If you’re using the Attribute Assistant, we need your help!

[MikeMillerGIS]

We’re doing some research into how the Attribute Assistant is being used. We’d like to see what rules you are using and how you configured your dynamic value table. 

This information will help us plan for the future. We want to know what are the most common rules.  We also want to see your gnarly and complicated rules to see how far the Attribute Assistant is being pushed.

So please share your dynamic value table along with any comments you have in this thread. We appreciate your help on this effort!

Thanks,

Mike

ArcGIS Solutions

PS: If you don’t know what the Attribute Assistant is (or aren’t sure if you are using it already) no worries.  You can learn more about Attribute Assistant on the ArcGIS Solution site here. 

[Anonymous User]

My favorite Attribute Assistant project is this: I loaded a table of 4,000 non-georeferenced engineering plans into a point file with a pretend x,y. I have editors identify a record one at a time to open the hyperlink of the plan, find its location in GIS, use the Advanced Editing Replace Geometry tool and click on the map to georeference it.  Then, upon updated geometry rules it runs many methods to insert information into the record's attribute like watershed, parcel id, subdivision and other local jurisdictional information on the site our engineers like to lookup plans by.  My only issue is that I cannot use expression value method with intersecting feature value method.  I am not sure it anyone has ideas...  I want to only run the intersecting feature method if that field is null?  How do I do that?  As the field may have already been populated (I inherited inconsistently edited data) or a point may be placed on a parcel where the information in the underlying parcel may be missing and thus my possibly good data will be overwritten to bad/empty data. 

My favorite Attribute Assitant rule is this: 

I have stormwater assets that have the name of the plan they are on in.  To automate copying of the plan hyperlink in, example for a pipe, it checks that the plan id field is formatted correctly, 2 letters, then some numbers, and if that is the case it populates.  However, the expression was not the simplest.  Some plans were entered wrong without the letters or are from another jurisdiction thus we do not have values for the plan id.  I tested if the plan id was null, if it was true it leaves the field null, if false it tests if the first two digits are numeric (there is no is alpha test) and if true it leaves the field null, if false it populates the hyperlink.

IIF(isNull([PLAN_ID]),NULL,IIF(isNumeric(Left([PLAN_ID],2)),NULL, "\\server\planfolder\publicworksfolder\" + Mid([PLAN_ID],1,2) + "\" + Mid([PLAN_ID],3,10) + ".pdf"))

[JasonBalmut]

Mary McCullough‌‌, your favorite AA rule helped me create a series that concatenates the full address number and name for SiteAddressPoints.  In our database, the Address Number Suffix can be tricky because it can be a letter (A, B, C) or sometimes a fraction (1/2, 1/4, 1/8) depending on what is being addressed.  A letter suffix will be placed right after the Address Number (903A, 851B) so that it doesn't get confused with the street name.  Fractions require a space so they don't bleed into the Address Number (903 1/2, 851 1/4).

Attached is a commented spreadsheet of the DynamicValue table with the concatenation expressions.  Our database does not contain Prefix Directionals but it's easy to follow pattern.  Thanks!

[MichaelVolz]

I'm using the AA Validate Attribute Lookup method to populate the road directional, road name, road type and municipality fields in our Road Centerline feature class.  Works well when the road directional field has a value (N, S, E, or W) but does not work if the directional field is null, which is the vast majority of cases.  Popup opens with the message "The property values cannot be changed".  It's validating against the MasterStreetName table.

Does anybody have a workaround or perhaps another method that would work?

[MikeMillerGIS]

If you can send me a repo GDB, I can take a look.  I would need the dynamic value table and a set of feature classes to test is out on.  mmiller@esri.com

[MichaelVolz]

Michael:

Currently you have worked on a beta version of AA that works for null values which will hopefully arrive as a regular version soon.  I was wondering if the capability that you are providing here will be either added to Attribute Rules in ArcGIS Pro by you or you will communicate to the ArcPro Attribute Rules (AR) development team that this capability needs to be added to AR for orgs that will be migrating from ArcMap to ArcPro.  Without this functionality in ArcPro AR, this would be another showstopper for migrating from ArcMap to ArcPro for my org.

[JayJohnson]

We have a scenario where polygons representing Fire Response Districts (FRDs) are used to update the attributes on lines (street centerline) so that the street attributes list which FRD each street segment is assigned to, for the right and left side of each segment.  We experience problems with Attribute Assistant in the case where the street centerline is geometrically coincident with the edge of two polygons.  What needs to happen is that the field FIRE_L gets attributed with the FRD polygon value on the left side of the line and field FIRE_R gets attributed with the FRD polygon value on the right side of the line.  What actually happens with Attribute Assistant is that both FIRE_L and FIRE_R get populated with FRD data from ONE of the adjacent FRD polygons, seemingly at random. 

Is there a Value Method that can help with this?  We are using the INTERSECTING FEATURE  Value Method, which clearly isn't up to the task for this situation. 

In the attached screen shot, FIRE_L="5" and FIRE_R="ES25".  If Attribute Assistant is activated when ANY kind of edit is done to this selected line (Skyridge, in blue), both FIRE_L and FIRE_R will be set to a single value, either "5" or "ES25", at random.

Thanks.

[JoeBorgione]

I feel your pain;  I've struggled with fire resonse zones in the past.  While I can't offer an AA solution, I can offer a slightly different approach.  

Years ago I decided that L/R fire zones were more trouble than they were worth, at least when it comes to the same jurisdiction.  [The PSAP that I contract with dispatches for  multi-agency and multi jurisdictions.]  When it came to responses where one side of the street went to one station and the other side of the street went to another station of the same department, I assigned the whole street to one or the other based on a network analysis 'quickest response' .

The streets that split fire response zones between different agencies, typically follow city boundaries as well and are fewer and further between.  You can find those fairly easily and update them manually.

FInally, the saving grace has been a CAD upddate that acutally uses polygons instead of hard-coded street enterlines for response assignments.

Best of luck.

[MikeMillerGIS]

I do not think we offer a method to do this.  Might be something we could look at adding as an option to intersecting feature for lines intersecting polygons.

chris_fox-esristaff‌

[DavidBollinger]

Late to the conversation.  I'm investigating AA for automating "left/right" attribution similar to Jay Johnson's question above, any progress on this?  (or is there some other existing approach that I've just missed?)

What I would envision is a "sided" version of the NEAREST_FEATURE value method, that would also allow the specification of a "percent along" and "distance offset" for linear features.  That offset point would then be used to perform the near analysis.

Depending on your road data, you may have (as we do) all sorts of left/right two-sided values (various emergency response providers, municipalities, zip codes, reporting districts, etc).  So taking just a simple one, say municipality, as an example, you'd have two separate rules for each sided field, here's a fictional mockup:

TABLENAME        FIELDNAME  VALUEMETHOD           VALUEINFO

RoadCenterlines  MUNIRIGHT  NEAREST_FEATURE_SIDED MunicipalBoundaries|Name|50|20

RoadCenterlines  MUNILEFT   NEAREST_FEATURE_SIDED MunicipalBoundaries|Name|50|-20

where the "50|20" part would mean "50 percent along, and 20 maps units perpendicular" (along with a convention for determining which sign value of the offset means left or right - I think negative=left makes most sense when oriented with from-to vertices)

[MikeMillerGIS]

David,

This is currently not possible. I can log the issue, but we are not really adding new features to the AA at this point, mainly focusing on bug fixes and ensuring it works with future versions of ArcMap