What's New in District Online (Release 3.1)

One of the advantages of using a fully hosted Web GIS is that we can deploy new versions of the application quickly and with minimal disruption to the user. Gone are the days of waiting years for new updates to be released and then having to install them on every single computer at a cost of thousands!

With District Online, as soon as we make changes to the application, you can see them immediately. This means we regularly make updates and apply new functionality without disrupting your work.

So the end of March brings one of these updates, and while the mapping interface itself may not appear to have changed much, we have made some fundamental changes in the administration panels and the core back-end code. Let's take a look at all the changes we've made.

There are a few things in District Online mapping interface that you will notice. Firstly, the left panel where the options to choose base layers (such as Aerial Photography and Ordnance Survey mapping) can now be undocked to present an easier view of the base layers, as well as the GIS layers such as Tree Preservation Orders or Flood Map zones.

What's more, you can now expand and collapse these groups of layers to give you a clearer view of the GIS information that is available to you.

For staff at Bath & North East Somerset Council you will also notice that there are many more layers to choose from. This is an ongoing programme to give more staff access to more information, all through the simple District Online interface. So if you notice that your department's data is not in District Online yet, make arrangements with your GIS team and you can benefit from sharing your data with your colleagues.

Now I won't go into detail on the administration panel updates because the majority of people won't have access to them, but the key functionality changes allow the administrator to create these new groups of GIS layers and assign them to users. These layers can now be assigned custom colours, symbols and labels based on their attributes and data types.

So, as ever, have a look at the updated District Online and hopefully you'll be using it every day!

Any comments or suggestions, drop us a note in the User Forum (currently in need of some input!) and one of our team will reply.