Now that the dust has settled and AGOL is almost old hat, it
must be time to give a roll. I started
with a relatively simple idea for a web map and thought this would be a test
and I know a lot of you are making the same start, because I see lots of maps
on AGOL with names like test, test1, map1, first day, try this, etc.
A few disclaimers, I am reasonably well versed in ArcGIS,
working knowledge of spreadsheets but I don’t live there, extensive database
knowledge, moderately knowledgeable about web map pages, although Karen and
Jason do my heavy lifting, abandoned my inhouse server about 6 months ago, and
moderately skeptical about service credits. Lindsay and Ken provided tips and
tricks and debugging for some of my more stupid mistakes. After about 16 hours, not all of it
productive time, here are a few things I learned that might save you some time.
False Step 1 - Do not take your great looking desk top mxd
with all of the symbology, layer files, and base maps that you use for your
local analysis and editing and just push it to AGOL. The idea that you can “simply” publish any
mxd to an AGOL web page is sort of true, but this results in a lot of lost time
for a really bad looking, under performing web map that you really didn’t want
to use as a web product anyway.
Good Step 1 - Take the time to really get into your AGOL
account. Get your profile set up,
establish the groups you want, add the icons, think about the key words, you
are going to be using them a lot, so get a list you like. Thinking time and image and icon prep is all
worth it. It might take you a few hours
to get a good base established but it is time well spent. Think about the pattern and style for user
logins, they will be using them more than you think and should follow some
pattern you can quickly recall.
Good Step 2 - Design an mxd for a web map, not your desktop
but a web map, what do you want to show or not show what will be the
information about that layer that you will want to see. This took a bit to think through and had
several false starts but I didn’t want to start with a template, for this
experience I wanted to see what it looked like starting from scratch, or nearly
so.
False Step 2 - Yep, the projection thing, seems like 100
years ago we were arm wrestling projections and coordinate systems and
datums. So now we are at the Web
Mercator Auxiliary Sphere 2, or whatever, and yes you do use the project
command or project tool, seems like the good ole days. Of course you could “simply” geocode your
data, but again I wanted to take my data and put it on AGOL.
False Step 3 - Project your data BEFORE you build the
mxd. If you build an mxd, then project
data, and relink your mxd to the newly projected data, some how the attributes
never get to the AGOL site. Sequence is
important here, sort of like putting the targets down before the airplane flies
over.
Good Step 3 - Fix all of the errors reported in the Analyze
step. Sure some of them are listed as
minor or low level or insignificant, don’t believe it, they are checked for a
reason and they will bite you at some point, just fix them.
Good Step 4 - Save at every opportunity. You cannot save frequently enough. Configure the pop up, save the pop up, save
the map. Change the transparency, save
the map. Change the edit properties, save the map. And save the pop up
information somewhere, even though you cannot actually cut and paste into the
pop up configuration window, at least you will know what you did. And save the
map again just to be sure.
False Step 4 - Don’t worry about how the html or web links
are going to look, you can’t really change them anyway and the AGOL does a
reasonable job of adding the “more info” link in the pop up, although it does
not recognize ftp sites as web links and you cannot insert a field name into
the custom configured link.
Good Step 5 - Overwrite the service when you update the
data. Yes, you can do some editing to
the data on the AGOL site, but then your desktop data is out of date. Just
update it on the desktop and republish. The “overwrite service” option works
pretty well, just remember that after you do overwrite, you have to re-share
the feature service; I spent too much time “debugging” that.
In the end, I think the AGOL is a good deal. I consumed 3 service credits messing around
with multiple uploads and false starts, but learned a lot. Check it out http://bit.ly/141df5V.
I sense that one of the primary audiences for the AGOL will
be the non-traditional GIS types who might have used Google fusion or some
other quick web map tool, so my next experiments will be to see how simple the
csv and Excel format are to use and to use the story map templates to build a
web page. I am curious how this experience
will fit with my Google publishing experience.
