Geocortex Web and Geocortex Mobile offer the option to integrate prebuilt workflows from Geocortex Workflow. In addition to allowing users to create applications more quickly, this feature allows for easier customization of applications and can provide a head start to common GIS tasks!
This Geocortex Tech Tip will demonstrate how to use and customize prebuilt workflows. Further, it will explain how prebuilt workflows can enhance both web and mobile applications and increase GIS capabilities!
Video Transcription:
Hi, it’s Paul here from VertiGIS! For today’s tech tip we’re going to look at using prebuilt Geocortex workflows when designing your web and mobile applications. They’re really handy to have when you’re building up with more common operations and allow you to get those applications up and running much quicker. Let’s have a look!
When we talk about prebuilt workflows it essentially means that we provide many of the out of the box Geocortex workflows for various common tasks that you can then add seamlessly into the applications that you’re building.
So, here we are in Geocortex Web Designer and there’s various locations where you can add in these prebuilt workflows. One of those is the “I Want to Menu”, which is right here. So, if I click in the “I Want to Menu” configuration I’ve got my default options here and I can add a new menu item. I’ve got commands and I can add in reports as well, but today we’re focusing on workflows. I’ve got my own workflows I can add in, I’ve got workflows that are shared by my organization, but I’ve also got this option here to “Create a new Workflow”.
So, now I’ve got a list of pre-built workflows that I can seamlessly add into my application. For this option, I’ve got clickable workflows in the “I Want to Menu”, a starting point type of workflow. In this case there is a “Buffer Identify” so it just simply presents a form for the user to specify a buffer, then identifies those features within the buffer. You can also do an “Address Lookup”. So, common tasks that might fall under the “I Want to Menu”. Sort of a starting point for users.
Another area I can go into is the map. Before I do that though I want to mention quickly that these options are all available inside of Geocortex Mobile Designer as well.
So, in Geocortex Mobile if I’m already in the “I Want to Menu” configuration and go to “Add Menu item”, I’ve got the same options here. This is the “I Want to Menu”, they’ve got some very similar options, if not the same options listed here. So, you have options in both in web and mobile to add a nice prebuilt workflow.
I’ve now gone back into Geocortex Web Designer and I’m in the map configuration. I’m going to focus my attention on this “Fire Hydrants” layer. I’m going to add a “Feature Actions” menu item to this layer. What that basically means is that when I click on a feature, I’ve got a menu option right within the result here to run a task. So, I’m going to click “Add Menu Item” then I’m going to click on the “Workflows” tab and “Create a new Workflow”.
Okay, so in this menu you can notice that I’ve got some different options. Obviously when we’re talking about a feature action it’s more applicable to what tasks you would like to run on a specific feature. You’ve got “Buffer Feature Geometry”, so if you want to buffer the feature you selected. Or if you want to you can run a “Reverse Geocode” on it so that we can get an address or get some related records on that feature. These are some common and really handy tools that you can use that are ready and available for you. You can also go in and refine them. So, you’ve got them prebuilt, but you can go into the workflow and refine it if you need to. I’m going to show you that in a second.
I’m going to focus my attention today on this “Edit Feature Attributes” workflow. Obviously editing features is a very common task in GIS applications but a lot of times when editing a feature, you are presented with a long list of attributes that maybe aren’t applicable for the user that is using your application. It may be applicable in other cases but for this application you may want to refine the user experience a little bit. Maybe you want to make some changes to your feature list or your attribute list in the way that it looks, naming conventions, maybe some attributes don’t need to be there at all. Like I said you can remove them. So, let’s have a look at doing that. Give the workflow a name, “EditFeature”.
Alright so we’ve got our new “EditFeature” feature action listed here. Let’s have a quick look at what that looks like.
Here’s my new “EditFeature” button and you can see that this actually runs a workflow. This is a Geocortex Workflow form that has now been built and customized based on the features that I’ve selected it for, so the hydrants layer. This is a form that I can now make changes to since it’s from Geocortex Workflow, whereas before I would be sort of walked into whatever attributes are associated with it and I’d have to just deal with it as is. But since it’s a Geocortex Workflow form I can go in and customize this. Let’s go ahead and give that a shot.
So, let’s go into the “Feature Action” configuration itself, and now I’ve got the option here to actually “Open in Geocortex Workflow”. I’ve got a few things here, pretty simple workflow, but this activity sequence sort of captures all of the information that I was talking about before. It captures layer information, all that sort of stuff, and then it’s populated into a form and that’s what I’m interested in here today.
So, this is the pre-populated form. As you know, especially if you’ve got a lot of attributes associated with a specific layer, it can be tedious to go through and create all of these form items and configure them all. This is definitely a head start to get this form built and then you can make changes to it from there. So, let’s make a few changes. Let’s just change “Comments” to “Notes”, let’s remove “Status”, remove “Manufacturer”, remove “Asset ID”, it doesn’t really matter just making some changes here. Let’s give that a save and then we can instantly go back into our Geocortex Web application configuration and select a hydrant, select that “EditFeature” workflow again, and we’ve got our changes instantaneously.
So, we’ve got our notes now and we’ve got those other attributes now removed. It’s very easy to make these simple changes and you can build an even further workflow from here. Maybe you want to do some other actions based on this edit, you’ve got the power from Geocortex Workflow to perform any number of other tasks that you might want to do. It’s a very powerful tool and gives you a great head start to some of the more common tasks.
Have a look if you’re interested and hopefully you’ll find these tools useful. Have yourself a great day!
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