Fulcrum was designed from the ground up to support full offline usability, but we are proud to extend support of custom online tile servers to our mobile clients as well. The latest updates to the Fulcrum Android and iOS mobile apps now list all of your Tile XYZ layers in the mobile layer selector, right along with your custom offline layers.
Custom Web Maps On Mobile
The mobile apps are built on the Google Maps SDK, so users always have access to Google’s impressive online inventory of global basemaps and aerial imagery, but sometimes you need more. While you’ve always been able to create custom map layers via offline .mbtiles packages, these aren’t always practical for large geographic areas that may already have coverage via an online tile map service.
Many governmental entities, including the USGS, state, and local municipalities provide geographic data as web services. Map tiles in the standard http://a.tilesource.com/{z}/{x}/{y}.png cache format are fully supported on both the web and mobile clients.
Sample Map Tile Services:
- USGS Topo Base Map:
http://basemap.nationalmap.gov/arcgis/rest/services/USGSTopo/MapServer/tile/{z}/{y}/{x} - USGS Aerial Imagery:
http://basemap.nationalmap.gov/arcgis/rest/services/USGSHydroNHD/MapServer/tile/{z}/{y}/{x} - Mapquest OSM:
http://a.mqcdn.com/tiles/1.0.0/osm/{z}/{x}/{y}.png
Serving Your Own Data:
If you have your own GIS data, you can utilize web services such as CARTO, Mapbox, or ArcGIS Online to serve out your map tiles to Fulcrum. Alternatively, you can roll your own tile server using a variety of freely available tools, including MapTiler, GDAL2Tiles, and QGIS. The resulting tile images and directory structure can be simply dropped on any web server or hosting services such as GitHub or AWS.
We’d love to hear how you are taking advantage of this new functionality and we’re always looking for new ideas, so send your feature requests to support@fulcrumapp.com and we’ll be glad to help!
2023 update for map users and GIS teams!
We have some great news to share! Fulcrum has recently signed a definitive Commercial Provider agreement with Esri™ to leverage their technology stack. So, what does this mean for you? Let’s break it down.
Fulcrum has established itself as a leading solution for field inspections and data collection, particularly for tasks that require location capabilities. On the other hand, Esri is the top provider of geographic information systems (GIS) with a wide range of clients from various industries that rely on location-related data, mapping, and analysis.
These two systems are like peanut butter and jelly, fries and ketchup, or field inspection management and geospatial analysis. Each is great on its own, but when combined, they create even greater possibilities.
We have begun to actualize this potential by signing an agreement with Esri that will allow us to integrate Fulcrum with Esri’s flagship ArcGIS™ product line using its runtime software development kit (SDK). As a result, we will offer a richer mapping experience across the Fulcrum platform, as well as a stronger data exchange capability with Esri products.
Our first delivery using the Esri SDK for mobile is expected to be released in early 2023. This update will include customer-defined labeling on pins and clustering of pins to make large datasets easier to manage, especially on mobile devices. When you have a busy day with multiple field inspections, using Fulcrum to boost productivity and data accuracy is already a great advantage. But seeing the data immediately on your mobile device without the need for drill-down is even better. It saves time during each inspection, and over time, these time savings can add up and make a significant difference between a successful day and falling behind schedule.
If you’re interested in seeing how Fulcrum integrates with Esri’s ArcGIS Online and upcoming new features, please check out our on-demand webinar previewing some of the upcoming integration functionality.