What is Indoors?
Sam Squillante - GIS Technician
The easiest description of Indoor GIS is that it is used in the same way as regular GIS, just incorporating Indoor capabilities like floor levels and unit-floor-building relations. The Package of ArcGIS Indoors is actually a collection of three applications, including a mobile app and two web-apps, being the Indoor Viewer and the Indoor Space Planner. These apps can be used independently or all together, but always involve the same base data. Overall, ArcGIS Indoors can be used for many things, including:
Identifying problems around facilities/campuses
Setting priorities
Monitoring change
Forecasting and understanding trends
Managing events around campus
Supporting Routing capabilities throughout buildings
Functions of the Web Apps
The Indoor Viewer application is used to view assets stored around the campus. You can heavily customize the application and can even incorporate external apps and links to provide additional functionality. This application also now supports functions like booking hotels and rooms directly through the app to streamline the booking process. The Indoor Space Planner, on the other hand, is used to manage and create space plans for facilities around the campus. Within this application, you can assign, re-assign, and remove people from Floor Plans while consulting and utilizing a detailed amount of information displayed as you do so. New capabilities include incorporating hotel restrictions and updating floor plan drafts based on newest updates to existing plans.
Application Updates
The most important thing to remember is that updates are continuously rolling out for these applications. Recently, new updates for both applications came out with the release of ArcGIS Online 9.4, and the release of ArcGIS Enterprise 10.9.1. With Indoors, the updates vary between the different online deployments of ArcGIS, ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Enterprise. Additionally, the updates tend to differ between the Indoor Viewer and Indoor Space Planner web applications, with the Space Planner updates trailing slightly behind the Indoor Updates. New capabilities include incorporating hotel restrictions and updating floor plan drafts based on the newest updates to existing plans. To go more into the details of the updates I will describe all updates for the AGO side of the Indoor applications, then all updates to the Enterprise side of the apps.
ArcGIS Online (AGO) Updates
Indoor Viewer (AGO):
Can now support an additional filter using available assets to find Hotels and meeting rooms.
Can now book Unrestricted Hotels (which are now available to be created in the Indoor Space Planner).
A ‘Locations’ list has been added and can be accessed through clicking the ‘locations’ button in the location panel.
Indoor Space Planner (AGO):
Can now update the current floor plan draft before merging to the default space plan. This allows for quick updates to a potential floor plan without potentially disrupting the current floor plan in order to sync the changes.
Can now configure the field used as a unit name. Previously, only ‘Unit Name’ would populate this value.
Can now set up permissions when creating hotels to limit access to specified organizational members.
ArcGIS Enterprise Updates
Indoor Viewer (Enterprise):
Can now book hotels and meeting rooms through a ‘Reservations’ layer.*
Can view the potential bookings through a new tab in the side panel.
Can now check in and out of booked hotels. The occupant must be assigned to this hotel to use this feature. If they are not, the occupant can only be assigned to an unrestricted hotel.
There have been updated functionalities to the usable filters.
Indoor Space Planner (Enterprise):
Can update the current space plan draft, just like in AGO.
Can set up hotel restrictions, just like in AGO.
Added increased filter options in the Unit and Occupant lists.*
Can now edit unit and occupant attributes and properties.*
* This functionality was previously available in AGO, but now has come to Enterprise
Deprecation
Typically, whenever ESRI releases a new set of updates, several deprecations to the app are also made. This means that certain features are no longer supported. In this new update to Indoors, the ability for the Indoor applications to use non-floor aware maps was deprecated. You must now set up a map to be floor aware in the map properties before being published to use in the web applications. Having floor aware maps helps provide increased functionality and speed of the applications.
Summary
Overall, ArcGIS Indoors is a very powerful suite of tools used to provide mapping capabilities to indoor facilities. These applications get continuously updated and features can become deprecated as well. The biggest updates to the Indoor applications were the ability for the Indoor Viewer to book hotels and meeting rooms, as well as providing enhanced filtering capabilities. The Indoor Space Planner can now be used to create restricted hotels and update floor plan drafts before merging with the default plan. ArcGIS Online will usually have increased capabilities than the ones offered in Enterprise, but those same updates for the Enterprise environment are rolling out a little behind AGO. If you would like any further information on ArcGIS Indoor features, or are interested in diving in further on some Indoors topics in future blogs, please let us know in the comment section.