ESRI ArcGIS User Workshop - Jan 2020 in San Francisco

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Wow! It’s been awhile since I posted. That’s because Fall semester was a full one. I’ll update you all on that soon - it basically will be a summary of using Pro for class, which was terrific.

OK on to the workshop.

We started with the inspirational video showcased at 2019 ESRI User Conference, and a video welcome from JD. The theme of the workshop is “Amplify your GIS”, and he introduced the new concept “geospatial infrastructure” also developed in a hot-off-the-presses paper with Michael Goodchild. Other new terms: the ESRI GIS technology world is referred to as the Esri Geospatial Cloud, and new key components are the geo-enabled workflows. OK, on to the new stuff.

What’s New in ArcGIS. There is lots of new stuff in Pro: coding, visualizations, editing workflows; new stuff in AGOL, primarily the new Map Viewer (Beta); and new stuff in the Solutions Workflows. Highlights for me include:

What’s new in ArcGIS Pro

  • Pro Extensions

    • New extension: LocateXT – to geocode unstructured data. Good for historical work.

  • New in Editor

    • Find and replace in an attribute table. Good for bulk re-formatting.

    • Contingent values within Domains. Makes editing more efficient.

    • Using Arcade for things like automatic calculation of attributes. They suggest we check it out, pronto.

  • New in Visualization Tools

    • Feature binning via the “Enable Feature Binning” tool. This opens a new tab on the ribbon, creates dynamic polygons summarizing features found within. This is good for example for large point datasets symbolized in hexagons.

    • Match Layer Symbology to a Style: Quick way to have different styles.  

    • The “Calendar Heat Chart” for data with temporal data. Looks slick.

    • You can add pie charts to polygon features, changing input and making pie charts variable; and make into 3D.

    • Text boxes: you can now change the shape of your text boxes – reshape along a complex boundary, e.g. This is pretty sweet.

  • New in Coding/Tools

    • In 2.5, you can schedule your geoprocessing tools. Wait what? This is going to be interesting.

    • Scripting: You can export a model to a python file, or export your geoprocessing history directly to python. Ok then.

    • In 2.5, jupyter notebook can be run directly in Pro (from “Notebooks”) in the Catalog. No need for to run JN externally. So there.

  • Sharing

    • New Layouts: Import Layout Gallery. ESRI has developed 12 default templates within a Gallery. You can use one of them, or add your own.

    • Printing: Printing is now done in the background, while you continue to work; you can print in black and white; and you can tile your larger maps.

    • You can Password protect your pdfs.

    • New export format for those carto-designers who like to work in AI: AIX files for Adobe Illustrator.

What’s new in ArcGIS Online

  • Map Viewer Beta is the new thing. This I must try, having yelled at AGOL more often than I care to admit about configuring pop-ups.

    • New Layout, with symbolization by field, by expression, (using Arcade) and filter data; New dot density symbolization choice, among other things.

    • More control over look and field of pop-ups (yay!), including adding text and images. Dynamic changes, yay!

    • Plus some slick links to Story Maps

What’s new in ArcGIS Solution Workflows

  • Showed us some great stuff from the Conservation Easement Solutions Workflow – migration from a paper-based solution to a digital workflow. There are many other examples

  • Use the ArcGIS Solution Deployment Tool.

  • This is a bit vague to me, and I will need to dig in.

What’s new in ArcGIS for Developers

  • ESRI continues its work to extend the platform through:

    • Javascript API

    • App Builders – Web AppBuilder (new is Experience Builder, which is in beta testing now)

    • Some other stuff that I wasn’t fast enough to capture. But looks good.

Example GIS workflows

Next the presenters walked us through a few key sectors using GIS. Some great stuff came out for me to explore, including:

GIS for law enforcement

  • There is a “Crime Analysis” toolbar, BTW. Free and added to the ribbon. It contains lots of crime-relevant tools and some ways to efficiently update data from tables

  • The “Import Records Tool” seems very useful for anyone using large tabular data that updates regularly.

  • Apparently ESRI has quite a few staff/engineers with law enforcement backgrounds who have built most of these tools. They stressed that lots of them can be/should be used for other workflows, and the Import Records Tool seems appropriate for this.

Public Works

  • Showed QuickCapture as an easy workflow to capture information about the condition of streets.

  • Once you have your problem areas, you can route them in AGOL via the “Plan Routes” Tool (uses credits!) in AGOL.

  • Those routes are used with the “Navigator” tool, and integrated with the “Tracker” app

AutoCad integration: you can now edit an ArcGIS hosted feature service in AutoCad. This is a big deal.

Parcel Editing and Parcel Fabric

  • Showcased the Parcel Fabric Administration, and Parcel Tasks

    • Parcel Fabric keeps track of all editing actions done on parcels, such as merging, splitting, etc.

    • Tasks include updating COGO; updates all the directions, areas, etc.

    • Besides my interest in haberdashery, I really need to get more into parcel fabrics.

Planning

  • This is where ESRI has been building the Urban Solution Workflow. We’ve seen this example before at the 2019 ESRI UC; it’s from Boston, discussing planning for a new high rise building and its potential shading of Boston Common.

Lots of stuff to follow up on for IGIS and for projects. Happy 2020.