Discover the future roadmap for LocalView

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We are holding a webinar for our Local Government customers on the roadmap for LocalView. The webinar will cover our approach to making use of new technologies in the Esri platform such as ArcGIS Online and Portal for ArcGIS, while continuing to provide web applications designed to meet the specific requirements of Local Government in the UK.

The webinar is on Thursday December 5th, from 11:00 -12:00. It will be recorded and we will publish the details  of how to access the recording on this blog.

If you would like to attend and have not received an invitation please contact your Customer Success Manager for details on how to register.

For further information please contact: localviewfusion@esriuk.com

Online Usage Reports

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Some of you have been experiencing issues with the usage reporting within LocalView Fusion online.  Thanks to those of you who raised these with Esri UK Support. 

Our investigations have shown that the issue is caused by the volume of usage data that we have on our online environment.  The issue affects the usage reports available for both applications and content within LocalView Fusion, and it manifests itself as no report being returned, and the request for a report eventually timing out.

As a temporary measure while we investigate this issue,  we have truncated the data, so that we only hold the current month and the last full calendar month of data on our online environment.  The impact of this is that you are only able to view accurate online usage for the options of Today, Yesterday, Last 7 days, Month to date and the Previous month.  Whilst you can still request usage reports for previous months within the user interface, these will not provide accurate results as they will indicate no usage.

The usage data has not been deleted, just temporarily removed from the online environment. If you urgently require usage reports on specific items of content or applications for previous months, please contact your Customer Success Manager as we can provide these from our internal reporting system which retains the full usage history.

Migrating from Retired Templates

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As announced at the release of LocalView Fusion v4.2, a number of templates were retired at the end of August. This blog article tells you where to find information to help migrate away from the templates that have been retired to their replacements.

 The templates that have been replaced are as follows:

  • the Survey template has been replaced by the Embeddable Survey template
  • the Map Fragment has been replaced by the Embeddable Map template
  • the Gazetteer Fragment has been replaced by the Embeddable Gazetteer template

For information on how to incorporate the newer templates into your websites and webpages, see the Integrator's Guide for Developers at  http://www.esriuk.com/radardoc/

The Integrator's Guide provides technical information on how to implement the embeddable templates, and has a short section describing suitable migration paths from old to new.

Hot Fix Release for Embeddable Survey Template

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We are pleased to announce that a hot fix release is now available for the embeddable survey template.

This fixes issue 39879, which required users to be logged into LocalView Fusion, before they were able to submit a survey.

The template was updgraded on our online environment at 5.30pm on September 9th at 5.30pm.

The download is available for our on premise customers to download on the ftp site:

FTP Location: https://download.esriuk.com
Username: Lvfusion

The password is unchanged and was sent recently to maintenance paying customers, however, it is available on request from support@esriuk.com if you have not received it or have mislaid it.

 

Integrator's Guide for Developers

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We wanted to let you know of another useful LocalView Fusion resource available from the Esri UK website.  This is the Integrator's Guide for Developers and can be found at http://www.esriuk.com/radardoc/

This website has information aimed at developers building web mapping applications on top of the ArcGIS platform using LocalView Fusion, and it replaces and updates information previously provided in the Integrator's Guide for Developers (a PDF document).

The website covers how to integrate LocalView applications into your websites and webpages.

The website does not cover the installation and configuration of LocalView Fusion. This type of information is covered by the following documents supplied as part of the LocalView Fusion Installation packages: 

  • LocalView Fusion Installation Guide (ArcGIS 10.1 or ArcGIS 9.3.1 and 10.0)
  • LocalView Fusion Template Installation Guide
  • LocalView Fusion Implementation Guide

 

LocalView Fusion 4.2 - July release

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We are pleased to announce a hotfix release of LocalView Fusion 4.2 to address a small number of critical issues affecting Radar Platform, MyLocation, WebPublisher and the Feed Fragment.

We have changed feeds so that it is now optional to return the geometry within a feed. This provides better performance if you do not need the map coordinates to be returned by the feed.  This change impacts the Radar Platform, MyLocation and WebPublisher templates and the Feed fragment.

We have also fixed a small number of issues in the Radar Platform and WebPublisher.  Please refer to the Release Notes (on the right hand side of this blog) for further details for these fixes.

All other templates have been re-released against the 4.2.172.0 platform, but are otherwise unchanged.

Upgrading to this new release from earlier versions of LocalView Fusion 4.2 is not mandatory. We suggest you only install this release if you have been affected by any of the issues that are now fixed. 

Upgrades to this release are supported from version 4.0 or above. Details of the upgrade paths can be found in the Product Lifecyce document.

The new release is available now on our FTP site::

FTP Location: https://download.esriuk.com
Username: Lvfusion

The password will be sent shortly to all our maintenance paying customers, however, it is available on request from support@esriuk.com if you have not received it.

The online environment was upgraded to this release on the evening of Monday 15th July 2013.

 

Bug Fixes for MyLocation and Embeddable Survey Templates

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We are pleased to announce that we have today released new versions of MyLocation and Embeddable Survey templates.  Please see the release notes (on the right hand side of this blog) for details of the issues fixed.

The new templates are available now from our FTP site:

FTP Location: https://download.esriuk.com
Username: Lvfusion

The password has been supplied to customers previously but if you have have mislaid it, please contact support@esriuk.com for details. 

The online environment will be upgraded at our next scheduled maintenance slot on Monday 20th May at 5.30pm. 

 

 

Printing Bug Fix for LocalView Fusion

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We are pleased to annouce that we have today released a new version of LocalView Fusion 4.2 to fix the recently identified printing bug.  This is Build 4.2.83.0.

This release will be deployed to the online environment during scheduled maintenance on the evening of Monday 15th April and is available now for download by our on premise customers.

Download instructions are being sent to all customers under maintenance, please contact support@esriuk.com if you have any issues downloading or installing the software. Only the platform is affected, the templates remain unchanged from the 4.2 release.

 

 

Bug Identified in Printing

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We are sorry to report that we have found a bug in the 4.2 release which is affecting printing under certain circumstances.

The templates affected are WebPublisher and Navigator.

The problem with printing only occurs if the graphic pin is displayed following a gazetteer search, and only if the application is either public and being accessed by an anonymous user or by a user accessing LocalView using internal endpoints (Windows authentication).

The temporary workaround with internal endpoints is to the clear the pin graphic before trying to print, you do this by clicking on the Gazetteer Search.  If you are using external endpoints (Forms Authentication) you may be able to change the permissions to the application so it is no longer public and specifically grant access to the users that need it.

We are currently working on a solution to this problem and will be issuing a bug fix release soon.  The online release is scheduled for the evening of 15th April 2013 and we hope that we will be able to make the release available to on premise customers before this date.

Thank you to the customers who have raised the issue with our support desk and helped us to diagnose the issue.

Upgrading LocatorHub

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We recommended when we released LocalView Fusion 4.2 that you should upgrade your LocatorHub at the same time.  We wanted to take this opportunity to provide you further information on how to do this and why we are recommending it.

LocatorHub is the address gazetteering component of LocalView Fusion which allows you to load in address datasets and then publish a gazetteer that can be used to search for an address.

Some of you may not been aware that LocatorHub is a separate application and needs upgrading independently.  You may be running a version that is no longer supported and you may have missed out on the new features within LocatorHub such as support for Ordnance Survey AddressBase products. You can check the LocatorHub Product Lifecycle document on our web pages for more information.

LocatorHub can be downloaded with your new version of LocalView Fusion (please contact support@esriuk.com if you do not have the download details).   Once you have the installer please follow the steps below:

  1. Save your current settings of LocatorHub. This is detailed within the 'LocatorHub Installation Guide' contained as part of the installation media.
  2. Uninstall LocatorHub.
  3. If you are also upgrading your version of ArcGIS we recommend that you do this before installing the latest version of LocatorHub.
  4. Run through the LocatorHub installation wizard.
  5. Check to see if there are post-installation steps from your previous version detailed in the 'LocatorHub Installation Guide'.
  6. Reinstate the previous configuration.

There are a few things to watch out for when you are upgrading LocatorHub:

  • If you are using LocalView Fusion to consume LocatorHub with ArcGIS for Server 10.1 then you will need to change the way you search feature classes as Feature Class Locators are no longer supported. We will be following this post up with another explaining what you can do instead using new LocatorHub functionality
  • LocatorHub version 5.0 uses a .NET 4.0 application pool and so this will need to be configured in IIS.  The steps to do this are detailed in the LocatorHub ‘Installation Guide’ which is included in the install media for LocatorHub
  • There have been schema changes to many of the source datasets (especially NLPG).  It is worth checking that your address data will work with the new schema which later versions of LocatorHub will support.
  • If you have upgraded to a full licence of LocatorHub and have integrated it into applications other than LocalView Fusion, then you should check that those applications are working against the upgraded LocatorHub services. 

If you would like the Esri UK Implementation Services team to assist in your upgrade of LocatorHub and/or LocalView Fusion then please contact your Customer Success Manager for a quotation.

LocalView Fusion 4.2 Available for Download

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We are pleased to announce that LocalView Fusion 4.2 On Premise has been released and is available for download to customers under maintenance.

For further information on what is new in LocalView Fusion 4.2 please see the recent articles in this blog. 

Full release notes are available in the panel on the right hand side of this blog.

Important Changes to Product Lifecycle

Please be aware before upgrading to LocalView Fusion 4.2 that we have made some significant changes to the Product Lifecycle. 

The new version of the ArcGIS Viewer for Flex template requires ArcGIS for Server 10.0 or above, it is not supported for ArcGIS for Server 9.3.1.  Therefore if you wish to use the ArcGIS Viewer for Flex template and are currently running ArcGIS for Server 9.3.1, you will need to upgrade ArcGIS for Server, prior to upgrading to LocalView Fusion 4.2.

We have also moved the 3.x radar platform and a number of templates into mature support these will be retired on the 31st August 2013. 

The templates that are now in mature support and their replacements are:

Template in Mature Support

Replacement Template

Map Fragment

Embeddable Map

Gazetteer Fragment

Embeddable Gazetteer

Survey

Embeddable Survey

 

We would encourage you to migrate your applications that use these templates to the replacement templates and to put in place plans to upgrade to the latest release of LocalView Fusion, especially if you are still running LocalView Fusion 3.x which will be unsupported after 31st August 2013 and is currently in mature support.

LocatorHub

If you are using LocatorHub then please ensure that you are running a supported version by referring to the LocatorHub Product Lifecycle.   We recommend that you upgrade to the latest version of LocatorHub 5.0 and for your convenience the LocatorHub 5.0 installer has been included on the same FTP site as LocalView Fusion – please see details below.

Download Instructions

Download instructions have been emailed to our customers, if you have not received this information, and are a maintenance paying customer, please contact Support for the download details.

Full installation guides and release notes are included with the software.

If you have problems with the download or applying the update, please contact our support desk by email or telephone on 01296 745555.

If you would like the Esri UK Implementation Services team to assist in your upgrade then please contact your Customer Success Manager for a quotation.

LocalView Fusion 4.2 - Bug fixes

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We are pleased to announce that we have released an upgrade to the online environment for LocalView Fusion to include a small number of bug fixes in the 4.2 release.

For further details please see the release notes that are linked from the right hand side of this page.

Please be aware, that for some of the changes to take effect you will need to clear your browser cache (as your browser may have cached components of  the previous version).

LocalView Fusion 4.2 Coming Soon

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A new release of LocalView Fusion 4.2 will be available soon providing you with new functionality and quality improvements.  Read on to find out more.

The two main highlights of the the 4.2 release are the:

New Embeddable Survey Template

Brand new template provides a number of enhancements to the existing survey template.  

Enhanced FlexViewer Template

Major enhancements to the FlexViewer template.

 

There are further details of these changes in separate blog articles.

Release Schedule

This online release will be in mid-February. 

The software will be available to download for on premise installation around the end of February, a further email will be sent when the download is available with details of how to access the software.

Product Lifecycle Changes

Changes to Browser support

LocalView Fusion 4.2 will no longer support IE6 (Internet Explorer 6).  Supported browsers are IE7, IE8, IE9, Chrome and Firefox. 

Survey Template

With the release of the new embeddable survey template, the Survey template will move into mature support.   The Survey Template will be retired later this year.

What’s New in the ArcGIS Viewer for Flex Template

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We are making improvements to the ArcGIS Viewer for Flex template and I wanted to take some time to detail some of the improvements that we are making and what can be done with them. The new ArcGIS Viewer for Flex template will be released alongside 4.2. It is worth noting that this release of the ArcGIS Viewer for Flex will no longer support ArcGIS 9.3.1. If you are still using 9.3.1 then you will need to continue using the old template.

Built on the latest ArcGIS Viewer for Flex

Recently the ArcGIS Viewer for Flex was updated to 3.1. The ArcGIS Viewer for Flex template is based upon this so you will get all the bug fixes and updates contained within this release. You can find details of the bugs fixed at 3.1 here.

Specify Gazetteer Zoom Scale

When provisioning a gazetteer in the ArcGIS Viewer for Flex template you can optionally specify a scale to zoom to when a match is found. This allows you to alter the scale for different data types so a postcode result could show at a larger scale than an address locator.

Geoprocessing

You can now consume geoprocessing tasks provisioned within LocalView Fusion in your ArcGIS Viewer for Flex template. The task user interface is automatically generated based on the task metadata. This is a significant feature that we think will greatly increase the number of uses for the template.

Identify Improvements

The identify window will now always use field aliases if they exist. Previously the field names were shown.

Improved Editing

Allow specific locking down of editing to just adding, modifying, deleting or editing attributes only. An advanced editing mode is also now supported.

Attribute Viewer

You can now provision an attribute viewer. The attribute viewer is a widget that allows you to view features attributes, edit them (if applicable) and export them to a csv file.

More information on the attribute viewer widget can be found here.

New Legend Control

Layers with more than one symbol now correctly show all symbols for the layer. Previously only the first one was shown. If a layer has metadata on the service end-point then this can also be viewed along with sliders to change the transparency.

Search by Buffer

You can now search for items within a buffered geometry. 

Support for Geoportal Server

You can now display information from geoportals. You can provision geoportal servers and then query them from within your application.

More information on geoportals and geoportal server can be found here. 

Theming

In previous releases you were limited to the blue UI theme. It is now possible to choose from a list of styles and set transparencies.

 

Improved Splash Screen provisioning and addition of About Text

Splash Screen Text can now be formatted. Previously it only accepted plain text. About Text can also be added if required and formatted in the same way.

 On top of this functionality there is also a host of fixes and efficiency improvements that will be announced in the release notes.

Embeddable Survey Template

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The embeddable survey template is a brand new template based on the old survey template, but completely rewritten with added features and functionality and a new user interface. 

Customers who have purchased the old survey template will be entitled to receive the new embeddable survey template at no additional cost.  For online customers this template will be automatically added to your online portal when 4.2 is released.  Any new customers purchasing the survey template will only receive the new embeddable survey. 

This template will replace the existing survey template which is now in mature support and will be retired later on this year. The new survey template works with all of your existing survey content so you can easily migrate to the new template.

The embeddable survey template will only work on version 4.2 or above so you will need to upgrade to the latest version to get the template.

Embedding

The survey can be embedded into an existing site using the same method as embeddable map. With just a few lines of code you can have a fully working survey in your website. There is also an embedded option that can be chosen when provisioning a new survey site. This removes the header image at the top of the survey making it easier to add to another website.

Map Location Enhancements

We have made a few enhancements to the location question type, so that it now uses the improved map component used in the embeddable map template.

You can now add additional layers to the map, and also identify these additional layers with the results showing to the right of the map.

For fault report surveys this will allow you to display existing faults to the user in order to reduce duplicate reporting.

You can also set a minimum scale at which the user can add their location; this can be used to get a more accurate position from the user.

Online Update to the Survey Template

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Happy New Year from the LocalView Fusion team.

Yesterday afternoon a new version of the Survey template was released to the online instance of LocalView Fusion.

The updated survey contains a fix for a bug that was recently spotted when searching for particular types of addresses in the Irish GeoDirectory dataset. Full details of the fix are available in the release notes.

We will also be releasing a brand new version of the survey template and a much enhanced version of the ArcGIS Viewer for Flex template very soon, watch this space for more details.

Online software update (and a new MyLocation)

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Yesterday evening, the online instance of LocalView Fusion was updated with the latest versions of the Navigator, Web Publisher and ArcGIS Viewer for Flex templates that I mentioned in my last post.

This online update also includes a much enhanced version of the MyLocation template which is also now available to on-premise customers on the FTP downloads site.

All existing applications that you have published with these template will continue to work as before and for full details about what's changed please visit the links to the release notes on the right of this page.

LocalView Fusion is 10.1 Compatible

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LocalView Fusion version 4.1 is now officially certified against ArcGIS for Server 10.1.

New Templates

During our testing we identified a 10.1 specific issue in the ArcGIS Viewer for Flex template and to fix it we have released a new 10.1 compatible version (of the template only). While fixing the problem we also made a few other changes, in particular we upgraded it to use the latest version of the generic Esri Flex application, and this delivers some new functionality, in particular the long-overdue Identify Tool. The release notes contain full details of other additions.

During the testing we also identified a couple of bugs in Web Publisher and Navigator, which weren't 10.1 specific, so we opted to create fixes for these too.

To summarise:

  • Version 4.1 of LocalView Fusion is compatible with ArcGIS for Server 10.1. However, if you are using the ArcGIS Viewer for Flex template you must upgrade to the new version which is available for download now.
  • There are bug fix releases of Web Publisher and Navigator available to download now.
  • I'd strongly encourage all users who have the Flex, Web Publisher or Navigator templates to take the latest versions. All of the new template releases WILL work with versions 10.1, 10.0 and 9.3.1 of ArcGIS for Server.

The latest templates are available on the customer FTP site (you will receive an email shortly with the connection information, alternatively, contact the Esri UK support desk for the details).

LocatorHub 5.0

If you are upgrading to 10.1, another consideration is your LocatorHub software. LocatorHub is the software that LocalView Fusion uses to do all of its gazetteering and address searching. As well as address searching LocatorHub can do some clever things with maps such as:

  • Searching for specific map features based on their attributes
  • Automatic co-ordinate conversion, meaning you can use a BNG address dataset to zoom to the correct location of a WGS84 or other lat/long map service.

If you're using LocatorHub to do either of these things, you will need to upgrade to LocatorHub 5.0 at the same time as upgrading to 10.1. As ever, if you have concerns about this, contact your Customer Success Manager or our support desk (or indeed, write a comment on this blog post).

I'll be writing another post soon about some of the changes in LocatorHub 5.0 that may be of interest to LocalView Fusion users.