Today at the Esri UC was a day full of technical workshops and industry sessions. I was busy checking out sessions on ArcGIS Online, AppStudio, Collector for Windows 10, ArcGIS Pro Tasks, and the Dakotas User Group meeting.
ArcGIS Online’s new security, privacy, and compliance capabilities make it easier to administer an Organization. Custom Roles can be created that restrict access and restrict the ability for certain users to use credits. New groups can be created with editing capabilities, allowing multiple group users to work on maps collaboratively. There are four options for authenticating users: Username-Password, Multi-Factor ID, Password Policies, and Enterprise Logins. Beefing up your user authentication can vastly improve your Organization’s security and protect against costly malicious attacks. You can check the system status and view security and compliance information on the Trust ArcGIS website.
AppStudio for ArcGIS has the potential to change the game in crowdsourced data collection. It is included with your ArcGIS Online account and currently offers three templates. It requires the free download of AppStudioPlayer and you can compile your apps for Android, Linux, Mac, and Windows stores. But how is an app made in AppStudio different from a Story Map Tour? The answer, is that no one will find your Story Map Tour in the app stores, but they can when you use AppStudio which even provides the APK file for your app when submitting it to stores. This cross-platform native app builder can offer great value for Tourism and Economic Development and simplify gathering Crowdsourced data. It is available now in beta.
Collector for ArcGIS will be available for Windows 10 in a matter of weeks. Because of the GPS capabilities of prior Windows operating systems, it will only function properly on Windows 10 devices. It will include easy template searching to find specific creatable features without scrolling through length lists. I predict this release will please many people I know who use Surface devices.
ArcGIS Pro users can create tasks which are preconfigured steps that guide users through a workflow process and can be shared with other projects. This is useful for offering instructional tutorials in a business’s best-practices workflow.
At the Dakotas Regional User Group meeting, several GIS professionals expressed the interest in being able to obtain LiDAR data for organizations throughout North Dakota and South Dakota. Organizations that shared a boundary with Canada have been unable to obtain data for a zone buffering the borderline on either side, but Minnesota was able to get LiDAR data within this zone for itself and these processes could be used to help out its neighbors. The 2015 North Dakota GIS Users Conference will be held September 28-29 in Fargo, and we’ll be there.
Amongst the exhibits, I saw many familiar faces from UCs past, and I also was able to meet with numerous Esri representatives to learn how to optimize the use of ArcGIS Online Web App Templates and Esri Maps for Office. I even managed to go on a little trip to Null Island, and during my time there I was perplexed just thinking about how many feature layers have washed up on its shores and had to be rescued.
What sessions have you been checking out at the UC? Tell us by tweeting us here or sending me an email. Hope to see you around the UC!
