Lesson 15e: Training for Markup Reviewer

The National Map is a collection of mapping products and services produced by the USGS National Geospatial Program.   The products and services are accessed via the internet through service calls and graphical user interfaces.  The National Geospatial Program has released a series of “how to” videos for people who are working with The National Map data and services.  The videos show how to use the services and interfaces to access data and tools for viewing, analyzing and printing geospatial data.   The training materials are a mixture of video and PowerPoint-based lessons.  Lessons 1 and 2 serve as an introduction to the training materials.  The remaining lessons are designed as quick “how to’s” and may be viewed as needed, in any order, depending on the user.

Lesson 15e: training for Markup Reviewer.

Lesson 15d covered Markup Application. The purpose of the web Markup Application is to provide users a communication tool to submit suggested edits, called markups, for the national hydrography datasets. The application allows users to review and submit markups for NHD, NDHPlus HR, and WBD.

Once markups are submitted through the web application, USGS, NHD and WBD partners will use an ArcGIS Add-in tool, called Markup Reviewer, to review the submitted markups and to update their status.

In this lesson, we will discuss how to access and install Markup Reviewer and how to use the tool to modify markup status during the markup life cycle.

Since only trained NHD and WBD editors can validate markups and perform edits in the NHD and WBD datasets, access to download the Markup Reviewer from the Hydrographic Data Community, or HDC, is available only by request. Access requests should be sent to markup@usgs.gov.

Once you are approved to access the Markup Reviewer, login into HDC site and navigate to Markup Community.

Then go to the page called ‘Markup Reviewer Software and Documentation’ This page becomes visible only once you have been approved to access the tool.

On this page you will find the most recent version of the Markup Reviewer and direct link to the User Guide. Download the zip file to your machine.

After you download and unzip the Markup Reviewer zip file found on HDC, open windows Explorer and navigate to where you have extracted the file. In this case I have it saved on my desktop.

Double click on Markup Reviewer Esri Addin file to run the install.

Click "Install Add-In" in the Esri Installation Utility window.

Open a new ArcMap session.

From the Customize menu, select Add-in Manager. You should see Markup Reviewer as one of the Add-in options.

To add the Markup Reviewer to your ArcMap toolbar, again go to the Customize menu, then customize mode. The Customize window will open. Then go to Commands Tab, and select Add-In Controls,

Highlight Markup Reviewer icon and drag it to any toolbar.

Now you are ready to start using Markup Reviewer in any mxd. You can close this mxd and open any working mxd as needed.

Before you can start querying markups you need to set up the mxd with appropriate hydrography layers you would like to work with. In the example I will present, I already have a working mxd with NHD and WBD layers downloaded for HU4 1602.

Click on the Markup Reviewer icon in the toolbar to open the Markup Reviewer. You can dock the tool window in various locations like any other window in Arcmap.

Now let’s do a quick overview. Choose editor organization to reflect which organization you represent. If your organization is not present in the list of options, you can type in.

Set the Theme to Hydrography if it is not already set.

The Thematic Layer drop down menu specifies which layer markups will be queried for. It lists the options for all hydrography layers added in the MXD’s Table of Contents. Setting the "Layer" option to "None" means that no specific layer association is required and all markups will be returned within the specified extent.

‘Specify extent’ options allow you to modify which map extent you would like to query markups for.

Review results window contains attributes of the markups returned from the query. The window contains options for the user to manipulate the returned results and their attributes.

The help icon opens the User Guide for the Markup reviewer. Here you can find all of the details on how to install and use the tool.

Let’s go through an example. Let’s say that I am interested in reviewing all markups that have been submitted in Region 16.

Since I would like to review all markups, and not just markups for a specific hydrographic layer, I will not specify a layer option so will leave it as “None”.

Now I can specify the extent for my query. I have the option to use a Current map extent. Or I can browse to a layer extent by navigating to any feature dataset on my computer. Or I can use the extent of the current layer specified in the Layer drop down list. If no layers are specified then this option remains grayed out. I also have an option to select a feature or set of features in the map, say an HU8, and set the extent only for the selected features. And the last extent option is to draw a bounding box on the map and set the extent to the box.

In this example I would like to query all markups that have been submitted in Region 16. Thus I am going to zoom my map view out to the entire HU2, and set the query extent to the current map extent.

Now I am ready to acquire the markups.

Once the query is done running, you will see a new group of layers added in the table of contents - called markup/Redlines_Edit. In this group you will find point markups, line markups, and polygon markups. Point markups get created for point features in the NHD such as dams or springs. Line markups get created for geometry changes suggested for line features in the NHD such as stream lines. Polygon markups get created for polygon features such as NHD water bodies or 2-D stream features like as NHDArea. Polygon markups are also used when the markup applies to an entire feature extent. Another example of a polygon markup is a suggestion for an attribute change or to remove a feature. Each layer is symbolized based on the markup status.

Since the query is based on the extent of the map view, you will see returned markups outside of the HU2 boundary. In this case, if I am interested only in markups inside of Region 16, I would just need to focus my review on what is displayed inside of the HU2 boundary.

You also now can see markup records in the Review Results window.

For each record you can see:

The email address of the user who submitted the markup,

ID of the source feature in the corresponding dataset,

Source feature class that was marked up (such as NHDFlowline, NHD waterbody, etc),

Issue type action (is the user suggesting to update an existing feature, delete a feature, or is providing only a comment?),

Description of the markup (this is the field that should contain sufficient information for the reviewer to be able to validate the markup),

Issue Status (submitted, In progress, won’t fix or resolved),

The date the issue status was last updated (for markup with submitted status this date signifies when this markup was created in the web application),

Editor organization and editor comment fields are blank for new markups (these fields get populated here in the Markup Reviewer by users performing markup validation and editing),

Attribute data field contains a list of proposed attribute changes (if any were suggested).

You can also click on any field name to sort the results based on this field.

Now let’s look at the functionality Markup Reviewer offers to work with the result records.

Click on a record or multiple records to select them.

Use the magnifying glass to zoom the map view to the selected feature.

Clear a record from the selection with clear selection button.

The number of records displayed in the results window is shown in the bottom left corner of the Markup Reviewer window.

You can use the filter button to filter query results by the Issue status field. For example, you may only care to see markups with the status field as “submitted” because you will be working on validating them. Or you may only want to see markups with issue status as “in progress” because you will be working on performing NHD or WBD edits suggested in these markups. Notice that the record counter changes in the bottom left corner to reflect the filter settings.

Click “all results” to remove any filters to be able to see all results again.

You can also filter results by source feature type: NHD, WBD, or NHDPlus HR.

Click “all results” to remove any feature type filters to be able to see all results again.

I left the very first button on the toolbar to be discussed last.

This button allows you to change the issue status.

Let’s talk about the markup life cycle and the appropriate issue status changes along it

Every markup has a status field associated with it. This field gets updated as the markup goes through the validation and editing workflow. The color of the markup display changes in the application to reflect its status.

Anyone can submit markups through the public Markup web application. These markups are assigned the status “submitted”.

Then USGS staff and NHD state partners review submitted markups in ArcMap with Markup Reviewer tool. They use the description field and any supporting information to decide if a suggested markups should be accepted.

If USGS staff or a state partner determine a markup to be an invalid edit suggestion, they change the status field to “won’t fix”.

If they determine a markup to be a valid edit suggestion, they change the status to “In Progress”.

Markups assigned  to “In Progress” status go into the editing workflow. NHD and WBD partners use custom stand-alone tools to perform edits in NHD and WBD to ensure database integrity is maintained properly. Note that no edits take place through Markup Reviewer.

Once the edits for a corresponding markup are completed in the NHD or WBD datasets, the editor will use the Markup Reviewer again to change the status field of the markup to “Resolved”.

Let’s say I am reviewing the submitted markups for validation and will be changing their status. First select the record, make sure to read the fields for Issue type, description, and attribute field to understand what kind of change is being proposed and why.

Let’s zoom in to this markup and then clear selection so that we can see its color. This markup shows in blue - the color of the ‘submitted’ status.

If you determine this markup to be valid, select the record, click on the ‘Assign Status button, which is the first icon in the toolbar, and assign the markup status to “in progress”.

Once you change Issue Status you need to populate the ‘Editor Comment’ field. Click on the ‘Editor comment field and enter any comments as necessary. All markups that get assigned as “won’t fix” should have an editor comment explaining why the markup was not accepted. Keep in mind that the comment field has a 400 character limit. In this example the markup has been accepted so no editor comment is necessary.

When you are done populating the fields, click submit. Now you see the markup color in yellow - the color of the “in progress” status.

The attribute updates and status changes can be viewed in the web application immediately. So this markup now shows in yellow in the web application as well. This way users will know exactly where in the markup life cycle this markup is.

If you are the editor that will be performing the NHD or WBD edits associated with this markup, you would then follow your standard workflow to obtain an editing job and perform the required edit using NHD or WBD editing tools. Once the edit is done and you have checked the job back in, you can go back into Markup Reviewer to change the status of this markup to “resolved”.

In this lesson, we discussed how to access and install Markup Reviewer, how to use it to query markups, modify their status, enter editor comments, and finally, how to submit the changes back to the web application.