Attribute designer

An attribute set is a reusable list of fields with the values a surveyor picks from: tree species, condition grades, pipe materials. Design it once on a keyboard and use it in every project, instead of typing the same lists on a phone.

One attribute set, designed once, giving its pick lists to a point layer, a line layer and an area layer.

Who can use it, and where it is

The Attribute designer is under Tools. It needs a Pro licence or better, and no organisation: a surveyor working alone designs sets for their own use. It lists your sets, with Download JSON and Open beside each.

Designing a set

Start with New attribute set, or Import JSON to bring in a set you already have as a file. A set has a name, an optional description and its fields. Each field has a name, a type, its values one a line, and a default value if you want one. The types:

TEXT, INTEGER (LONG) (whole numbers) and DOUBLE (decimals): one value picked from the list.
MULTISELECT: several values picked from the list at once.
BARCODE: scanned with the camera, so it has no list of values.

Every field except a barcode needs at least one value, and the values of whole-number and decimal fields are checked as numbers. Anything that would stop the set working in the app is listed when you save.

A set's own page

Open, here or on Content, shows what is in a set: how many fields, how many values, which data types. It has Download JSON, Edit, sharing, and Delete, which asks you to confirm; a shared set also needs its name typed, because the people it is shared with lose it too. A set is deleted only there. Projects that already use it keep their own copy.

Sharing a set

A new set is personal: private to you and in no organisation, so nobody else sees it, an admin of your team included. Share it from its page or from Content: with Groups, or with everyone in the organisation. Sharing a personal set moves it into that organisation, and the move is one way: making it private again later hides it from colleagues, but it stays with the organisation.

Sharing needs a role that can publish. Only a set’s author, or the admin of its organisation, can edit or delete it; everybody it is shared with can open it, download it and use it in the app.

Using a set

In the app, open the project, then Mapit Cloud and My Content, open the set and import it into the project; or download its JSON and import the file. Then link it to a layer’s field.

In a new cloud project, a draft’s pick lists are attribute sets that go inside the project when it is published, already linked to their fields. They stay in the draft unless you save one to your Content. Project designer explains them.

In a published cloud project, its sets are its own copies. Change a field’s values with Edit structure, then Pick list on the field, and release the change to the crew. Changing a project’s structure.

If your licence lapses, or you leave an organisation

Your sets are not deleted, and you can still open and download them; the designer opens again when the licence is active. Sets you shared into an organisation stay with it when you leave, and you stop seeing them. Your personal sets are unaffected.