Use Transportation 511

The Transportation 511 solution delivers a set of capabilities that help you import critical information from your incident management system and share roadway information with the public so they can make informed decisions before they travel.

In this topic, you’ll learn how to use the solution by assuming the role of a user and performing the workflows below.

Note:

Use your organization's data or configured apps to follow these workflows.

View road conditions

You will assume the role of a motorist planning travel to your next destination in search of information about road conditions prior to driving across state. You will use the Transportation 511 app to discover current roadway conditions, restrictions and closures, and other alerts to help plan a safer trip.

1. In a browser, from the Transportation 511 solution, view the Transportation 511 app.

   The Road Conditions widget is open by default. Road Conditions categories are presented in a list with corresponding total counts.

   Note:

   Information shown in the Road Conditions list automatically updates as you pan and zoom the map to different extents or when searching for a location by address.

2. Click a category to expand it.

   After expanding a category, you may notice that it includes expandable lists that are specific to a particular road or highway.

3. If necessary, in the category, expand a list.
4. Click one of the listed reports.

   On the map, a pop-up displays at the location of the incident. The pop-up includes details about the incident, and, for some types of incidents, it provides a link to additional information.

5. In the Road Conditions widget, to the left of a category, click the button to turn the layer on and off.

Configure data updates

The Overwrite Hosted Features script is meant to be scheduled as a task to run regularly to keep road condition information current in the app. The script takes a zipped file geodatabase and overwrites the published feature collection with the current road condition information. The script can run on a machine without ArcGIS installed. You will now assume the role of a employee in the transportation agency responsible for keeping the Transportation 511 app up to date with the latest information on road conditions across the state.

Configure script parameters

To configure the Overwrite Hosted Features script, complete the following steps:

1. Sign in to your ArcGIS organization and browse to the Transportation 511 solution item.
2. Open the item page and click Overwrite Features.
3. On the item page, click Download.
4. Unzip the OverwriteFeatures folder.
5. Download and install Python version 2.7 or version 3.4 if you do not have it installed on your machine.
6. Browse to and open the overwrite_hosted_features.cfg file in a text editor, and update the following inputs:

   Parameter	Description
   featureServiceItemID	The item ID for your Transportation 511 feature service.
   featureCollectionItemID	The item ID for your Transportation 511 feature collection. Note: Item IDs are found at the end of the URLs when viewing item details, for example, http://myorganization.maps.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=d7c57317a0564cafae28cdc464d63ff9.
   fgdb	The path to the provided zipped file geodatabase, for example, C:\Transportation511\RoadConditions.zip. Tip: A sample schema geodatabase is provided in the Overwrite Features .zip file.
   baseURL	Your organization's URL, for example, https://myorganization.maps.arcgis.com.
   username	Your ArcGIS username.
   pw	Your ArcGIS password.
   maxAllowableOffset	To optimize performance of the data in the application, it is recommended that you generalize complex line and polygon features. Enter the maximum amount of simplification you want for the features in the feature collection. Note: This is defined in the units of the spatial reference of the service, by default, in meters.
   nameMapping	To ensure that features in your feature collection are updated with data from the correct feature class in the file geodatabase, enter a layer mapping to match layers in the published feature layer with the file geodatabase feature class in this parameter following this pattern: Feature Service Layer 1, Database Feature Class 1; Feature Service Layer 2, Database Feature Class 2 Note: The defaults provided in the configuration file work against the provided sample geodatabase and the deployed feature service.
   path (Optional)	The path and file name where you want the log to be written.
   isVerbose (Optional)	True or false. To disable logging, leave this parameter blank.

7. Save your edits to the configuration file.
8. Run the Overwrite Hosted Features script, overwrite_hosted_features.py, to test your configuration. If necessary, refer to the troubleshooting guide below.

Note:

Optionally, you can pass in a configuration file as a parameter to the script. If no configuration file is passed in as a parameter, the script looks for a configuration file named overwrite_hosted_features.cfg in the same directory as the script.

Schedule data updates

You can use the Overwrite Hosted Features script (overwrite_hosted_features.py) with Windows Task Scheduler to overwrite feature collections at a regular interval. Scheduled updates ensure that users have access to current information to support more timely decision-making when traveling.

To update the Transportation 511 feature collection on a schedule, complete the following steps:

1. Open Task Scheduler on the computer hosting the scripts.
2. Click Action > Create Task and name your task.
3. Click the Action tab and click New.
4. Set Action to Start a Program.
5. Click Browse and go to the location of your Python installation (for example, <default directory>\Python27\python.exe), and click Open.
6. In the Add Arguments text box, type the path and name of the script (overwrite_hosted_features.py) and path and name of the configuration file (overwrite_hosted_features.cfg), and click OK.
7. Click the Trigger tab, click New, and set a schedule for your task.
8. Click the Settings tab, click the If the task is already running, then the following rule applies drop-down arrow, and choose Do not start a new instance.
9. Click OK.