While most of 2020 has been anything but recognizable in virtually (see what I did there) every facet of society, Cloudpoint has strived to bring the same level of education and interaction that our clients and supporters have been used to from us. When “lockdown” hit us, we quickly pivoted to providing FREE  webinars on a wide range of topics: ArcGIS Indoors Working with data for NG9-1-1 Migrating from ArcMap to ArcGIS Pro Parcel Fabric These are just a few of the many topic

With the State of Illinois’ impending transition to a Next Generation 9-1-1 system (NG911), many 911 agencies are currently working to update their GIS data. Agencies are required to have GIS data for their emergency service boundaries, road centerlines, and address points. In an NG911 system, data from all agencies will be maintained by the agency but stored and shared at the state level, meaning every agency’s data must be in the same format. This is no small task and some

The Forrester Wave is a guide for buyers considering their options in the technology marketplace. To offer an equitable process for all participants, Forrester follows a 30-criterion, publicly available  methodology. Identifying the nine most significant location intelligence platforms, they placed Esri at the top, ahead of Google, Microsoft, and Hexagon to name a few. Esri as we know is the global market leader in GIS, and Cloudpoint Geospatial is proud to be a trusted Esri

We work with a lot of municipal local government clients and have learned over the years that selecting the right GIS asset management solution these days is a critical, time-consuming task. Decision makers can’t afford to make the wrong decision when investing hundreds of thousands of dollars over a period of just a few years. So we thought it would be a good idea to review some basic questions to ask yourself when evaluating which option is best for your organization. As an

Esri provides a vast number of resources and applications that enable their users to collect, update, and analyze their asset management data. In this blog post, we’ll take a look at how we can use those Esri apps and resources available to us on ArcGIS Online to manage our PCI (Pavement Condition Index) ratings on our road centerlines layer. The use of the Collector App will allow users to view the road centerline features in the field and which roads need inspected. The Sur

Cloudpoint is pleased to partner with surveying and engineering firms to bring GIS to these firms’ small municipal clients. Recently Brown & Roberts Inc. and Benton & Associates contracted Cloudpoint to provide GIS services to the City of Harrisburg , IL and the Village of New Berlin , IL. Harrisburg’s GIS data is stored in a local geodatabase that is updated occasionally. After a recent watermain project, Cloudpoint utilized an AutoCAD file and Record Drawings provided by th

Of the many deployable solutions that Esri offers, the Citizen Problem Reporter Solution is a Crowdsource Reporting Application that can be configured and leveraged for use across organizations. The solution (once deployed) allows the general public to submit non-emergency problems in the community based on problem categories (Animal Problems, Health Problems, Road Problems, etc.) and certain problem types within those categories (Barking or Loud Dog, Standing Water, Potholes

Becoming an Esri Business Partner was a key to fueling company growth and opening doors to new opportunities. “Our company’s partnership with Esri has boosted our name recognition and allowed for expertise to be noticed on a national verses regional scale.” says founder and CEO, Jonathan Hodel. Now this partnership blossoms once again as Cloudpoint announces they have received their ArcGIS Indoors specialty designation. This process involves completing an application to Esri

Introduction: We are yet again able to add on another employee to our team and we are excited to announce that it is Hunter Ray! He does not come to Cloudpoint as a stranger but actually a familiar face from past conferences. His title is GIS Analyst and he will start off by aiding Micah and the Enterprise team along with some application development work. We are fortunate to find someone with Hunter’s education and experience. Education: He has a Bachelors Degree in Zoology

Cloudpoint has gone through various internal changes so far this year; from adapting to remote work, to investing in AWS services to optimize our use of ArcGIS Indoors and Enterprise, to expanding our virtual training efforts with free webinars. After much consideration by the team, we are ready to publicly announce our new name as Cloudpoint Geospatial. This new name better describes the services that we provide and more accurately encompasses our overall purpose. Included i

C.ommercial O.ff T.he S.helf Even though we have all become more technically adept, the idea of customized programming is still out of reach for most users. However, that does not stop us from wanting the shiny buttons and slick applications. Enter COTS software.  This very blog is written on COTS software. Long gone are the days when a solid grasp of HTML and CSS are needed for a great website. Squarespace, Wix, Google Sites along with probably a dozen other site builders ex

Jodi, Tyler, and Matt have been a part of the team for 5 years! Though they all have differing roles, they each surpass their work titles to serve both staff and clients. It’s evident that these three will drop what their doing to help you. Jodi, Tyler, and Matt, you have been crucial in providing quality services to clients and keeping Cloudpoint well and thriving. In separate interviews with all 3 employees, they all said there favorite thing about working at Cloudpoint was

Are you a GIS user that has transitioned from ArcMap to ArcGIS Pro? If so, Congratulations! If not, you might want to consider dipping your toes in the ArcGIS Pro waters ( ArcMap is set to be retired by March 2026 ).  For the ArcGIS Pro users, or those thinking about making the move from ArcMap, you now have the capability to manage your land records data using the Parcel Fabric in ArcGIS Pro, with improved workflows and editing capabilities. Here are a few tidbits to know wh

The Cloudpoint team is taking advantage of this time of remote connectivity to connect with you in a whole new way.  Our professional GIS experts will be hosting a series of exciting GIS webinars to help users take advantage of the latest GIS resources. Although we can’t meet in person right now, here is a list of our upcoming virtual events that you won’t want to miss out on.  Be sure to join our team for some high-impact learning opportunities to see how your organization c

Same Team, Same Expertise, Different Locations We are all working though these confusing and trying times to find a new normal. There is a plethora of advice  for not going crazy and a few tips from other GIS Professionals . I thought I’d share how Cloudpoint Geographics has managed and migrated to a distributed workforce while continuing production on essential projects and even expanding. As a company, we have always stayed nimble. We either use Dropbox or Google Drive to s

Since we are all working at home these days. It makes sense to think that some GIS workers will be trying to connect to their enterprise GIS. If you do not have a VPN or the connection is spotty, you may want to try and connecting to the data through ArcGIS Portal. Micah created two short videos to help with this task. You will need to know your ArcGIS Portal home URL, a username and licensed copy of ArcGIS Pro. This next video shows you how to connect ArcGIS Pro to open and

With the coronavirus spreading rapidly, its high-time the GIS community invoke its power of location analytics to help fight off the destructive spread. Tools are readily available to locate, track, and even predict when and where the virus will spread. Esri has numerous resources available such as pre-configured web apps, operations dashboards, and solutions deployment tools. One of the major provisions that have made is incorporation of the Coronavirus initiative into ArcGI

It’s rather interesting, some of the comments we get about the name of our company when people are first introduced to us. They say “Cloudpoint, hmm, is that some kind of cloud-based service, do you work with point clouds, etc.?” As company founder Jonathan Hodel notes, “when we started up in 2011, my wife, Megan and I were discussing several options for names and wanted something that spoke to the technology we are using. As a geospatial company, I knew point clouds  were a

Despite the recent COVID-19 setbacks, the Cloudpiont team was represented at the recent Esri Partner Conference in sunny Palm Springs, CA on March 7-9. Jon Hodel and Micah Williamson were able to attend the conference to stay abreast with the latest technology and solutions offered by Esri through all facets of the ArcGIS platform. It was a bit of an unusual conference given the circumstances surrounding the coronavirus concerns as we were surprised by things like the last-mi

The Cloudpoint team has the pleasure of once again working with the City of Bloomington and their public works staff to upgrade the City’s GIS infrastructure. This project will consist of providing an Enterprise GIS upgrade within the public works department that will later be leveraged for all City departments. The new upgrade will include onsite professional services to: Setup and implement ArcGIS Enterprise within the Client's network environment including installation and