Geocortex Blog

A new version of the Geocortex Essentials Flex API is now available. Highlights include:

• Support for Forms 1.0
• Export Map
• Support for new workflow activities: SetLayerDefinition, SetLayerVisibility, Report, GetMapExtent, Geoprocessing
• Support for ESRI Flex API 2.4

Licensees can download the Geocortex Essentials Flex API 2.4 from the Geocortex Support Center.

A new maintenance release of Geocortex Essentials is now available. This is a maintenance release focused on quality improvements rather than the introduction of new features. Some of the most notable issues resolved are related to printing errors and other inconsistencies. We encourage our customers to consult the release notes (found on our Support Center with the download) for more detailed information describing the specific issues that are addressed in this maintenance release.

Discussion Forum Superheroes

As part of our new and improved Geocortex Support Center launch last April, we challenged forum members to participate in our Discussion Forums to share knowledge and help build a strong, vibrant user community. We established prizes to acknowledge key contributors in a tangible way by offering $1000 (MVP) and $500 (runner-up) in support/training/services credits to the two community members that we deemed most helpful to their peers between the launch and September 1st. 

Bravo to our MVPs

We’ve gone through the stats and the Geocortex Support Team has cast their votes. Congratulations to Gareth Finney, our MVP and winner of the $1000 prize. Coming in not far behind, a thank-you to Sonia Dickerson, who has also been a big contributor and has been selected for the $500 prize. Special thanks to you both for actively contributing valuable knowledge to the discussion forums! 

Gareth Finney (MVP) - Spatial Consultant - Department of Sustainability and Environment - Melbourne, Australia

Sonia Dickerson (MVP Runner-Up) - EGIS Developer - Minnesota Department of Transportation

Although Gareth and Sonia are being specifically acknowledged, we’d like to thank everyone who has been contributing to the Geocortex Discussion Forums. We’re really starting to see an awesome community of Geocortex users helping one another succeed with web-based mapping emerge. Together we can continue to build a great resource for people to help each other find answers for common questions and overcome roadblocks.

But let’s keep the conversations going!

We are pleased to announce that we are offering a second challenge round which will run from September 14, 2011 to February 14, 2012.

We are offering the same prize options as before and will use the same participation criteria to recognize super achievers. Please review the original Announcement in the Discussion Forums for background information. We hope this additional incentive will allow the superpowers lurking in everyone to shine through. Winners will be announced shortly after Valentine’s Day 2012.

Latitude is working more and more with distributors to represent and implement our Geocortex technology overseas (we actually hosted our Geocortex Business Partner Summit in Victoria last week – it’s always great to get together in person). As part of this strategy I’m pleased to welcome two new distributors in Europe.

1Spatial is now the Geocortex reseller for  the United Kingdom and Ireland. 1Spatial has been serving public and private sector clients for more than 40 years, and as they continue to build out a practice helping organizations that make extensive use of Esri technology, they determined that Geocortex can help Esri clients achieve their objectives in a unique and compelling way. And we determined they get it, and are good at what they do.

Informi GIS A/S is now the Geocortex reseller in The Kingdom of Denmark. Informi is also Esri’s official distributor in Denmark, and like other Esri distributors who resell Geocortex technology, they determined that Geocortex technology is complementary to Esri’s core ArcGIS Server offerings. I had the opportunity to visit their offices in Copenhagen last January; they’re a great group of people with a top-notch reputation.

You can read more about our business partners here. 1Spatial and Informi will undoubtedly do some excellent work in the months and years ahead to introduce Geocortex technology to people in their countries, and it’s a pleasure to have this opportunity to work side by side.

We are pleased to announce that Geocortex Essentials 3.4.2 is now generally available to customers.

This is a maintenance release to address some known issues in the product. In addition to our regular bug fixes we’ve paid particular attention to REST endpoint performance and improved support for secured ArcGIS Server services.

Geocortex customers can visit the Geocortex Support Center to download this update and product release notes.

When Latitude Geographics relocated its waterfront offices last year (approximately 100 meters eastward), we wound up with a better view of Victoria harbour. The harbour is actually a very busy one; with float planes, kayaks, canoes and boats of all type coming and going all day.

Over the past two weeks we have had the pleasure of looking out the office windows and seeing the following two images of beauty.

The first is the Attessa IV pictured below. Please note the helicopter pad. Very cool.

Today, the Pallada from Russia set anchor in nearly the same spot. Very impressive.

With the nice warm weather, Victoria harbour is a great place to drop anchor this time of year. The 270 Russian sailors on board surely will take the opportunity to do a lot of sight-seeing over the weekend.

We’ve used Salesforce.com across a number of departments for several years now, and I’m a big fan. When you factor in all the costs of an internally deployed CRM, I think we’re way ahead.

This morning we experienced a two hour Salesforce.com outage during regular business hours. The outage happened with one instance among the many they deploy, but it happened to be the one we’re on.

For me, what’s most interesting about the relatively brief outage is my reaction to it. I was a little bit outraged. After all, what am I paying them for? I found myself reflecting on the risks associated with becoming increasingly reliant on Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings. Truthfully, my gut expectation is zero unplanned service interruptions.

I should be more realistic given that for the last ten years we’ve been a SaaS provider (ArcIMS hosting, now ArcGIS Server hosting). Our goal is maximum possible uptime of a fairly complex system. While we’re good at avoiding downtime, every once in a while something trips up. And although we respond quickly and effectively, I figure most clients feel just like I do when it happens to us.

Contrast this with internal systems deployed by folks you know and work with. A couple nights ago our IT team was doing some complicated internal email server maintenance/upgrades as part of scheduled downtime. It took longer than the expected hour. It took a few hours. I made a phone call later in the evening, and was informed that a couple unexpected issues had cropped up and were being addressed. I was fine with it, because I knew Alex and Barry were working aggressively on it and I know them to be extremely smart, hardworking guys. In fact, I felt bad they were stuck in the office dealing with MS Exchange gremlins until 1AM. My gut expectation of them is rapid recovery from unforeseen challenges.

SaaS may be imperfect but it’s an alternative to in-house systems that, if we add things up at lots of organizations, probably experience comparable (if not more) downtime. The specific examples I’ve used are merely anecdotes and they differ in key ways; my point is that I think people tend to be far more empathetic when we’re working with the actual people who are responding to a system failure.