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Nov 19, 2025

What's new in ArcGIS AllSource 1.5

By Stephen Kredel

ArcGIS AllSource takes disparate data and makes sense of it, many times through visualizing data. In this release, the AllSource team focused on enhancing visualization of temporal data in Timelines. Additionally, Military Overlay now includes the standards: MIL-STD-2525B and MIL-STD-2525E. 

To learn more about other enhanced and added tools, read What’s new in ArcGIS AllSource 1.5

 

Timeline Enhancements

Often, data containing time attributes is best understood when seen. So, in 1.5, the timeline saw updates to its ribbon, symbology, and swimlane controls. 

The ArcGIS AllSource ribbon on the Timeline tab with the View group highlighted.
The View group now includes four new buttons dedicated to controlling how swimlanes are viewed on a timeline. In addition, access to symbology for timespans has been included in this release.

Using the Expand All, Collapse All, and Stack Timespan/Cascade Timespan, swimlanes can be adjusted. Often, when dealing with time-based data, events can take place over a period as opposed to a single moment in time; this is known as a timespan. Timespans can overlap, making the features on a timeline hard to see. One of the best ways to deal with timespan overlap is to create swimlanes on the timeline.  

The Category Definition menu with a selected Category Field and Values. 
Using the Category Definition menu, a timeline can be customized to create swimlanes based on the features set by a Category Field and Values.

After creating a timeline, but before inspecting it, try out the new Category Definition tool. Using this tool, the timeline’s displayed category and the values can be selected to split the timeline into swimlanes. 

A Timeline set to Stack Timespan.
Stack Timespan allows a timespan to overlap on a timeline and see the data as it sits against other features.

Using Stack Timespan, the features are set in a single timeline; however, when dealing with many features, some visibility issues occur as features and timespans begin to overlap. To help alleviate how busy the timeline appears, let’s cascade our timespans in this lane. 

Timeline set to Cascade Timespans.
By enabling Cascade Timespan, the timespan in a swimlane cascades for each event.

Cascade Timespan separates overlapping timespans for enhanced visibility of the data. Let’s look at how data appears when the timeline is expanded. 

A timeline set to Expand All.
By using Expand All, the timeline splits itself into multiple swimlanes chosen in the Category Definition menu.

By using Expand All, the timeline is split based on chosen values so that timespans can be viewed in their respective categories. Once a swimlane has been expanded, the data becomes easier to read, however the timeline can always collapse back into a single-lane view. 

A timeline set to Collapse All.
Collapse All returns the timeline to a single swimlane for a traditional view.

Collapse All, Expand All, and Stack/Cascade Timespan were designed to aid users in visualizing and categorizing their data. However, when it comes to visualization, symbology is always key. 

The Symbology pane with Timespan symbology.
The Timespan Symbology sits underneath Primary Symbology on the Symbology Pane.

Using Timespan symbology, a user can customize how timespans are symbolized on a timeline. Choosing appropriate colors and symbology further complements the timeline and time-based data. 

Timeline set to Cascade All with Timespan Symbology.
Using Timespan symbology, you can begin to modify how the timeline is symbolized to help differentiate between timespans.

To learn more, read the help for Timelines. 

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Stephen Kredel

Stephen Kredel is a Product Engineer on the ArcGIS AllSource team. He joined Esri in 2022 and focuses on technical writing and help documentation. He has four years experience as a Geospatial Intelligence Imagery Analyst in the U.S. Army and earned his B.A. in history from the University of Redlands.

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