Highlights from Presentations and Exhibits at the Esri UC 2020: plenty of ArcGIS
ArcGIS Workforce:
- Mobile app for worker, web app for dispatcher and project owner there is ArcGIS Platform
- Mobile app allows use of mobile app to complete to do list
- Web app allows the creation and management of work for mobile working
- GIS allows automation of processes, train dispatchers and mobile workers
Workforce has same look and feel as collector and survey123. As a mobile app, Workforce allows you to launch other ArcGIS Field apps like navigator, survey 123 & collector. So you can allocate field work and receive real time response on progress using the auto or manual sync
What’s great is that you can see photos PDFS, add and edit notes or attach photos. You can even broadcast your status. You can extract pieces of map to work in the field. Sync is a new capability to work offline or sync to update. The web app allows you to see all the assignments, the workers and their locations. You can create assignments as a form and see all the workers and their workload.
In the demonstration, they show the worker updating some work live and it immediately shows on the dispatchers view—very reminiscent of ESRI JTX. As the GIS Analyst you can pull all this information into feature services, online layers and tables which can are enriched with the photos and documents which have been captured
ArcGIS Indoors Road Ahead
- Can be run through Enterprise or AGOL
- ArcGIS Pro has extension which can load and put in CAD data
- Space planner is new extension
- Viewer/Kiosk
- Runs on mobile and works with indoor positioning systems
- Uses 2D & 3D floor plans and network analyst networks
- Runs on iOS or Android
Load floor plans, create indoor maps and then publish to indoors for web or mobile. Latest release has space planning and management capability for ‘what If’ scenario planning. Web indoor viewer to provide indoor navigation and search nearest for receptions and businesses.
Mobile:
- Mobile experience is brandable
- Supports conference room booking through office 365
- Real time person locating
- Search and find nearest
- Office Hotelling – means staff can book hot desks
- Supports Bluetooth (through sensors), Wi-Fi and GPS
- Esri offers own indoor positioning system?!
- Directions can provide spoken navigation
Indoors is a separate license that you need to enable, once enabled you can use ArcGIS Pro to start building your map(s). Using Indoors you can optimize social distancing for seating and floor plans (e.g. for Covid 19).
Licensing Indoors enables a licence for all in organisation and gives 2 ArcGIS Pro licenses. Includes data reviewer, 3D analyst, network analyst and spatial analyst to name a few.
RoadMap:
- Space use analytics – real time occupancy
- Real time asset tracking, locate moving assets, geofencing
- Enhanced workspace reservation
- Centerline network generation, faster more scalable routable network generation)
- Platform floor awareness. Indoor positioning SDK, mobile floor picker and collector support
ArcGIS Analytics for IoT
- By next near there will be over 20 billion smart devices
- 80% of sensor data has location element
- End to end system for analysis in real time, near real-time or over time
- Runs on kubernetes to be faster
- Has GeoEvents and GeoAnalytics
There are feed items real-time analytics or big data analytics – ingest, alert, analyze! Works through AGOL (whereas before it was enterprise alone). For AIOT – it is cloud only, there is no infrastructure. Create feature layers that can be consumed on a map of live data. Real-time analytics output to ArcGIS Layers (maps & feature) or Alerts & notifications (email).
Can use data over time, 20 posts a second can become a million in a day, so analytics can grow to support this.
By the end of 2020 there will be more than 20 million connected cars. Billions of events per day. How do you handle or analyse this volume of data? The Big Data feed provides this. You can model the analysis on the feed and then automate the refresh to display hourly, weekly, monthly changes
Data doesn’t need to be already inside ArcGIS to run the big data analysis it uses Cloud (AWS S3, Azure Blob) and Web (Http/RSS).
Huge amount of spatiotemporal analysis tools (Summarize, find locations, enrich data, analyze patterns, manage data and more) many can be run as the data arrives or to analyze change over time. Annual subscription on top of AGOL
Designed from the ground up, it is a cloud hosted SaaS, Managed by Esri so eliminates IT staff configuration and maintenance—and it scales! No development is required. It comes with a large amount of credits, so credits are not used for feed. A sizing exercise will be undertaken at setup to figure out cost.
AIOT can scale better than geo-event server and is designed to be easier to use.
Next release in August, Azure Cosmos DB feeds are going to be enabled…. Highly suspect that other formats will come soon!
ArcGIS Explorer:
- Explorer is designed for field operations
- That means to digitally enable workflows with location technology so field work can be completed faster and more efficiently with better return on investment
- Planning is done with ArcGIS Workforce, Navigation is done with Arcgis Navigator.
- Understanding what is happening is done with ArcGIS Explorer (publisher extension).
- Capture is done with ArcGIS Collector, Survey 123 or Quickcapture.
- Monitoring is done with ArcGIS Tracker/ Operational Dashboard.
- Coordination is done with Workflorce, tracker or explorer
ArcGIS explorer is a map you can use anywhere on or offline on mobile or windows. You can pull up attributes and documents like a map viewer. You can also create and share notes on the map, whilst mobile.
What’s new:
- Offline web maps – you can use predefined offline areas. You set the area as offline areas in AGOL and they can be used offline out in the field
- You can also create offline areas in Explorer!
- Set schedule updates to keep offline areas up to date.
- They only push out CHANGES so more efficient and less data.
- Set refresh intervals, up to every 6 seconds and provides near real-time updates.
- Viewing tracks with Tracker, so you can see your tracks in ArcGIS Explorer….see that they’ve completed the circle!
- Improved app linking.
- Sideload base maps.
- Load mobile map packages through SD cards.
- PKI authentication.
- Streamlined portal sign in.
- Get directions.
ArcGIS Explorer, for me, used to be an ArcGIS Pro type viewer. You could open shapefiles, KML files and other GIS data, it was a great little tool for people out in the field but it wasn’t too great on mobile. It is awesome to now see it being part of the field operations tool set and its integration with all the capture and field work apps.
Survey123
What is Survey123? It is forms + geo… There are companies that thrive from filling out forms—Esri improves on this by adding the location element!
Survey123 Designer:
- 2 new question types in designer, map and ranking question.
- Map replaces the ‘Place Geopoint’
- Ranking questions allows preferences based on choices.
- Improved custom links for URLS.
- Web access accessibility keyboard navigation is included,
Survey123 field:
- (iOS Android Windows and Mac)
- Survey update notifications.
- Better maps.
- Multiple attachments and camera-only photos.
- Enhanced workflows through folders.
Survey123 Connect:
- New XLSForm syntax – hidden appearance – hides a Geopoint question so that you don’t have to show them.
- Esri visible column, dynamically hides a question while preserving its value.
- New XLSForm syntax – mode and status – mode describes if a record is in edit mode or not and status says whether it is draft, submitted, sent, inbox or collect
Survey123 Reports:
- Price change, from 2.5 credits per report to 0.5 credits.
- Expanded report template syntax with summary sections (to produce summary report) and statistics.
Workflow automation:
You can now integrate Survey123 with apps and services other people in the organisation use like Office 365, Google Cloud, LinkedIn, MailChimp and more.
What’s new is the inclusion of all fields in payload on edit events and inclusion of repeat data in webhook payload.
New Survey123 web app JavaScript API.
As a developer you can interact, work and test web apps or embed forms in your own web apps.
Note that Esri Field Maps was announced yesterday, that will eventually encompass many of the functions of Collector and Survey123.
Stay tuned!