“Easy analytical maps!” That’s ArcGIS Online. Ready access to a dozen great basemaps, hundreds of high quality operational layers, and your own data (point tables, GPS data, KMLs, shape files, or just ad hoc data) makes it easy to assemble content.
It helps to think about your audience when producing maps for others. Are they comfortable coping with lots of data with sometimes confusing names, or do they need greater clarity? Will they want and know how to change contents? Can they interact with layers and do their own exploration in the manner you seek, or will they do better with a story that you construct for them? ArcGIS Online lets you turn off or configure pop-ups, tweak attribute names and display, integrate dynamic tables or charts or queries, and even construct a step-by-step guided presentation.
A new silent video shows a quick example (not even 8 minutes, realtime) of starting from scratch, changing a basemap, adding a shapefile, customizing popups, choosing a classification scheme, and saving the file in MapViewer, then opening it in ArcGIS Explorer Online to add a dashboard gadget and build and show a presentation. After watching the video you can practice the demonstrated processes yourself with the very same shapefile.
Combining the processes in this movie with the capacity to enhance a shapefile detailed in “Fun with GIS#93: Mapping External Data via ArcGIS Online” means enormous analytical capacity is at your fingertips.
Looking at images is easy. Being analytical is powerful, and where the jobs are.
- Charlie Fitzpatrick, Esri Education Manager
