Cloudpoint is excited to announce that we have partnered with Scott County, Iowa to install ArcGIS Server on the Amazon Cloud. This will allow the County to have greater control over their mapping and make their maps available to more people on the web.  The Amazon EC2 cloud is a flexible deployment solution that is versatile and scalable. Scott county staff will have complete control over what, when and how their public facing GIS is updated. this allows more efficient use o

Cloudpoint Geographics is excited to announce that we have been contracted by the City of Barrie, Ontario, Canada to assist with their Parcel Fabric!  This project has been in the works for a few months and we a pleased to see all the pieces come together.  In the coming year, Jon will be making a couple of trips to the great white north to assist in implementation and training of key staff to utilize Esri's Parcel Fabric.  The Cloudpoint team is thrilled to add the City of B

This past Friday dozens of city and county officials converged on the Morton Fire Department building in Morton, IL for Cloudpoint Geographics' ArcGIS for Local Government Solutions Showcase.  It was a successful event that included several presentations ranging on topics including drone mapping, parcel management, webmap creation, and much more.  You can learn more about the topics discussed as well as access the presentations by accessing the Showcases page HERE . We are ha

The City of Washington, Illinois has experienced a population growth and a spur in construction over the past few decades.  After meeting with Cloudpoint Geographics early this year, they decided that they needed to get the most out of their GIS in order to be ready for future growth. Washington decided that the best way for them to prepare for the future was to properly document all of their spatial data. Whether it was parcel data, utilities, zoning, or any other section of

One thing we love about working at Cloudpoint Geographics is the ability to spread the good word of GIS and how powerful of a tool it can be for an organization.  Over the past few weeks several Cloudpoint staff members have had a variety of speaking engagements ranging in topics from mobile mapping implementation, to overhauling utility mapping, to a general overview of what GIS is, and why updating maps is important. This was true for both Jonathan and Joe as they hit the r

Every Fall the Illinois GIS Association hosts its annual conference. This year the event was at the Hilton Lisle/Naperville Hotel and Conference center from October 17-19.  It was a fantastic event which started with the Monday night social which was sponsored by Cloudpoint Geographics and featured a rousing game of Trivia.  Cloudpoint's own Micah Williamson was on the winning team while Joe, Paul, and Matt were all runners up falling 1 point shy of tying Micah. In addition t

One thing setting SignOps apart from the rest of the crowd is the user-derived environment.  The development team has former highway maintenance experience and the users are solicited for their feedback frequently. Well, you spoke and we listened! Cloudpoint is happy to announce that we have launched our updated SignOps release! After compiling ideas for a few months, Cloudpoint was able to get some of your suggestions put in place.   So what updates are included: The program

Roanoke, IL- Cloudpoint Geographics recently celebrated its 5-year anniversary on August 25, 2016.  We've come a long way from back in the day with a one room office borrowed from the local realtor and an old Lenovo laptop (which we still have in our possession now bearing the label Cloudpoint-LAP 1). To celebrate the special occasion, team members were treated to a lunch at the Chanticleer restaurant in Eureka, IL and a round of disc golf at Washington Park.   Cloudpoint con

Cloudpoint staff is currently undertaking a very large sign inventory for the City of Bloomington, IL.  The city has over 20,000 signs and over 300 miles of roadway, which is the biggest SignOps project that we've undertaken so far.  With so many signs to inventory and such a large area to cover, we started to brainstorm ideas that could lead to higher productivity.  The solution that we came up with: Bicycles.  The bicycles are proving to work great!  Staff can park in a cen

Santa Fe, New Mexico  The New Mexico state Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department (EMNRD) has been using ArcGIS for several years. The problem lies within it's departmental silos. They have utilized ArcGIS Server for a few years, but not to the enterprise level. Last Month, EMNRD contracted with Cloudpoint* to install ArcGIS Server with Portal. This included a SQL Server datastore, Federated servers and integration with Active Directory. Because we are a nimble fir

Following suit with our recent numeric theme, today I want to give you three reasons for trying ESRI's Workforce for ArcGIS . In short, Workforce is a tool for creating, assigning and monitoring work orders or assignments that are related to different places or spaces. Still in the beta stages for now, it will be fully released this year and here's why you should give it a run: 1. It's soo easy to deploy.  Whether you are a power user or just getting started with web GIS, thi

We at Cloudpoint Geographics are pleased to announce that Esri inc. has awarded us with an exclusive designation of being Local Government specialists. The specialty is designed to assist Esri users looking for  partners who can help them deploy ArcGIS for Local Government in their organization. While this description is no surprise to our existing clients, it serves as a validation of our work ethic and excellence. We strive to make our clients great and help them get recogn

A multilayer basemap is a new feature that Esri rolled out in the March 2016 update of ArcGIS Online. Here are 5 steps you can take to create a multilayer basemap for your ArcGIS Online organization.   1. If you have existing basemap content- such as parcels, building footprints, roadways, etc.- in your ArcGIS Online organization, you can skip this step, but I added content from a County's ArcGIS REST Services Directory. In this case, click Add Item on the My Content page,

1. Create a Web Map - Use your GIS to easily communicate pedestrian access routes (temporary & permanent) by displaying them on a web map and share with the public to communicate temporary road closures or construction activities to the traveling public.  The routes can be added as a layer to the GIS and easily updated by office or field personnel to keep the public informed about designated routes or changes.   ArcGIS Desktop can be used to digitize the routes and published

It's never been easier to maintain an accurate and up-to-date inventory of your culverts using GIS and mobile technology.  Another example of the effectiveness of using mobile apps for inventories is shown during our ongoing project in LaSalle County, IL where Cloudpoint is completing a culvert inventory on all of the county highways.   Here, Joe is using Esri's Collector app to complete a culvert inventory for LaSalle County, IL. While climbing into and out of the work van,

The Town of Normal, IL is taking great strides in its GIS progress under the leadership of two highly talented professionals.  IT Director, Teri Legner and GIS Coordinator, Cassidy Killian are currently working with the water department to update all of their old maps.  The water distribution system is currently all mapped out in CAD however it is not exactly to scale, causing a huge challenge when trying to convert to GIS format.  Normally a simple georeferencing process can

Clark County, WI has partnered with Cloudpoint Geographics to migrate to an enterprise GIS environment and create a seamless workflow for migrating tax and parcel data into a standard format compatible with the state’s Act 20 requirements.   The State of Wisconsin's Department of Administration is very proactive in their GIS initiative working with all of the counties within the state to create a seamless state-wide digital parcel map.   The Wisconsin Land Information Program

Contours are a great way to quickly view an area and get the feel for the lay of the land. And the better the source data, the more you can do with them, from reference to planning. Recently we used data derived from LiDAR to build a county-wide contour layer. The reason we went with LiDAR data is that the accuracy is usually much tighter (and more recent) than existing elevation information. There are obviously different methods  and tools to do this but here in Illinois we

Dick Simon is the Director of the Electric Department for the City of Rock Falls, IL.  Here is a little bit of information about how Dick got to where he is at today and what GIS has done for him. Dick has been with the City for 25 years, starting as an Apprentice Lineman and working his way up to his current position of Director of the Electric Department. As part of his duties, Dick is responsible for the maintenance, repair, replacement, testing and capital improvements to

Growing up, I had a mouth full of cavities and now have plenty of fillings to show for it.  Little did I know at that time (back when I though I wanted to be a fireman) I would soon be making a living by working in that same building where I would go for routine checkups and teeth cleaning.   No, didn't go in to dentistry (although if you stop by we could take a look at your teeth but I wouldn't trust our diagnosis).  We recently purchased the former dentist office in Roanoke