One of the more common questions we get regarding Geocortex Web is how to move an application from the Geocortex Viewer for HTML5 (GVH) to Geocortex Web.
This starts by moving your capabilities to modern Geocortex capabilities for reporting, workflow, and printing as well as trying it out for yourself by exporting your map out of GVH into ArcGIS Online and then bringing that same map into Geocortex Web.
In today’s Geocortex Tech Tip, we’ll do a deep dive on how simple (and powerful) this is.
Video Transcript.
“Hi, I’m Cam Barnard. Product Manager for Geocortex Web. In this brief Tech Tip, I’m going to walk you through the process of taking an application from the Geocortex Viewer for HTML5 and moving it over to Geocortex Web.
It’s one of the more common questions we get and I am delighted to show you how that works. Let’s get started!
The place we begin in moving an application from the Geocortex Viewer for HTLM5 over to Geocortex Web is to do a survey. We want to make sure that we are using the latest version of Geocortex modern capabilities for Workflow, Printing, and Reporting.
So, we’re going to go through our application we’re going to have a look for those things, and if you aren’t already using those that is absolutely what you begin with. You begin to convert from traditional workflow, print templates, and reports that were part of Geocortex Essentials and you move them to the modern capabilities.
Now keep in mind as you do that that you can run these things side by side in version four and version five. So, I have one example here it is the ‘Search assets’ workflow.
I’m going to do a search by selection. Go through, it’s going to highlight those on the map. I’m going to select them all and I’m going to generate a mailing list report.
So, that’s a five series workflow as well as a report. I can download it, I can have a look at it, everything is good.
All right so we’re happy with that part. Now, this particular application has got a fairly long layer list with structure and hierarchy, so we’ll keep that in mind as well. I also want to briefly just show you an example of one of these tax parcels where if I view the additional details, I’ve got a particular set of assets and I’m linking through to the buildings.
All that functionality is functionality that we want to be able to easily bring over into Geocortex Web.
The very first thing I’m going to do is come over to Essentials Manager. I’m going to find that Search assets workflow example and I’m going to go find this ItemID.
All right, we’re just going to make a quick copy of that we’ll use this as our example. We’ll paste it in there.
Step two. Once you’ve got things up to modern capabilities, is you’re going to export your current map as a web map. Now, we’ve provided this tool as part of the Geocortex Viewer for HTML5 and in fact, as many people have been asking us, you know are you going to create a migration utility or a tool or how are we going to do this, the answer is we’ve been working very diligently on this export web map capability.
I’m going to give this a title ‘Geocortex For HTML5 To GXW’. We’re going to go ahead and we’re going to export that item.
It’s been exported. If I come to my content here in ArcGIS Online and refresh, I will be able to see that I just created.
So, I’ve got a web map. Now, amazingly that brings all kinds of stuff with it. It’s going to bring your layer list, it’s going to bring the structure, it’s going to bring feature detail config and convert that to pop-up config for your web map.
It’s going to bring any single feature charts that you have on that feature bring those over; layer relationships, field configuration, arcade expressions, and in our experience and as we did our analysis we realized that is by far the most labor-intensive and costly part of moving an application over.
We are continuing to work on this capability and as more and more is supported in the web map we will bring more and moreover.
Meanwhile, over in Geocortex Web, I’m going to open the Web GIS Default Template. This is the one that is closest to the standard look and feel of a Geocortex Viewer for HTML5 application.
So, we’ll open that up. I’m going to go down to my map component, I’m going to get rid of my scene, I don’t really need that right now.
I’m going to select my web map that we just created, and I’m going to go ahead and import it. Now, the moment I do that, once it’s loaded, I already have my layer list, for example, which includes things like my sub-layers and administrative areas and things like that.
Furthermore, as I begin to look at this application, I can do things like adding that workflow into my ‘I Want To’ menu.
So, let’s go ahead and perform that action. We’re going to go I’m going to go to ‘Workflows’, I’m going to go get my handy dandy ID that I stashed away for safekeeping. I’m going to search for that. You can see it’s done by someone within our organization, save that and I can actually run that already in my live preview.
We’re going to search by selection. We’re going to draw something on the map we’re going to go ‘Next’, we’re going to select all those assets, we’re going to generate a mailing report, it’s going to go through do that work provide us with the link – it’s pretty much an identical experience to what we just saw inside GVH.
Now additionally, it’s brought over a bunch of other information such as relationships. So, if I click on this tax parcel here, I’ve got the same fields in the same order, I’ve got related records. I can drill in and look at the building, for example. Exactly the same way I did within GVH.
Now from here, it’s just a matter of saving my application and then I can begin to customize the look and feel.
Now, you’re into Geocortex Web, you can do all kinds of things that you could never do before in GVH – from changing the branding of your application, for example, all the way to changing highlight colors and re-plumbing in all those modern capabilities that you’ve already converted over from your Geocortex Viewer for HTML5 application.
I realize that is a very quick and – in some ways – simple demo of how this is going to work, but the big ideas are: start by moving your capabilities to modern Geocortex capabilities for reporting, workflow, and printing. Second, give it a try. Go in and do an export of your map out of GVH into ArcGIS Online and then bring that same map into Geocortex Web. That gets you a huge starting point where you can then graft in those capabilities and very quickly get to an almost equivalent application from GVH to Geocortex Web.
I hope that was a helpful introduction to the process. We’ll talk to you very soon!”
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