Documentation

Overview

ChronoCards is a website that allows GIS teams to effortlessly share knowledge and workflows across their organizations. Work done across several GIS platforms is logged in one place where users can dig into workflows without needing to constantly interrupt colleagues with questions about what was done and how.

Company Onboarding

It's easy to started and set up your organization's account!

1. Register your company here and confirm your email address by clicking the link we'll send you.
2. Follow the on-screen instructions to select which GIS systems you use, your company's focus (time vs. metrics), and create a team to organize your users.
3. Finally, click the button(s) link your OpenStreetMap and/or ArcGIS Online account. Note: this should be an ArcGIS Online account that you have listed in the "Portals" menu of ArcGIS Pro, but it does not need to be the active portal.

Your organization is now ready to go, but ArcGIS users must install the ChronoCards ArcGIS Pro add-in in order to see their ArcGIS Pro activity in ChronoCards.

Employee Onboarding

Only admins can invite new users to the system. By default, the first user to register the company is an admin.

1. From the left sidebar, click "Users" and then click the "Invite New" button in the upper right.
2. Enter one or more comma-separated email addresses of the user(s) you wish to invite. Note that while you can invite many new users at once, all users invited will share the same teams, team access levels, and roles.
   Once you've sent invitations, you can optionally fill out further information (such as name, birthday, etc.) for each user. As part of the signup process, these users will be able to see and edit the information you have populated for them.
3. Each user will receive an email with a link to activate their account, complete their profile, and link their OpenStreetMap and/or ArcGIS Online accounts.
4. ArcGIS Pro users must install the ChronoCards ArcGIS Pro add-in in order to see their ArcGIS Pro activity in ChronoCards.

Installing the ChronoCards ArcGIS Pro Add-in

The ChronoCards ArcGIS Pro add-in connects your activity in Pro with ChronoCards, so it must be installed before you can expect to see Arc items on your dashboard.

1. Download the ChronoCards ArcGIS Pro add-in and double click it to add it to ArcGIS Pro.
2. ArcGIS should now have a ChronoCards tab in the top ribbon. If it's successfully connected to ChronoCards it will be blue and look like this:
   
3. Users should now be able to see their ArcGIS activity as it happens on their timelines.

Account roles and team access levels

Account roles

An account can be added as either a user or an admin. Admins can manage/create all teams company-wide, configure permissions for other users, confirm billing preferences, and invite new users to your company's ChronoCards account. By default, the first user who created the company's ChronoCards account will be an admin. Generally, only company-wide leads should be admins. Most organizations won't need more than 3 to 5 admins since a team access level of "manager" grants a user admin-level permissions for only that team.

Team access levels

When in metrics focus mode, teams can be used to organize users into groups to share knowledge and easily monitor group progress. Users in the same group may see each other's activity following the access levels outlined below.

When in time focus mode, ChronoCards allows users to track time against one team, one project, and an arbitrary number of tasks (including none). Each team may only have one integration enabled at a time, which will set which user metrics are tracked alongside your time.

These are permissions that only apply for a specific user on the team as assigned.

• Manager:
• can view all GIS activity and/or time records of the team in detail, including potentially sensitive data like location (if provided)/browser metadata/users' IP addresses
• can add/edit/delete any of the team members' time records (including manager's own records)
• can add new members to team provided they've already been invited to the company by an admin
• can manage existing team members' access level within the team
• Member:
• can see GIS activity and/or time records of anyone on the team, but without sensitive data mentioned above
• cannot add/edit/delete any hours within this team
• Limited member:
• can only see own GIS activity and/or time records (without sensitive data)
• can see team trends as a whole, but anonymized-- cannot see individual records of other team members

Example

For example, if Bob is the department director he should have an admin role. Joe and Susan each manage teams of 5 people. They should be invited to ChronoCards as users and then set as managers of their respective teams. Bob, as an admin, will be able to view and manage all users across all teams by default. Joe will only be able to see/manage his team and Susan will only be able to see/manage her team.

One team can have multiple managers if so desired-- adding Joe as a manager to Susan's team would allow him to manage either his team or Susan's team. There is no limit to how many teams a user can be on.

OpenStreetMap Activity

OSM changeset metadata is replicated every minute and will appear on your dashboard in real time as changesets are received. This includes things like changeset hashtags, comments, centroid, total number of changes, submitted date, and submitted time.

Every 20 minutes, more detailed data is pulled from Overpass and streamed to your ChronoCards dashboard. For each changeset, you can see:

• total features added, modified, and deleted
• count of buildings added, modified, and deleted
• count of POIs added, modified, and deleted
• count of roads added, modified, and deleted
• total distance (kilometers) of roads added, modified, and deleted
• count of waterways added, modified, and deleted
• total distance (kilometers) of waterways added, modified, and deleted

ArcGIS Pro Activity

ArcGIS Pro edits and events are streamed immediately to ChronoCards and will appear on your dashboard in real time. Certain events, like the use of geoprocessing tools, contain extra descriptive information (parameters, execution time, etc) that will only be sent by ArcGIS Pro after you've saved your project.
These may be subject to change. ChronoCards can log almost anything that happens in ArcGIS Pro and many events are left out for brevity. Please contact us if there's something missing here that you'd like to see.

• active portal changed
• the active portal in ArcGIS Pro was changed
• analyst note
• sent whenever an analyst types a note within the ChronoCards ArcGIS Pro add-in
• animation export finished
• application closing
• application startup
• ArcGIS portal added
• ArcGIS portal removed
• edit operation, edit discard, edit post, edit reconcile, edit redo, edit save, edit undo
• sent whenever features are edited
• contains map name, layer name, count of features affected, and feature IDs
• element added, element removed, elements updated, elements placement changed
• sent when creating/editing elements of layouts
• exploratory-analysis-updated
• sent whenever an exploratory analysis tool is ran
• layers added
• layers moved
• layers removed
• layout removed
• map closed
• map removed
• map property changed
• sent whenever any map properties are changed, such as name, map units, reference scale, rotation, background color, extent, layer clipping, metadata, coordinate systems, transformations, illuminations, map labels, color management, etc.
• map series
• sent whenever you create/update/change views on a map series
• once a map series is created, this will fire any time you change the active series page
• page changed
• sent when a layout page changes sizes
• portal sign on changed
• sent when you log in/out of a portal
• no information is sent nor saved regarding your username or password
• project items changed
• this is a very broad event that contains data about changes made to your ArcGIS project
• sent when adding new Python notebooks, reports, maps, layouts, geodatabases, folder connections, locators, etc.
• also sent when removing most of those things
• project closed
• project opened
• project saved
• standalone tables added
• standalone tables removed
• tool - <tool name>
• initial event is sent immediately whenever a geoprocessing tool is ran
• when the project is saved, more detailed data about the entire event (parameters, execution time, etc) is sent to update the initial event

Metrics Focus vs. Time Focus

ChronoCards offers the ability for users to track their time and for any team they're on and tag those hours with a project and task. This is useful for billing project-based work, but it is entirely optional. If you track time, your GIS activity will appear on your time card and you'll be able to see additional metrics (such as edits/hour).

You can switch between both focus modes at any time on your profile page. All of the same activity (ArcGIS Pro events, OSM edits) is automatically stored no matter which mode you are in. Changing focus just provides the ability to track time and hides activity that was done "off the clock."

• If your focus is set to "time", you must clock in and out and will only see activity logged when you are on the clock.
• If your focus is set to "metrics", you do not need to track time to see your activity and activity available will be shown at all times.

Additional Support

Please do not hesitate to reach out to our support team if you have any questions or need clarification! We typically respond the same business day or faster.