Getting Technical - April 2021

April 23, 2021

George Kouroupis

What’s new in ArcGIS Online? What tasks are best suited to Esri’s scripting language, Arcade? How do you streamline editing in ArcGIS Pro? Get the answers to all that and more in this month’s edition of Getting Technical.

Features

Introducing ArcGIS Enterprise on Kubernetes
From the onset of development, our guiding principles have been to deliver a system that provides world-class geospatial services, serves as a content authoring and collaboration environment, is highly scalable and easy to maintain. We’re thrilled to share and showcase many aspects of this new architecture and design from its deployment to configuration and ongoing maintenance.

ArcGIS Pro: Moving Desktop GIS to the Next Frontier
What we think of as “GIS software” has seen its fair share of change and evolution. GIS software is now on personal computers, on mobile devices, in web browsers, embedded in drones and autonomous vehicles. We even see GIS software running happily in the background without any human intervention. Even so, there is still a need for desktop GIS, learn how it fits into the broader GIS system ecosystem in this blog post.

What’s New in ArcGIS Online (April 2021)
ArcGIS Online was just updated! New capabilities include improved collaboration across organizations, and the new Map Viewer and ArcGIS Dashboards in general availability. You can also schedule ArcGIS Notebooks and customize colour themes for your organization’s home page.

New ArcGIS Dashboards is Out of Beta
ArcGIS Dashboards Beta was officially introduced a year ago, and we are happy to announce that with the April 2021 release, it is out of beta and available for general use. This new version of Dashboards, built on the ArcGIS API for JavaScript 4.X, has been renamed to ArcGIS Dashboards and is now the default experience for your organization to access dashboards. The previous version of Dashboards is now called ArcGIS Dashboards Classic.

Introducing Charts in Map Viewer
Charts (beta) have been added to Map Viewer! Visualizations are how we interact with and make sense of our data. We all understand the importance of visualizing our data in geographic space, but there is great value in visualizing our data in ‘data space’ as well. Charts in Map Viewer provide extra insights into our data, allowing us to quickly make comparisons, visualize distributions, and uncover relationships.

Submit your app for our App of the Month
We’re looking for outstanding, publicly accessible ArcGIS-based apps to be featured in the Esri Canada Blog as our App of the Month. Could your app be it?

Flying Solo with ArcGIS Field Maps Webinar Q&A: Part 1
We received many questions were received during the “Flying Solo with ArcGIS Field Maps” webinar and they were answered by the technical team as part of two-part blog series. In part one, we cover questions around requirements, Collector equivalent workflows and going offline.

“Demystifying the ArcGIS Online Sign in Options” Webinar Q&A
On March 18, we hosted the “Demystifying the ArcGIS Online Sign in Options” webinar and received many questions throughout. We’ve answered those questions around getting started, configuring SAML logins, and more.

FAQ: What tasks are best suited to Esri’s programming language, Arcade?
Arcade is a simple scripting language intended for evaluating the values of attribute fields and geometries within the context of ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Runtime, ArcGIS Online, and the ArcGIS API for JavaScript. It was designed for creating custom visualizations and detailed labelling but is now implemented in a growing number of environments. Learn when to use Arcade in this overview of what, where and when to use Arcade.

Hot Tip: ArcGIS Pro Editing Tip – Streamline Your Editing Workflows

Do you edit data in ArcGIS Pro and find that you are performing tasks that seem a bit repetitive? Would you like to streamline your workflows to make editing your data more efficient? There are many tools and templates available to you in the editing environment that can help you reduce the number of clicks while editing and maintain data accuracy. See how to use Trace, Preset Templates, and Group Templates to streamline your editing workflows.

COVID-19 Resources

Visit the ArcGIS Solutions site to learn more about Esri’s suite of coronavirus recovery solutions.

COVID-19 Canada Resource Hub
Esri Canada’s resource hub includes bilingual maps, apps and other COVID-19 resources for the public, customers and media. The hub is constantly updated with case and vaccination data. It features dashboards on economic recovery, family structure, household dynamics and mental health, COVID-19 open datasets, additional GIS training videos and other resources. Check out our COVID-19 Recovery Solutions.

Coronavirus Vaccine Distribution Solutions
Achieving high COVID-19 vaccination rates requires a robust and transparent public education campaign that provides accurate vaccine information, progress on the distribution plan, and guidance needed to access a vaccination. A series of new ArcGIS Solutions designed to help communities communicate vaccine distribution plans and monitor the effectiveness of those plans are available for ArcGIS users. The new solutions align with recommendations provided by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), support plans developed by communities to execute the CDC recommendations, and leverage your location-based data to increase public confidence and monitor key vaccine distribution metrics.

Announcements

ArcGIS Living Atlas News (April 2021)

What’s New in argcis.learn (April 2021)

What’s New in ArcGIS AppStudio Version 5.0 (April 2021)

What's New in ArcGIS Experience Builder (April 2021)

What's New in ArcGIS Business Analyst Web and Mobile Apps | Q2 2021

What's New in Configurable Apps (April 2021)

What’s New in ArcGIS Notebooks (April 2021)?

Scheduled Mode for ArcGIS Notebooks in ArcGIS Online is here!

Your home page, now in color! (April 2021)

ArcGIS Runtime Local Server SDK 100.10 is now available!

View more announcements in the ArcGIS Blog | My Esri Blog on GeoNet

Service Packs, Patches & User Resources

ArcGIS Location Referencing 10.8.1 Patch 1 (Desktop)
This patch is to fix an issue with Calculate Route Concurrencies geoprocessing tool for ArcGIS Roads and Highways Desktop.

ArcGIS Location Referencing 10.7.1 Patch 2 (Desktop | Server)
This is a general maintenance patch for Esri Roads and Highways Desktop and Esri Roads and Highways Server.

ArcGIS Server Map and Feature Service Security Patch
This security patch addresses a security vulnerability found in ArcGIS Server map and feature services.

View more security patches

Web Watch –White Papers, Blogs and Useful Resources

App of the Month: Our Changing Continent
April is Earth Month – a perfect time to share this month’s App of the Month. The Our Changing Continent story map uncovers the stories that are hiding in an incredible North American Land Change dataset and highlights continent-wide issues that transcend borders.

Map of the Month: A Focus on Drumheller, Vegetation Inventory
Drumheller’s Flood Mitigation and Climate Adaptation System is committed to achieving both greenhouse gas reduction and conservation goals through its vegetation inventory program. Over 5,000 individual shrubs and trees have been surveyed during the past few months. The data collected has provided a wide range of vegetation statistics on local variety and density, as can be seen in the displayed visuals. Each tree mapped can also be tracked for health, age and suitable replacements, providing for a sustainable urban forest that can be maintained for the welfare of both inhabitants and wildlife in one of Canada's most unique landscapes.

Video: Defence & Security: An Interview with Pierre Bilodeau

Esri Canada’s Desmond Khor, Marketing Campaign Manager and Pierre Bilodeau, Defence and Security Industry Manager, discuss how government agencies can rely on location intelligence to make better, smarter decisions in changing environments.

Geographical Thinking Podcast: Season 1 | Episode 6 - The Future of GIS Professionals
What will the role of GIS be in the future? And what will this mean for GIS professionals? Guan chats with Chris North, Director of Technology Adoption at Esri Canada, about the shift he is seeing in the geospatial business and the opportunities this transformation can bring. Chris shares his views on how the industry is evolving from specialization to mainstream, why organizations need to bring geography back into GIS, and what impact these trends will have on the GIS community and beyond.

Geographical Thinking Podcast: Season 1 | Episode 7 – Choose to Challenge
Caroline Arnouk, founder & CEO of OPA Technologies, decided to challenge the status quo of traffic closure planning while working for the City of Montréal. The civil engineer founded OPA Technologies six years ago to help cities minimize the effects of traffic obstructions using GIS. Caroline speaks to Guan about how to sell to the public sector, the benefits of circulating business ideas, and the evolution of her company during COVID-19.

Community Map of Canada – Style of the Month

The Community Map of Canada is a basemap of Canada built from authoritative data, collected closest to the source, and updated daily. Check out the Community Map of Canada’s style of the month, “April Crocus”.

London: Maps, Location Technology Promote Mobility, Health
Twice in the last decade Londoners have seen dramatic shifts in the way they interact with streets and transit. The first was in 2012 when the Olympic Games temporarily brought 600,000 new riders to London’s buses and trains. The second was in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic emptied streets, buses, and rail cars. Learn how the London transit agency Transport for London uses mapping technology to maintain traffic awareness and prioritize sustainable transportation.

Territorial Empathy Maps Racial Inequality to Take Action
Maps, like all media, can be used for misinformation, but they can also be used to uncover and communicate the truth. Right now, old maps that perpetuated systemic racism in American cities are informing critical debates over racial prejudice and economic inequality. Learn how Zarith Pineda, an architect who advocates for social justice, works to confront the issue of historically marginalized communities one map at a time.

Video: Adding the Community Map of Canada Vector Basemaps to Enterprise

Learn the step-by-step process of adding a Canadian Vector Basemap to your Enterprise deployments.

ArcMap Continued Support
ArcGIS 10.8.1 is the current release of ArcMap and will continue to be supported until March 1, 2026, as established in the ArcGIS Desktop Product Life Cycle. We do not have plans to release an ArcMap 10.9 with the ArcGIS releases in 2021. We understand there may be questions as to what’s next for ArcMap inside ArcGIS Desktop. By viewing the ArcMap Continued Support page, you will be able to find the answers to most, if not all, of your questions regarding continued support of ArcMap as well as resources to help you transition your work moving forward into several Esri products such as ArcGIS Pro.

Deprecation Notice for Explorer, Collector, and Tracker
ArcGIS Field Maps was launched in October 2020 and replaces the functionality of ArcGIS Collector, ArcGIS Explorer, and ArcGIS Tracker on the iOS and Android mobile platforms. These products (Collector, Explorer, Tracker) are currently available to download and are fully supported; however, they will be retired in December 2021.

View more articles in ArcUser | ArcNews | ArcWatch

Training

Using LiDAR Data in ArcGIS

With a solid LiDAR data management strategy, you'll be able to provide support for better decision making within your organization.

This instructor-led course will teach you how to optimize the use of LiDAR data in ArcGIS for 2D and 3D analysis and for efficiently sharing results, as web services.

View training solutions