Tag Archives: ArcGIS Mobile

This week and the next, we will be posting updates to the templates on the Water Utilities Resource Center.  Our focus was to expand the templates to include data, cartography and examples for sewer and storm water. 

The next release of the templates will have an expanded and updated data model.  There are now feature dataset for both the Sewer System and Storm Collection System.  We have included these datasets in each the of map documents with sample cartography, scale dependency, label expressions, etc. 

We also restructure the Operations and Planning datasets.  All operational data, whether it be data for the field or the office, is now in the Operations Dataset.  This dataset has been expanded to include layers to support typical activities for Sewer and Storm data maintenance.  The Planning dataset is now only used to store and manage the reporting layers.  We have also included the results from the CIP template, both decision support results and the CIP project areas, in the core information model.  We did this so you can see how storing when you store CIP data in your utilities authoritative data repository in GIS, your analytical results and new CIP projects are available for publication to browser based and mobile GIS applications.

Since many public works departments also operate water or wastewater utilities, we’ve decided that the public works resource center and the water utility resource center should use the same sample data when possible.  So you’ll also notice in the newer template sample data some public works feature classes like roads and facilities.  We wanted to leave this dataset in the download to show how one Geodatabase, a central source of information, can support many different divisions or departments in a municipality and to show that these templates can be easily expanded to support different or other datasets.

At the time of this blog, we have already posted the first two updated templates, the Water Utilities Mobile Map template and the Water Utilities Network Editing template.  These templates have been upgraded and improved to handle the changes to the data model mentioned above.  You will see new functions and workflows built around the sewer and storm datasets.  Below I will highlight some of the new functions in each template.

In the Water Utilities Network Editing Template, you will find many new improvements and enhancements.  Most of these changes were a direct result of your requests.  First you will notice that we split up the Attribute Assistant and the ArcMap Toolbars into 2 separate installs.  This makes it easier for us to make future improvements and roll them out faster and also allows you to install just one of the components.  We heard from a few utilities that had built their own editing toolbar previously that they just wanted the attribute assistant.

When you open ArcMap, you will now find two toolbars.  We split the tools into reporting/tracing tools and into editing tools.  If you want more details, review the release notes, or you can click shift +F1 on top of any of the tools on the toolbar…yes per your suggestions, we included compiled help for each of the tools!!!  The new reporting/trace toolbar has commonly used tracing functions.  You can perform an upstream trace, downstream trace, or isolation trace, by just the click of your mouse.   There is also an option to Export to Excel the selected feature, or load the selected features into the ID Box. 

You’ll also have notice a new table, GenerateID, in the GDB in the updated data model.  This table is used to support a new option in the Attribute Assistant, GenerateID.  This new option allows you to specify a column in the GenerateID table to use as the ID index.  Yup, you can generate unique ID right in ArcMap using whatever incrementing scheme you want.  The tool uses the value, combines it with a prefix you specified, then increments the table.  There are a few more new options in the Attribute Assistant, so check out the release notes and review the help.  There is also a link for the help in the start menu, under ArcGIS Templates.  Note, Windows 7 does not support .hlp out of the box, please download the fix.

The Water Utilities Mobile Map now shows both the Water dataset, and  the sewer and storm data.  We added a new component that lets you toggle between the different datasets.  So it is easy now to just look at sewer data or water or storm, or turn all three on.  This is presented to the field staff as a single, large button that make toggling between them very easy.  We also improved the ID layer list.  You can now filter which layers are presented to the user for Identification, making it easier to navigate the drop down list.  You will also see the list expands when you click it, again, making it easier for the field personal to select a value.  This new version also includes a module to show how to record new data, such as inspections, leak locations, service request, etc.  This inspection module can linked to a source asset.  Say you are doing a fire hydrant inspection.  When you tap or click the hydrant, the inspection module copies information from the hydrant to the inspection record.  It does this by matching field names.  So it can help automate some of the information that needs to be captured, like ID.  Lastly, you will see a module for workorders.  This is an example of how you can work with a workorder system.  This module read a feature class that stores all the work orders, filters them based on the crew name and present them to the field staff.  The workorder module is linked to the activity module, so by opening a workorder, it starts an inspection. 

We’re very happy with these new releases, but we’re already looking forward to rolling out more enhancements.  With the expanded tools, symbology, data schema and workflows into Sewer and Storm, you now have a starting point for all assets at a water department, sewer utility or public works department.  

Please keep in mind, these enhancements came directly from your requests and feedback about the templates, so please keep them coming!

Thanks

ArcGIS Team Water