portal. And this where the ArcGIS geo information model resides. So what is this geoinformation model? Well, you can think of it as the web GIS building blocks that make up your end applications that support those business use cases, workflows, and those different patterns of use of geospatial technology. And there are different tiers of this geoinformation model as well. This first tier includes things like your map and vector tile layers, imagery layers, feature layers, and even 3D scene layers. And all of these different layer types are web map layers with a RESTful service behind them that is being hosted by those geospatial servers and that reference those different geospatial databases and systems of record. Now, along with these map layers, there's analytics. These analytics are spatial analysis tools that also have a web service behind them or a geoprocessing service. Some of these analytics include things like spatial joining one feature to another or doing things like geocoding or generating driving routes and directions. And all of these different map layers and analytics are managed within that portal technology as items. Items in the portal are catalogued with an item name, description, tags and other metadata and properties. Now, the next tier up in the geoinformation model is the webmap tier where we have 2D webmaps and 3D web scenes. Now, these web maps can pull in one or more of these map layers and you can have a map layer that supports one or more webmaps or 3D scenes. These web maps and 3D scenes are also items managed within that portal, which means they have their own set of properties and metadata. The next tier up from that in our geoinformation model is the application tier. Now, ArcGIS provides a variety of out of the box, ready to use and ready to configure mobile, desktop and web-based applications that plug and play with those web maps in 3D scenes. So as soon as a webmap is configured with those different map layers, you can easily configure an ArcGIS app to use a web map. This means you can define a basemap and the look and feel of the map layers by configuring the web map instead of hard coding those properties into the end application. A webmap can also support one or more applications. For example, you may have a webmap containing a variety of different map layers that is being used in a mobile application to collect data out in the field. That same webmap can also support a web based dashboard application back in the office. So as users are editing data in the field, the people in the back office can see those edits in real time. And just like the webmaps, the map layers, and analytics, these applications are also items within that portal that have their own URLs and can be accessed by users of ArcGIS. Now one major component of this portal technology and the geoinformation model is the identity and security model that is provided. These different application, webmap, and layer items within the portal can be shared to a single user, to a group of users, or to the entire portal everyone who has access to that environment. Now when your organization is looking to support a new planning and design workflow or they need a solution for field mobility or they're looking to improve sharing and collaboration, It's these different building blocks and the geoinformation model that can allow your organization to stand up geospatial workflows very quickly by reusing all of these assets and items that reside within this portal technology. By following this geoinformation model your organization ensures that content being shared via this geospatial system of engagement is up-to-date, shared securely, and provides a consistent framework for using web maps and shared geospatial services throughout your organization. - Patrick Huls ... View more

Hello TGI5 and welcome back to another episode. I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving for those of you watching in the US and for those of you around the world, I hope you had a great week last week. For this week's episode, I wanted to highlight some newer capabilities in ArcGIS around creating an application to collect photo inspections and viewing those in an oriented imagery viewer. So let's jump in and take a look at what this all looks like when it comes together. And then I'll break down how to set up your own Photo Inspections and oriented imagery viewing applications. Ok, so here we have an Experience Builder application in which we have brought in some reality capture mesh data for the Orlando area. On our map, we have some physical network infrastructure, as well as these photo points. These photo points were taken with the Quick Capture photo inspection template. Now, once we bring in those points into our Experience Builder app, by leveraging the oriented imagery capabilities, we're able to see not only the picture that was taken but the viewshed of that picture. We'll notice in our Oriented Imagery viewer we can pan around the photo that was taken from our photo inspection Quick Capture application and we're able to see that viewshed from the photo. As we Zoom in and pan around, we'll see that viewshed change within our photo as well. Now, the photo inspection template within Quick Capture can be used to collect walk out survey information. It can be used to locate infrastructure like this manhole or just capture photos while out in the field. That may help some engineering down the line. Now as we take a look at this last photo, here, this third example. Again, once we pan around our photo in the Oriented Imagery Widget, we can see the viewshed for that photo change within our 3D Web scene. So how do we put together an application and workflow like this? Well, first we start in ArcGIS Quick Capture and we can use the photo inspection template. So if you go to the Esri templates, you'll notice that there is a photo inspection template that you can use to help create your photo inspection Quick Capture app. Now, I've already gone ahead and done that. And here is what that template looks like. We can collect information like the surveyor or field engineer, and each button collects the severity of our photo inspection as well as the actual photo. Now to set up the oriented imagery capture capabilities, we go to the map tab, then the three buttons and we have this view oriented imagery. Now, when you set this up for the first time, it will say collect oriented imagery, and this will add all the necessary fields into the data capturing workflow. Once you've done that, that photo inspection feature layer can then be brought in to any of the web maps and apps in ArcGIS as well as Experience Builder where there is an oriented imagery widget. Now, this widget that we can see here allows us to select that photo inspection layer from a group in our portal organization or in the map in our application. Just like that, we can bring in this oriented imagery widget into our end application. Now, there's lots of documentation on this workflow, including some great blogs that are available, and I'll be sure to provide a link to this particular blog that also walks through how to set up your own photo inspection template and quick Capture as well as this oriented imagery widget in Experience Builder. So this has been another episode of TGI5. I hope you enjoyed learning a little bit more about the photo inspection template in Quick Capture and the ability to set up oriented imagery viewing within our ArcGIS Experience Builder. Until next time we're out. Oriented imagery meets field data collection Blog: https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/quickcapture/field-mobility/oriented-imagery-meets-field-data-collection/ -Patrick Huls ... View more

Hey, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Telecom GIS in five minutes. For this week's episode, I wanted to take some time to show you all some ways that you can customize your ArcGIS online or ArcGIS Enterprise Portal Homepage and show you some ways that you can create an Experience Builder app that can be leveraged as that main interface into your portal, that can provide a little bit more of a tailored experience for your end users. So let's jump right into it. Now, when you first stand up ArcGIS Enterprise or login to your ArcGIS online organization, you probably will see a very similar default homepage with a main banner stretched across the screen. Now we can see that I've added some common maps and apps that are links right here on the homepage. Now how I was able to add these Map app links is by going in and editing our home page, which brings up this nice builder interface. Now, this builder interface allows us to customize the header, these content blocks where we have the base maps or our commonly used maps and apps, as well as the default color scheme here within our Home page. Now this Homepage Builder, while nice, can still be a little limiting in what content we can present to our end users. The homepage of our portal also has these links here at the top, which for many users in your organization, may be too much for them. So we want to create more of a tailored experience that just presents them the maps and apps that they need with additional information to help them do their job or get a hold of us the GIS team to be able to put together the maps and apps that they are looking for. So I want to show an example here of an Experience Builder app that we have put together that can be used in lieu of that portal homepage. So this Experience Builder application is now our destination for end users. When they come to this URL and they log in, we can see that their user identity is shown and they are logged into this application. And now we've got some additional branding and links and access to maps and apps directly within this Experience Builder app. So unlike the Portal Homepage, we can take some of the common maps and apps and directly embed them within this home page. We've got a viewer application here an example of taking a dashboard app and also embedding it into Experience Builder. And then as we scroll down on this application webpage, we can now see some other reporting applications and dashboards that summarize information about our networks, market analysis, and other GIS data that resides within our portal. So instead of providing the links to maps and apps on the Home page, we now have these applications easily accessible through this alternate homepage. Now, along with providing these featured apps or our common maps and apps directly embedded here. Using Experience Builder, we can create these different pages. So in this example, we've created a page for additional apps which pulls in the groups within this portal. So if I'm logged in as someone from customer care, I will only see the customer care group here. And from this group, I can now dive into any additional maps and apps that are shared with me. So once again, instead of being limited to the number of maps or apps in the homepage, we can now expand the number of maps and apps and give our end users a more tailored experience. Now within this Experience Builder app, we've also added an option here to give our end users the ability to make a map. So similarly to the home page and the Webmap tab, which takes you into the Webmap, we've taken the Webmap viewer and embedded it directly in Experience Builder. So if I'm an end user and I wanted to start to explore data that is being maintained and shared into this portal, we can jump in here and we can start to add those layers that reside within our portal and do some self service mapping, adding our own authoritative layers to the map, doing some analysis, creating our Web maps and be a little bit more self sufficient. But we are still limiting the amount of bells and whistles that our end users have within this tailored portal experience. Now, another common challenge that we see within the organizations that we work with is being able to share GIS information with other teams and by GIS information. I mean, how to get a hold of the GIS team, what ArcGIS licenses are available for other teams to use, and if those other teams have any technical issues, who should they contact? So another nice thing about this tailored home page here using Experience Builder is that we can provide additional information in this webpage. So here we have a tab for ArcGIS Deployment and Use which walks through some additional information. If a user is interested in leveraging ArcGIS Pro or maybe setting up their own ArcGIS enterprise licenses, what do they need to do and how do they get a hold of either the GIS team or those licenses? Another tab here for training and support, so you can offer and provide additional information on how end users and different teams can access training that's available or provide the 1-800 number and the Esri .Com website for logging technical support cases and resolving any tech support issues that end users may have, as well as providing just more information on my Esri, how end users could sign up for my Esri, how they can download their own licenses, request access to licenses. So this is all great information that I am sure you all in the GIS side have received similar questions from different teams across your organization asking for these details. So by leveraging this Experience Builder framework, you can now share and expose a lot of this information to the end users that you serve in your organization. Now, the last thing that I want to show here is just the Experience Builder set up. So here we can see that I've created kind of this template, and within this template, we've embedded our applications and we've embedded our buttons and hyperlinks, and we've set links to different pages. So Experience Builder allows you to create these very interactive and dynamic web pages, along with building your traditional GIS Web apps. So I encourage you all to take a look at Experience Builder. And if the Portal home page isn't quite enough for your end users and you want to create a bit more of a tailored experience, this is a great application to take a look at to help address some of those challenges. So thank you all for watching this week's episode. If you have any questions on how I put this together, or you would like us to share a template of this for your use in your organization, feel free to comment on this post or reach out to us, and we can send you this template for Experience Builder. So until next time we're out. -Patrick Huls ... View more

Hey, everybody and welcome to another episode of Telecom GIS in five minutes. This week the Esri Telecom team is at the Connect (x) conference here in Orlando, Florida. This event is all about the wireless industry and 5G innovations and the telecom infrastructure required to support these innovations. So we thought it would be relevant to showcase a demonstration of the RF wireless solutions and fiber planning that the Esri Telecom team is showcasing here at the event. So without further ado, let's jump into a demonstration. As communication networks have evolved, so has GIS and its role in planning nextgen networks. Network planners and engineers need geospatial tools to assist in not only automated fiber design, but wireless RF planning as well. Because broadband can be delivered via fiber, HFC, WiFi, fixed wireless, and numerous other ways, a one trick GIS or engineering tool, limits a planning teams ability to be as efficient and effective as possible. ArcGIS as a comprehensive geospatial system allows network planners to access all the tools necessary to plan communication networks no matter the network technology, and that's what I'd like to show in this demonstration. So let's continue our planning around addressing the digital divide in Lakeland, Florida. The schools we've targeted as public WiFi locations will also serve as locations for fixed wireless deployment. So let's understand what the wireless coverage will be and perform some RF engineering. Then let's move into fiber planning to connect all these sites together. So once again, we can see our schools here on the map and using our connected GIS, we can add our suitability results, which have been filtered down to the final set of school targets. These are those seven locations that we will use to generate our RF coverage. Using the Expera Online solution that is built on ArcGIS, we can easily take a spreadsheet that contains the information about the type of wireless equipment and spectrum that we want to use and drop it into our RF calculation tool. The setup of this tool lets us verify each location before running the analysis. Once we have verified all of the antenna information from our spreadsheets and each of the sites locations, we can then run our analysis. Here we have our RSSI coverage results for each of the sites that we plan to deploy fixed wireless at, but not only do we have this coverage map, which we can overlay on top of our imagery, but for each building and home. We can also see the expected signal strength. Selecting on a home location shows us the rooftop signal strength, a tested signal strength adjust 5ft above the ground, and the best possible signal strength if a receiver was placed on a mass outside of the home. So as we are calculating homes path for a new fixed wireless offering, we'll be able to better understand which homes are serviceable and their quality of experience. Now, whether we are providing broadband access via fixed wireless, WiFi, or fixed line, a fiber back bone is still needed, so let's transition from RF planning to fiber planning and see what it's going to take to provide fiber to each of these sites. Once again, we have our proposed sites and the original suitability results added to the map. And just as we've added this data from our connected GIS, we can also add the RF engineering output as well as our As-built fiber network. This fiber network and the network access points, the Splices, the FDHs, PEDs, etc. Will be used in our high-level fiber design, so our goal now is to optimize the proposed new fiber routes that will connect all of these schools or fixed wireless sites to our existing fiber network. Using ArcGIS and the Network Path Planner Spatial Analysis Tool planning routes no longer requires hand drawn lines in Google Earth. The Path Planner tool leverages a street network to optimize the proposed fiber routes. All we need to do is put in our network access point and the sites that we want to connect. Then give a name for our project and run the tool. The tool uses spatial analysis and the street network to locate the shortest distance path back to the existing network. The tool will also daisy chain sites together. If it made sense for a site to feed into another site. And now that we have these network paths, we can then see the footage of each route and generate a high level cost for this fiber project. ArcGIS as a comprehensive geospatial system, provides the tools for next gen network planning and engineering. ArcGIS provides that one connected GIS system to easily go from planning wireless networks to fix line networks so that engineers can address the digital divide as optimally as possible. So this has been another episode of TGI5. Thanks for watching. We hope to see you all at future industry events and until next time we're out. -Patrick Huls ... View more