Operational layer properties

For each operational map layer you add to a mobile project, you can determine how the layer behaves inside the mobile project. The properties you can configure include the following:

Map layers (feature classes) honor certain properties you set when creating them or designing an ArcMap document, including layer name, field visibility, and field alias name (inherited from the feature class). For more information on how to effectively design and create a mobile map, see How to design and create mobile maps using ArcGIS for Desktop.

When authoring operational map layer content in ArcMap, the following properties affect your mobile project:

For each mobile service, hosted feature service or mobile cache you add to your project, many of the layer properties are inherited from the map document that you can further configure inside of Mobile Project Center to meet your field operation requirements. This is convenient when you have a set of layers that you want to use for multiple projects.

For example, you might have a water facilities inspection project and a water valve maintenance project that leverage the same mobile service, feature service or mobile cache. In the inspection project, the water valves map layer should not be edited, yet it can be edited in the water valve maintenance project. Using Mobile Project Center to configure the properties of a map layer, you can unlock the editing capabilities in the maintenance project and lock them in the inspection project.

It's important to understand that what your field worker can do with a map layer is limited by the schema of its data source. For example, for data from mobile services and mobile caches created by the Create Mobile Cache Tool, layers can't be used for collecting data by field applications unless it has a GlobalID column created in the geodatabase. Similarly, field users can't collect or manage attachments for a map layer unless the attachment has been enabled for this layer in the database.

Purpose of an operational map layer

An operational layer can be used for one of the following purposes:

ArcGIS for Windows Mobile supports editing against any transactional model inside a multiuser geodatabase. You should determine the best model for managing changes (versioning, short-transaction editing, or non-versioned editing).

Additional settings of a layer

Depending on the purpose you set for a layer, you can change the following optional properties:

6/4/2013