1. Easy Process Automation to
Develop Work Efficiencies
• Presented by: Tammy Kobliuk
• City of St. Albert

2. Today’s Objective
• To give you ideas you may not have thought of
• To see new uses for old tools

3. Organization Overview
• Municipal Government organization
• St. Albert, AB – population 63,255
• 585+ Employees
• City of St. Albert administration:
• Corporate GIS group in IT Services
> Total Corporate GIS Staff: 2.12 FTE (3)
• Overall GIS structure is hybrid
> GIS’ish staff in two other departments: 4
• Esri users since…2000

4. System Environment
• ESRI Small Local Govt ELA
• ArcGIS Desktop 10.1
• Microsoft Office 2007
• FME ESRI 2014 (think Data Interoperability Ext.)
• File-based central data warehouse
• SDE installed, but no data loaded
• VM Ware virtual server environment
• Development, Test, and Production environments
• Currently data stored on 4 different servers

5. Why Automate?

6. Why Automate?
• Efficiency
• Accuracy
• Repeatability
• Documentation
• Transferability
• Brainstorming

7. Automation ROI
Otherwise known as so much work, so little
time...
• Increase work capacity
• Increase speed of tasks
• Decrease manual tasks
• Decrease the chance of mistakes
• Transfer tasks to other staff

8. ...and more
• No misunderstanding instructions
• The same process every time
• No forgotten steps
• No more typos

9. Why Not Automate?
“I don’t have time”
“I don’t know how”
“I didn’t know I should”
“I didn’t know I could”
“I only have to do it once”

10. Automation:
Can you afford not too?

11. Automation
Toolkit

12. The Best Tool for the Job Is:
• What you have
• What you know
• What you can afford
• Sometimes what somebody else has already
developed: don’t reinvent the wheel

13. Key Available Tools
• Modelbuilder
• Data Driven Pages
• Data Interoperability Extension (FME) - $
• Python

14. Modelbuilder
• Data replication
• Data processing and extraction
• Geoprocessing or process discovery
• Geoprocessing automation
• Workflow automation
• Geoprocessing documentation
• Task reassignment

15. Server Data Updates
One master file, one central data warehouse, three
server environments, five servers

16. Data Driven Pages
• Map series type projects
• Automated image extraction
• Pre-filled form generation

17. Data Interoperability Ext.
• The “FME starter kit” for ArcGIS users
• ArcGIS non-core extension (not in ELA’s)
• Sample uses:
• Data extraction
• Spatial and non-spatial joins/overlays
• Attribute field restructuring – names, field order, type
• Complex attribute filtering, parsing, reassigning
• Database QC and cleanup
• Data prep for input into other applications
• Data format conversion

18. Census Preparation

19. Python
• Extend data driven pages
• Extend modelbuilder
• Hack someone else’s code
• We don’t know it
• We use it anyway

20. Automation
Tips & Tricks

21. Be Practical
• Simpler is sometimes better
• Multiple simple models not one big complex one
• The information doesn’t always need to be in GIS
• Excel
• Text files
• Non-spatial RDBMS files
• Empower your end users
• Enter their own data
• You just generate the final (map) product

22. Automation Shouldn’t be Last
• Start with automation
• Not an afterthought
• Assume you should whenever possible
• Automation can:
• Affect how you build your data
• Affect how you design your maps
• Affect how you approach your project
• Build your model/script as you discover your
steps and parameters
• Ensures you remember all of your steps

23. Case Studies

24. Dispatch Map Data Extraction
• 9-1-1 application interactive map
• 17 data layers
• Various formats
• Various locations
• Output indexed shapefiles
• Quarterly data updates

25. Dispatch Map Data Extraction

26. Dog Park Maps
• New Animal Bylaw
• 20 off-leash and dog-friendly parks
• Deliverable 1: internal planning maps
• Deliverable 2: downloadable printable maps for
the City website
• GIS not part of the project team
• Information constantly changing
• Non-technical team members
• The need for speed (fast turnaround)

27. Dynamic Text: date
Data Drive Page Name
Data Drive Page attributes:
Site Attributes
-From joined Excel table
-Entered by non-GIS staff
Data Drive Page attributes:
Site Comments
-From joined Excel table
-Entered by non-GIS staff
Planning Maps

28. Data driven
page name
Data driven
page attribute
Website Maps
Static comments
- Same each page
Dynamic Text:
Date
Data driven page attributes
From Excel spreadsheet

29. Photo Radar Forms
• Operator forms
• Pre-set information for each site
• To provide information to each operator
• To help meet audit requirements
• Information subject to change
• Information to be entered by Admin staff
• Each form requires an integrated map
• GIS index is a point shapefile

30. Sample Form
Static layout set up in
ArcMap
Static Text
Data Drive Page Name
Data driven page
attributes from Excel
Dynamic Map

31. Overall Future Plans
• Build in error checking and sophistication
• Scheduled processes
• Learn Python
• ArcGIS Pro Tasks

32. Q & A
• Tammy Kobliuk – GIS Coordinator, City of St. Albert
• tkobliuk@stalbert.ca
• 780-459-1730