Maps4Apps Module

What is It?
The Advanced Mobile Maps4Apps Module is a combination of an intuitive, finger friendly GIS map viewer and associated data services specifically designed to support and enhance data associated to Assets, Work Orders, Inspections, and/or other Enterprise Asset Management elements. Maps4Apps is deployed in conjunction with and integrated to one of Blue Dot’s existing Advanced Mobile-based Work Management and Inspections Line of Business solutions.

Why is it Important?
Demand is growing within industries such as Public Sector, Utilities, Facilities and other asset-intensive organizations and industries to gain operational efficiencies and a lower ecological footprint through the mobilization of their field workforces. For organizations that maintain geographically disbursed assets and especially linear-type assets, the challenge to accomplish this effectively can be monumental. By providing a highly usable GIS-centric representation of asset and maintenance items combined with EAM-centric data, processes and workflows, field workers will be able to make better and quicker decisions in the field, resulting in improved efficiency and performance of their field tasks along with a potential reduction in drive time, fuel costs and paper forms.

Functions, Features & Objectives
The Maps4Apps Module has been designed to enable field workers to view and easily interact with visual map-based representations of assets and work assignments in conjunction with Advanced Mobile’s Tablet-based and finger friendly Work Management and/or Inspections applications.

The GIS Map Viewer is synchronized with the mobile application, ensuring that the lists of work orders match the work orders and assets displayed in the active map extent, and that the map contents match any searching or filtering that occurs within the application. Similarly, selections of a work order icon within the map would result in the highlighting of the corresponding work order within the list and the selection of a work order in the list would result in the highlighting of the corresponding icon in the map.

Standard map viewer functionality such as pan, zoom, and layer visibility control is supported in an innovative manner ideal for a touch screen enabled device.

This combined view of map and tabular data can provide many benefits to Field Workers:

Improved in-the-field decision making, particularly with regards to routing, work prioritization, etc.
Improved comprehension of task states and work progress, particularly with regards to route-based or linear tasks Increased accuracy and speed in identifying specific Assets and Work Assignments

These benefits (and others) contribute to the accuracy, efficiency and effectiveness of the Field Workforce and ultimately contribute in a positive manner to the bottom-line financials of the department or organization.

Interoperability
The Maps4Apps Module has been designed and built to seamlessly interact with Blue Dot’s current Advanced Mobile Line of Business solutions. The underlying data schemas and integration services to back-end systems are highly decoupled to provide a level of protection from changes and differences in back-end system versions and/or implementations. This Module use esri’s flagship ArcGIS 10 Advanced Enterprise Edition technology and interacts in a read-only manner with other esri products and/or GIS repositories (via DataSources). The Maps4Apps Module will use the ArcGIS Mobile map cache functionality provided by the ArcGIS Server Mobile Services to provide full off-line support in the field. Additionally, the Module will utilize existing Advanced Mobile-based solution packaging, deployment, and support services to maintain consistency and look and with currently deployed the existing mobile solutions and applications. All ArcGIS-specific functionality will be built to and will use the appropriate esri product data schemas, scripts and macros.

Market Conditions
As recently as May 1st, 2009, Gartner concluded in an industry research paper titled ‘GIS and EAM Integration: State of the Market’ that “there is no single-vendor solution” that successfully combines EAM and GIS functionality, rather that such capability “must be built either by the vendors, the implementers or the customers themselves.” This situation is even more pronounced for mobile solutions that combine EAM and GIS functionality. Though there are a couple of companies that successfully market point solutions that incorporate both GIS and EAM functionality for the mobile workforce, these offerings do not provide the flexibility and/or enterprise platform capabilities now demanded by customers and as a result have failed to capture a significant share of the available market as identified by Blue Dot.

esri Partner Information
Currently, Blue Dot is a Silver Level partner within the ESRI Partner Network. Additionally, Blue Dot was a finalist to receive an award at the upcoming 2011 Esri Partner Conference developing and delivering quality esri software-based solutions or services in the category of Mobile Application(s). To qualify to receive this award, esri required Blue Dot’s Map4Apps Module to be built on ArcGIS 10 technology and be delivered/deployed to at least one customer, no exceptions.