By Charlie Frye, Esri Chief Cartographer
If you make zoning, soils, geology, or any of a number of kinds of maps where your data represent many different types of features, you can make use of some specialized functionality in the unique values symbology method in ArcMap’s layer properties symbology tab. This functionality allows you to create headings within your layer’s symbols that will be shown in ArcMap’s table of contents and in your map’s legend. Headings provide a shortcut for assigning symbology and add some hierarchy to your table contents. Legend headings, at a minimum, help visually organize the information in the legend, and if your legend uses multiple columns, you can set the column breaks to occur at the headings- this makes the legend easier to read.
There are two cases, depending on how your data are organized, where the unique values headings functionality will help. First is a case like zoning where you may have between 20 and 50 classes of zoning; in this case, the goal is to better organize the presentation of those classes by adding some hierarchy to how your layer appears in the Table of Contents and the legend. In this first case, you can also benefit from using the Match to Symbols in a Style option for symbolizing Categories; this automates the assignment of your symbology. Once you use this option, all that remains is to assign the headings, which will represent, for the zoning example, the major types of zoning, e.g., commercial, residential, public, etc.
The second case is like geology where each map effectively has a unique set of feature types, and you may have between 20 and 100 different feature types on a given map,though your data may have more than 1,000 different kinds of features. That is the map will be showing fewer than the total number of possible feature types. For databases with an excessive number of different kinds of features, the Match to Symbols in a Style option is not going to be a time saver. Instead, setting a different color scheme for each heading is preferred. For the geology example, the idea is to show surface geology units by age category (quaternary, cretaceous, etc.) using groups of colors that have a narrow hue range (see the geology 24K.style for examples). The reason this works well is based in how the color schemes are applied to unique values symbology. ArcMap chooses colors from the within the color scheme that are as different as possible, making for a visually distinctive result. If you don’t like the result, just pick the same color scheme again, and you’ll get a different solution because the first color is assigned randomly so different color assignments are made each time the color scheme is reapplied.
Here is how to add headings to your unique values symbology:
1. Create unique values symbology for your layer and then, while still in the Layer Properties window’s symbology tab, select several rows that represent features that belong in a specific group. Right-click on any of the selected rows to see the options that are shown below and choose Move to Heading, then New Heading. You can use Ctrl-Click to select multiple rows or Shift-Click to select a range of rows.
2. Enter the name of the heading that you want to display in the table of Contents and the legend in the resulting dialog box:
3. Repeat Steps 1 & 2 as needed to create additional headings.
Tips:
- When working with data that has many categories and types of features, it is often more productive to turn off the graphic view of the color ramps and use the names; so a good practice would be to name your headings the same as the color ramps you will be using.
- You can select a heading and then click the buttons with the black up or down arrows to change the order that headings will appear in the legend.
- You can click twice on a heading in the list to change its name; the first click selects the heading, and the second click allows you to edit the name.
- Once your headings are set up and you’ve assigned all your symbols to the appropriate heading, you can select the heading to apply a color ramp to the symbol within just that heading as shown below:
Once you’ve created your legend, the way to ensure that the columns do not start except at headings is to edit your layer’s legend item properties. Here’s how to do that:
1. Start by editing the legend’s properties and then on the Items tab, select your layer and then click the Style button.
2. In the Legend Item Selector window, click the Properties button to show the following dialog. Check the option at the bottom to prevent items being split across legend columns.
Here is an example of a legend for a surface geology layer that was constructed as described above:
As shown above, you can also the Legend Item properties to set the fonts for the headings and labels, however, if you want to just change the font, select the entire legend and use the Font Color on the Draw toolbar. This will not alter the size or effects such as Bold or Italic.
Hey Sean,
This is exciting. Do you know when it’ll be available on the Government tenant? It doesn’t show up in my flow yet. Thanks- Julie
Hi Julie – we are working with Microsoft to get an estimated date when the connectors will be available to the Government tenant. We will post a note in the ArcGIS for Power Automate Community when we get information.
Hi Sean, Thank you for the blog post – exciting functionality. I just have two questions. 1. I started testing the ArcGIS Power Automate connectors, but realized that they require a “Premium” Power Automate subscription. I cannot use it like I can use Survey123 in the free Power Automate? 2. The method to connect to “Get Geometry from a layer”, Can i use any polygon, line or point feature services in my organization OR am i limited to the boundaries available from the “Location Types” in the ArcGIS for Power BI Visualizer, because i see that one of the mandatory… Read more »
Interesting, yet I don’t understand why there is no direct connector in PowerBI that would also support ArcGIS Enterprise Portals. I’ve written the custom connector myself that does allow you to connect to AGOL or Portal via OAuth2.0, does the token refresh and runs the query against the FL REST API along with pagination (if maxResults limits the response)…
Not everyone wants to be pulling the data using the connectors in Power Automate…
sorry, what I’d welcome would be a simple REST API Query connector where users would (in its simplest form) query the data via url that can obtain in REST API … Thanks
I have made several cloud flows in PA for to my survey123 forms. When testing a flow, they appear to work and send an 365 email, but then stop working when survey’s are submitted? Last Fri, one flow just starting working and sending emails… on Monday that same flow has not responded? Any thoughts?
Does this connector with Enterprise or just Online?
Hi Shawn – currently the ArcGIS Connector for Power Automate only works with ArcGIS Online. We are working on building a connector that will work with Enterprise, but are not ready to release it yet.
Thank you. have any clue when release date is?
No updates as to the release date yet – we will keep you posted as capabilities are planned.
Please feel free to contribute to the Esri Community with your ideas and functionality requests.
Thanks, Sean, do you know anything about error message when using custom connector, ‘cannot add more than 1024 properties in the webhook payload?
We are trying to use ArcGIS “Find Address Candidates” connector at CDC. We tried using both ArcGIS and ArcGIS PasS with “No Stored” option. Both results in “Token is valid but access is denied”. With the same token/login details we can make direct rest API call. Any idea why we might be getting access denied?
I have a workflow that is using Power Automate connector with ArcGIS Enterprise to send emails with a completed Survey123. After working out great for free with our Microsoft Office suite license for about 5 months, Microsoft is now saying this is a Premium connector. Is this correct? If correct this is a big blow to my workflow. Can this be?!?
Hi there, i am new at using Power Automate with Survey123 and was wondering whether it was possible to create a flow that will email someone specific depending on a choice from the survey (e.g. if I choose from drop-down: property type: office, then email person A, if I choose property type: Shop, email person B, else, email person C). when checking the flows in can see the condition option, but receive the following error: ActionBranchingConditionNotSatisfied. The execution of the template action ‘Send_an_email_(V2)’ skipped… anything that i should consider, any good resource go get best practice advice on how to… Read more »
Hi Sean, thanks for the article. Can you provide an update as to whether this now works with AG Enterprise?
Sean: I’m watching #MSIgnite and wondering if the connectors work with MS Copilot. Would be great if we could create our own Copilots for Teams using Copilot Studio that integrate with our Enterprise or AGO rest and other systems so people could use natural language in Teams to ask questions and get answers from the data.