Geocgi Solution Engineers recently developed a work order dispatch application for the Heartland Cooperative(Co-op). This custom web application hosted within their on-premises ArcGIS Enterprise deployment allows dispatchers to group relative work orders into ‘batches’ and which are assigned to equipment in the field. This application gives the dispatcher the ability to perform several functions: such as view and filter current work orders in a table and the map, batch and assign work orders, and sequence work orders within batches. The functionality has improved dispatch workflow speed, data consistency, and visibility at all levels of management. Utilizing the ArcGIS Experience Builder framework and a custom API for communication to an IBM Db2 database, our Solution Engineers developed a custom widget that organizes these features and tools in one location for the dispatchers.
Heartland Co-op approached us with the requirement to modernize the dispatch application just before peak season was about to begin. After understanding the requirement and gathering necessary functionality, we began an agile development strategy to stay on schedule. Weekly sprints allowed stakeholders to keep a close watch on development and gave them the ability to quickly make on-the-fly adjustments. The first stage of development included creating a JavaScript module for communicating over HTTP to the custom API, enabling the application to send and receive data to the work order database of record. Next, we created the various widgets targeting custom required features. These widgets include batching CRUD tools, product filtering, and acreage summaries. Geocgi also created a routing function to easily visualize the sequence of work orders within batches on the map. Alongside this development, we created the Feature Service to be consumed by the web map and related application. This service included a point layer for work orders, field boundaries, current equipment locations, and other relevant layers. Once this service was published and a web map was created, developers were able to start configuring the application within ArcGIS Experience Builder. Within the new app, various configurable widgets were added to compliment the custom widgets that were in development. Upon completion of the configurable app and the custom widgets, a full testing suite was set up to allow multiple testers from Heartland Co-op and geocgi to test all functionality and identify bugs. During this testing phase, we generated ideas for further enhancements to improve the application. After addressing all bugs and enhancements, integrators deployed the application to the production system, dispatchers were trained, and existing workflows migrated to the new production application.
Heartland Co-op uses this application throughout their peak fertilizing seasons and have reported no issues with functionality. In addition to this dispatching application our Solution Engineers developed a historical work order viewer/analyzer application which uses some of the same custom widgets but also includes other charts and analytics for reporting. The Geocgi and Heartland Co-op partnership is now looking to the future planning enhancements to this application and development of other web-GIS applications. For more information on this project, please contact our Solutions Manager, Jesse Parker, jesse.w.parker@geocgi.com.
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