Your data, for the people who only need to see it

A cloud project holds everything the crew collects: every layer, every field, the forms, the working notes. Most of the people who care about the survey need a slice of that, not all of it, and they need it without being part of the collection.

So a publisher, a manager or the admin chooses what leaves the project, and how far it goes: to named groups, to everyone in the organisation, or to one outside reader through an access token.

On a cloud project’s page, Publish as WFS offers three shapes: the whole project, every collected layer as it is; one layer as it is; or one layer with only the fields you tick. Everything else stays in the project: forms, styles and the crew’s point details are never part of a WFS, and photographs never leave the phones that took them. If you choose, a WFS carries each feature’s attachment names, so a photo handed over later can be matched to its feature.

A WFS is served in two open standards at once, OGC API Features and WFS 2.0, so it opens in anything that reads either: desktop GIS, web maps, scripts. Each one carries a title, an abstract, keywords, a licence and a contact of your choosing, which is what a GIS shows about it before anybody opens a layer.

A WFS is a separate copy of exactly what you published, rebuilt from the project after the crew syncs. The project itself is never opened to its readers.

Add web map on Content starts a map over a Mapbox basemap: streets, outdoors, light, dark or satellite. Add layers from any of the organisation’s WFS, put them in order, switch them on and off, and save the view the map should open on.

Each layer has its own style: colour and transparency, point size, line width, fill and outline. Label features with a field, choose which fields a pop-up shows and in what order, filter what is drawn, and set the zoom levels a layer shows between. The layer list doubles as the legend.

The finished map has its own address. It opens full screen, with zoom, a basemap switcher, the list of layers and a pop-up listing a feature’s fields when you click it. Nothing to install: the people you share it with sign in and open it.

Every WFS page shows its two addresses, ready to copy. For somebody outside your organisation, create an access token on that page: it goes in the address, so QGIS, ArcGIS Online and other clients connect with nothing more than a paste. A token opens that one WFS, read only, for at most a year, and can be rotated or revoked at any time. Each live token takes one of your viewer places, because it is somebody reading your data who is not on your roster.

Points carry their height as a field, so a map that cannot draw heights, as ArcGIS Online cannot, still shows them in its table.

• Private: only its owner and the organisation’s admin. Everything starts here.
• Groups: the people in the groups you pick, for example one client’s team.
• Everyone in the organisation, where the organisation allows it.
• An access token: one outside reader of one WFS, such as a client’s QGIS.

Viewers are people who read what is shared with them and collect nothing, so they need no app licence; an organisation has viewer places for them, and each access token takes one too. Nothing is ever open to the whole internet. A web map’s sharing leads its layers: share a map more widely and its WFS are shared at least as widely, after you have seen which. Narrowing a map never narrows a WFS somebody else may rely on.

A published WFS follows the project. When the crew syncs, the copy is rebuilt within seconds, so a web map or a QGIS layer shows what was collected this morning, not what was exported last week. Every field is as the crew recorded it, and nobody downstream has to be sent a new file.

The story follows one survey from the first form to the handover.

• It is read only. Nobody edits the data through a WFS or a web map; changes come from the crew.
• It does not convert coordinates. Data is WGS 84 longitude and latitude, as collected; a client that needs another system converts it.
• A web map simplifies a layer when zoomed out and may leave its smallest features out; zoomed in, it draws every feature.
• Photographs and videos are never published: they stay on the phones that took them. A WFS carries their file names only if its publisher chooses.
• A web map filter changes what is drawn, not what can be read: to keep data from people, publish a WFS without it.
• A published copy is not encrypted the way a project is: publishing is the point at which data leaves the sealed store, which is why only what you choose is in it. It stays on our servers in the EU.
• A token in an address can be copied along with it. That is why it opens one WFS, read only, and expires.
• Nothing is published to the whole internet: every reader is a person you share with or a token you issue.