The SCGS website once had a “Digital Downloads" page, but for years it was littered with broken links and became functionally useless. As a consequence, all data requests were submitted and fulfilled manually via emails to staff members. This was highly inefficient; it resulted in needless delays for those requesting data, and created needless labor for the staff members meant to provide it. The self-service portal eliminates these hurdles, allowing SCGS to serve the public more efficiently and capably.

By leveraging the ArcGIS Hub infrastructure, one upload on SCGS’s end translates to several different downloadable formats on the user’s end. This is extremely useful when distributing data to large groups of people, many of whom likely do not have access to the proprietary software formats used in the ArcGIS ecosystem.

To make uploading to the site consistent and simple for staff members, I wrote a script that handles the uploading process. The script cleans the contents of a file geodatabase through a sequence of joins and exports - this results in a final product that is much more meaningful to the average user, who likely doesn’t need all of the ancillary information that SCGS stores in their databases internally. The script then stages a feature service definition and uploads the product to a folder in SCGS’s ArcGIS Online account, where it becomes visible in the public portal. The script’s parameters can be adjusted according to the database at hand.

Code available upon request. The site has not yet been fully integrated into SCGS’s publication workflow, but an abridged beta version can be viewed here.