If you’ve been attending our bi-monthly Road Ahead Webinars throughout 2019, you may have noticed that I’m finding it harder and harder to squeeze everything that I want to share into 45 minutes. There was just a LOT going on with Geocortex in 2019, and a lot to communicate. We have been very busy, and I hope you agree that our work is enabling you to build a whole new class of applications and solutions, to solve new business problems, or to do something you used to do before but in less time or with fewer headaches.
When I reflect on Geocortex in 2019, it’s hard not to focus on our product development efforts since we’ve directed a significant investment into research and development.
In the first quarter we launched three (3) completely new products: Geocortex Web, Geocortex Mobile and Geocortex Printing. Let me take a minute to talk about the viewers first (Web and Mobile).
With Geocortex Web we are building the foundation for future web applications, using Esri’s new 4.x ArcGIS JavaScript API. We’ve had four releases since it’s initial launch, and as of Geocortex Web 5.4 you can drag-and-drop your own layouts, integrate 2D maps with 3D scenes, and manage apps through the dev-test-staging-prod lifecycle – alongside several other capabilities never before possible in Geocortex Essentials 4.x. While it’s not ready to replace your feature rich Geocortex Essentials 4.x applications yet, we’re working hard to make that a future possibility. In the meantime, take advantage of Geocortex Web alongside your existing apps to solve new problems for existing or new users.
Geocortex Mobile replaces Geocortex Mobile App Framework (GMAF). Our customers demand a robust, performant, and easy to use app for doing offline field work. And Geocortex Mobile provides a native app experience on iOS, Android and Windows that we wouldn’t have been able to achieve with GMAF. We’ve seen customers using Geocortex Mobile for some business-critical use cases with great success. In a recent release we added high-precision GPS (GNSS) support – something our mobile-offline customers have been excited about for a long time.
When we released Geocortex Printing in April, we finished our initial vision for a new offering: Geocortex Essentials Builder Edition, which enables organizations to use Geocortex capabilities (Workflow, Reporting and Printing) inside Esri’s Web AppBuilder for ArcGIS. We also took the liberty in dramatically improving the design experience and adding features never possible in Geocortex Essentials 4.x printing. Through ongoing development of Workflow, Reporting and Printing, the capabilities of Geocortex Essentials 5-Series are now recommended, and they’re being used instead of their equivalent features in Geocortex Essentials 4.x. So, you may notice that the sample apps that ship with Geocortex Essentials use 5-Series products, and our most popular Geocortex Essentials training courses also teach with the 5-Series exclusively. If you haven’t tried these products yet, now is a great time to dive in – and note that you can run 5-Series products alongside your workflows, reports and print templates that you’ve developed in Geocortex Essentials 4.x so you don’t have to make a hard switch.
Alongside our investments in the Geocortex Essential 5-Series, we released Geocortex Essentials 4.11 (in February) and Geocortex Essentials 4.12 (in July). We’re adding small amounts of new features in Geocortex Essentials 4.x, while the main improvements come in the form of its incorporation of the new capabilities of the Geocortex Essentials 5-Series. We’ve also put a focus on quality improvements – so you can be sure that your 4.x apps will continue to be maintained and supported for years to come.
Geocortex Analytics got a big upgrade in the 1.5 release that shipped in August, and this continues to be a critical solution for customers that want to understand and improve their GIS infrastructure – and we’re committed to adding even more capabilities to Analytics 1.6.
Right now, we’re setting the stage for another action-packed year of Geocortex product R&D. In Q1 of 2020, you can expect a new product in the 5-Series, Geocortex Access Control, which will enable you to secure layers, fields, and features within your published map services and feature services, from any client that connects to the ArcGIS REST API. Geocortex Access Control is the latest product fulfilling our vision to re-imagine Geocortex Essentials as a suite of modern, standalone, and portable products that can be combined and deployed with more flexibility.
Throughout 2020 we will obsess over delivering frequent and iterative releases of Geocortex Workflow, Reporting, Printing, Access Control, Web and Mobile to further solidify Geocortex Essentials as the leading framework for building robust and capable apps on the ArcGIS platform.
Not unlike the Road Ahead Webinars, I have more to share, but I’ve run out of space to fit it all in. So, if you’re interested, let’s talk. Send me an email at dmillen@latitudegeo.com and let me know what you like, and what you don’t like, and how we can help you succeed in 2020 and beyond.
Contributors