We have been in Redlands attending the Javascript ArcGIS Online Templates Holistic Lab. Its always exciting coming to ESRI, like being back at university; surrounded by super bright people.
I’ve said this a number of times but in 2006 with the launch of Google Maps, I did wonder about the future of ESRI. Don’t think I was alone. Today that is quite the reverse. ArcGIS Online is truly outstanding. Its cloud based, makes geo-data available to be consumed by a multitude of different devices, provides data management controls (public/private data), allows publishing of data from multiple formats (CSV, GRX, KML etc), and can be distributed in multiple ways; as GIS targeted maps/apps, embedded in documents, as story maps. Bottom line it will broaden the reach of geospatial data beyond the GIS folks, and provides the ability to integrate with business systems.
This holistic lab was the first of its kind. It was in part a discussion/tutorial on what these new, so called, solution templates are about and how to use them. It was also a testing and bug finding lab. Most importantly, for partners, it was a great opportunity to interact with the Javascript templates team.
ESRI are moving away from the generic map viewer. The Flex for ArcGIS viewer will remain, as a widget based open source code base for quick and easy standup and customisation of ArcGIS data. The Javascript templates are new animals. They are integrated into ArcGIS online. Meaning when you publish your data as a webmap, you can choose to embed this data into an actual web (or mobile) application. More than that you can host this app on your own server. So download the source, tweek it (rewrite it/extend it) and include the app as one of the template options for your ArcGIS online administrator. The templates are also configurable, so non technical administrator can change the look and feel of the app without touching any code. Very cool.
Focused ArcGIS Apps
The idea behind solution templates is focused apps. So:
1) Build a template which works against any data set of a certain type or schema; the local government data model for example.
2) Simple workflows and away from the generic or swiss army knife type apps. In the mobile world, ArcPad remains alive and well. But there are complex workflows in the app which we have had clients complain to us about. Solution templates may help to compliment ArcPad and provide less technical workflows for non IT field workers.
3) Apps targeted at a particular audience. This could be as simple as a printing template, which provides options for users to print their maps in a particular way. So no longer a generic print widget, a targeted simple map printing app.
We’ll write more in a future post on working with the templates. For now; there are some very exciting developments going on in the ESRI world.
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