The latest version of the GIS Support plug-in will be enhanced with features integrating the plug-in with GIS.Box – a tool to develop your GIS with a browser-accessible component.
See video: First steps in GIS.Box
Why?
QGIS is fantastic software for professionals who acquire, process data, and provide information and knowledge to an organisation (Situation 1 from the figure below). As the use of GIS in an organisation increases, issues arise that QGIS alone cannot handle. This is, first and foremost, a multi-person job. Every (well, maybe almost every) GIS professional wants their colleagues to be able to access the data they have prepared in a simple and convenient way.
This is when GIS specialists look for solutions. For starters:
- using geopackages on a network drive
- installing PostgreSQL + PostGIS and uploading QGIS projects there (Situation 2 in the picture below).
These are good ideas, but they have one drawback: it is very difficult to persuade non-GIS people to use QGIS. In order to view a map with a network and customers, a BOK employee, board member, or salesperson has to open a program with dozens of buttons, connect to a database, and be prepared for some problems with coordinate systems… This very rarely works well. People are simply scared. And that’s not surprising.
Naturally, ideas arise on how to prepare a browser-accessible solution for these users. And that’s when GIS professionals find:
- QGIS2Web (works, but for really simple applications)
- Lizmap – here is our opinion on Lizmap
- Q2WC2 – this is only for advanced users
OK, if a GIS professional has admin and programming knowledge, this will work. Unfortunately, in the short term, as the requirements for data maintenance and the complaints about speed will only increase.
Additionally, issues relating to the following may arise:
- object attachments: this has always been a GIS problem,
- permissions: we don’t want everyone to have access to everything in edit mode
- change history: who changed the contact for this client and when?
- and the biggest bane: local copies of files – it’s impossible to control users not making local copies and working on outdated data.
Sounds familiar?
How can GIS.Box help?
Quickly and very effectively. Technically, GIS.Box is an application installed on a server with access via a web browser. This is where the data, user accounts with their permissions are kept and where the easy-to-use user and administrator tools are located. This data can be accessed from QGIS via the Plug-in. Everything is easy to configure, and the layout is pleasing to the eye.
In summary, with GIS.Box we can get situation 3 from the figure below:
- Data and user accounts are in GIS.Box
- GIS professionals connect from QGIS to GIS.Box via a plug-in
- Other users connect via a browser
- They all work on the same data. They can edit in the browser and QGIS.
- The GIS.Box administrator manages permissions using tools in the Administration Panel
The transformation from a simple solution (Situation 1), to a GIS.Box-based solution (Situation 3) is shown in the video below.
Benefits of using GIS.Box:
- Scalability – giving GIS access to the next person in the organisation takes 2 hours and 1 minute. One minute to set up an account and two hours for basic training.
- Control over keeping the data up to date
- Access to data for a wide range of users via a web application
- Simplification of GIS: by using functionalities such as profile pictures or colour dictionaries, it is possible to create a very user-friendly tool
- Security: possibility to perform backups, history of changes, access rights to data. These are features that affect the security of the stored data.
You can test how it works right now. Using the plug-in you have in QGIS, you can connect to a demo version of GIS.Box and download data from there. Would you like to test it in your company? Feel free to contact us!