A VertiGIS Studio Web Roadmap (sort of)
Pinned Featured
Does VertiGIS Studio Web (VSW) have a roadmap? How can I get a better sense of whether a feature I'm interested in might be developed?
Fair questions, and very challenging to answer. For those of you who haven't met me, my name is Cam Barnard and I am the Product Manager for VertiGIS Studio Web and the Product Director for VertiGIS Studio.
While it is not, strictly speaking, a roadmap; I thought you would benefit from a written summary of the themes that have driven many of our development decisions to date, and the order in which we are addressing those themes.
Keep in mind as you read these, that requests by customers, partners, and our own services group can, and should also play a major role in when a specific feature is implemented.
As always, questions and discussion are welcome!
Theme 1 – Information presentation and visualization
Initial versions of VSW were focused almost exclusively upon ensuring that geospatial information could be visualized well, and interacted with effectively, in an attractive layout. The vision here was to take a set of use cases that apply to both new and existing customers and to do them thoroughly so that everyone could begin to use VSW even before it had full feature parity. This theme has taken the majority of our development effort to date, and is now largely complete. To date this has included:
- A new configuration framework
- Flexible layouts by separating component behavior from component presentation
- Support for component arity – allowing multiple of the same component in an app
- Support for multiple layouts within an application
- Support for composition – allowing a single configuration component to be reused
- Support for 2D maps and 3D scenes in a single entity with the ability to toggle back and forth
- 2D maps support heatmaps
- Standard map/scene navigation and zoom controls
- Support for multiple 2D maps and 3D scenes side by side in an application with the ability to synchronize the location between them
- Color and theme your application to match your organization’s look and feel
- Map Context Menu
- Coordinates widget
- Reverse geocode address widget
- Simple Layer List
- Legend
- Layer presets switcher
- Base map switcher
- Location Bookmarks
- Device Geolocation
- Scalebar
- Scale Selector
- Coordinates of mouse on map
- I Want To… menu
- Toolbar
- Extent-specific Search
- Identify
- Results Highlighting and Labels
- Map filter effects
- Results List
- Results Table
- Result Details
- Result Actions
- Charts
- KPI Cards
- Buffering tools
- VertiGIS Studio Workflow support
- VertiGIS Studio Reporting support
- VertiGIS Studio Printing support
- Embedded Map Mode
- Hooks and markers for integrating 3rd party street level or aerial imagery
- User Preferences with information density toggle
- Social sharing link generation
- Layer catalog
- Control layer transparency
- End-user Layer reordering
- More control over results list and result details views
- Enhanced layer list features: e.g. layer filter
Theme 2 – Adding end-user information to the application
Tools and capabilities allowing end users to interact with information presented to them. The vision here is to begin to allow end users a more complete set of tools for interacting with the geospatial information that has been presented to them.
- Measurement tools
- Redline Markup tools
- Add a layer to the map
- Add file-based data to the map
- Re-symbolization of user uploaded layers
- End-user control over color and symbology of markup
- Plot coordinates on the map
- Markup shapes
- Markup text labels (via location notes)
Theme 3 – Getting information out of the application
Getting results out of the application is often done with an information product such as a report, but sometimes you want raw results, or sub-sets of geospatial data.
- Download results to a CSV, XLSX, Shapefile
- Guided import wizard
- [future] Export and Extract data tools
Theme 4 – Feature Editing
Editing is a common use case, this is one of the most frequent requests we are seeing currently for VertiGIS Studio Web that isn't already there.
- Edit feature workflow creation template
- Add Feature tool (also available via Workflow)
- Edit Feature tool (also available via Workflow)
- Snapping tools
- [soon] COGO editing Workflow
- [future] Advanced editing tools: union and cut, data grid editing
Theme 5 – Enterprise Web GIS
There are a number of heavier weight features that are very important for some enterprise Web GIS use cases, but that aren't used by the majority of VertiGIS Studio customers. The list may not be long, but the effort to create these things is significant.
- query builder
- starred results (with commands supporting multiple results sets and set operations)
- save and load application state via projects
- UI show/hide by user/group
Finally, keep in mind that as we are developing VertiGIS Studio Web we are working to ensure that features are available in both 2D and 3D, and that they are WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility compliant.
-
Official comment
Yousef Quran In general VertiGIS Studio will eventually replace Geocortex Essentials / Geocortex Viewer For HTML5. If you are building on VertiGIS Studio Workflow and VertiGIS Studio Web that is the most future proof path. No plans to deprecate Geocortex Essentials ... still release small maintenance releases for it.
-
Thanks for writing this! This is helpful as we're assessing whether or not Web is ready for us to remake our current sites in
-1 -
Glad it was helpful. I'll be back into this updating it from time to time as I have additional information.
0 -
Post updated to reflect the 5.8 release and the support for "Add file-based data to the map"
0 -
Does Geocortex Web support displaying map tips when identifying a feature? I can't find any documentation on map tips at all.
0 -
@Peter Hanmore? - today we have the ability to show 'feature details' for individual features. This is similar to what GVH would have shown in the top left corner of the map, but you can put it anywhere in your layout.
Additionally we are currently working on adding 'on hover' style map tips to GXW that can show you a brief summary of a feature on the map in a 'callout' style right on the map. This isn't 100% complete but it looks like it will be complete in time for our 5.9 release on October 7, 2020.
0 -
That's excellent news (and timing) as we are preparing to do a full (if functionality permits) proof of concept? of one of our public facing apps that currently uses callout/maptips frequently.
0 -
Curious if the ability to use Essentials site configurations in the Web Viewer are planned to be supported, or will it always be connected to just ArcGIS WebMaps?
0 -
@Marc Rempel?
Great question Marc. What we've been working on is enhancing the "Save to ArcGIS" feature in GE/GVH that saves to a webmap. There is a tremendous amount of information in our Site/Viewer config that can be represented in webmap configuration. We are 'growing' this as quickly as we can and the end result is the majority of your site configuration (layers, attribute configuration, feature descriptions, layer hyperlinks, etc.) will be codified into the webmap. When we get this far enough along the flow will be:
- Ensure your GE/GVH app is using modern Geocortex capabilities for printing, reporting, workflow, and access control
- Update your GE/GVH environemnt to the latest version (to give you the 'best' Save to ArcGIS featureset)
- Use Save to ArcGIS to save your app config to a webmap (or the majority of it)
- Start a new Geocortex Web app ... say with the Web GIS - Default template
- Point it at your webmap
- Add in your print templates, workflows, report templates
- Use Designer to adjust UI look and feel and branding to your liking
As we dug into this early on, the truly time-consuming parts of setting up a Geocortex app were in the map services, layer config, attribute config area ... and if you can export that well most of the rest of it is pretty easy.
You can try this today, but the Save to ArcGIS isn't yet as good as it will be. There are also things we are waiting on in the webmap spec that Esri has promised 'soon' such as the ability to represent group layers that will allow us to bring more of your configuration over into the webmap.
Hope that helps paint a picture of what the future might look like.
I recently recorded a tech tip video demonstrating this so keep your eyes open on our YouTube channel (I think it is due to be published on October 16th, 2020.
Cam
0 -
@Cam Barnard? Thanks for the response. Is the Save To ArcGIS already an option in Essentials? I haven't noticed it yet if it is. I will be sure to check out the tech tip video when it comes out.
Marc
0 -
@Marc Rempel? Indeed it is there today ... you can find it in the Toolbar section of Geocortex Essentials Manager. There are some pre-requisites such as needing to authenticate into your app using an ArcGIS Identity so it may be that you haven't seen it for that reason.
0 -
@Cam Barnard? Ah, that makes sense. Interesting, I wasn't looking for that in a viewer toolbar. Would have thought it would be at the site level as a configuration option to export site to ArcGIS.
I will give that try.
Thanks!
Marc
0 -
Reviewed and updated for Geocortex Web 5.9 release.
0 -
Reviewed and updated for Geocortex Web 5.10 release (December 2020)
0 -
Is there a doc that compares Web to Esssentials and what is needed to reach feature parity between the two?
0 -
@Ted Cronin?
Yes there is.
There is a forum topic I'd suggest you add a comment to.
On this topic I link to a PDF matrix which I update for you with every release to make it easier to keep track of what is done and what is still to do.
0 -
Updated this list to better reflect current state at 5.12.
We are working hard on the geometry add/edit tools for 2D which will open up our ability to provide you with much requested features around editing markup and measurement, more user-facing options for styling markup, and out of the box tools for add/edit features.
0 -
Hey @Cam Barnard? I could not find the 'edit feature workflow creation' template as referenced in theme 4. We are on 5.2, please advise
0 -
@Elsalloul, Ahmed? Hi Ahmed. This was added in version 5.4 - 4 December 2019
Time to upgrade!
0 -
@Cam Barnard? sorry Cam, that was a typo. We are on the latest version 5.21 and I could not find the template.
0 -
@Elsalloul, Ahmed? Hi Ahmed! I believe what you're looking for is in your Feature Layer > Layer Actions > Workflows > Create New Workflow > select the Feature – Edit Feature Attributes template.
If you're not able to see this, please submit a support case to us (support@geocortex.com) and we'll help you find that template.
0 -
Updated this post for 5.13 to show support for re-symbolization of user uploaded layers, and re-symbolization of markup.
0 -
Updated. If there are themes you are looking for not represented here, let me know and I'll add them.
0 -
Hi Cam,
What great work!
Recently, I had a project using GeoCortex Workflow 4 & GeoCortex Workflow 5. And I am trying to build custom reusable workflows for future projects.
My general question is what is the roadmap for GeoCortex Workflow 5 and Wondering if the VertiGIS Studio Web is a replacement for GeoCortex Workflow 5 or GeoCortex Essentials? What is the support timeline for these products in the future?
My concern here is that I am trying to build a reusable module while trying to avoid building on top of components that will be deprecated, at least, in the near future.
Many Thanks,
Yousef Quran
Schneider Electric0 -
Hi Cam Barnard,
Are there any plans around the "Add data from file" functionality? We notice it only support input as Lat/long (decimal degrees) where Geocortex Essentials supports local projections as well. Furthermore, setting symbology for these layers does not seem to be supported yet (You are attempting to edit a symbol that is not currently supported) nor is displaying additional attributes from this layer.
Looking forward to your input on this.
Kind regards,
Duncan
1 -
ESRI Nederlands (Duncan) ... yes. We plan to extend that UI and make it more like the guided wizard interface that is currently in GVH. We currently support setting symbology on lines/polygons ... points are coming.
1 -
Hello Cam, the documentation says we are able to add pre-configured bookmarks. Is this still an option, because I am not finding it.
0 -
Sean Phayakapong ... This is one of several things that is configured directly in the webmap itself. Pre-configure your bookmarks in the webmap, and they will show up in your bookmarks component alongside any that the end-user defines.
2 -
Got it. Also, can you only load one map service into the 2D map initially? (Not talking about Add from File or Add Layer commands)
0 -
Hi Cam Barnard - The link to the forum topic with the PDF Matrix looks like it's broken or it least it doesn't open for me (I get a 404 error). Is there a new location?
Also, do you know of any kind of comparison matrix that shows the difference between VertiGIS solutions (Essentials and VertiGIS Studio Web) and Esri solutions (Web AppBuilder/Experience Builder)? I know that's kind of huge endeavor, but it would really help us with future app planning.Thanks - Steve
1
Please sign in to leave a comment.
Comments
36 comments