You may have heard about the Aurora Project through the Esri grapevine, but not been entirely sure what it is. In this blog, I’ll try to demystify the Aurora Project, showing you what’s to come and what it’ll mean to you and your organisation. But first, let’s take a step back in time…
Collector for ArcGIS was released back in 2013 and has become a well-established mobile app for undertaking data collection. Since its release, Collector has grown massively in terms of its capabilities and number of downloads (over 700,000 just on iOS). Yet all good things must evolve with the times and now we’re ready for a Collector refresh. This is where the Aurora Project comes in. The next generation Collector app will bring a host of new features that will build upon your existing data collection workflows, for example:
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- Better maps
- UX improvements
- Arcade expressions
- Improved offline workflows
- 3D data collection
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Let’s take a closer look at these.
Better Maps
Labels
Yes, labels are finally coming to Collector with Aurora. You can all sleep easy once again. Along with basic labels, the new Collector will support those created with Arcade expressions (I’ll talk through this a little bit later on). If you have a label displaying a key piece of information and you need to edit that field, your label will update when the data does.
Advanced symbology
Aurora introduces advanced symbology to your maps in Collector. This allows you to display your spatial information in ways your users understand. For example, use hatching or summarise data distribution with heat maps:
Vector basemaps
Vector basemaps are also coming, so you can view crisp and responsive maps.
If you have labels in a vector basemap they’ll rotate with your map. On that note, you will now be able to rotate your maps as well.
UX Improvements
Sliding panel
Tired of choosing between the map and your form? In the new Collector app, you can now choose how much of each you can see. If you want the map, minimise the form. If you need the form, minimise the map. If you can’t decide, have a bit of both.
Location target
The introduction of a crosshair ‘cursor-on-target’ experience now means your finger doesn’t get in the way when manually adding points, lines and polygons to the map. The crosshair stays in the centre of the screen, allowing you to pan the map to accurately locate your point.
Smarter data entry
Add a photo attachment in one click, capture other media types – audio or video, and read information from a QR or bar code.
Arcade Expressions
With Aurora supporting Arcade expressions, you can change the way you experience editing forms in Collector. If you want to perform a calculation on two fields of collected data, create an Arcade expression which can now be displayed in Aurora.
Improved Offline Workflows
