This workflow assumes that you have installed ArcGIS Mission Responder but have not yet used it to engage in a mission. You'll learn about the various tools that are part of Responder and how and why to use them.
Upon opening the app and signing in, you are taken to the mission list. Tap your mission to enter it.
Mission familiarization
You are now in the mission overview. You have entered the mission but are not yet an active member. The status icon in the upper right corner indicates your status with an orange dot.
Prepare for the mission by inspecting the mission details and resources.
The following tabs are available in the mission overview:
- On the Map Areas tab, you can see the live mission map and any map areas that are available for offline use. If there are any, download them prior to entering the mission in case you lose connection to the live mission map.
- On the Mission Details tab, you can view the mission summary and description to familiarize yourself with the mission.
- Tap Mission Teams and Members to view the list of mission members and see how they are organized into teams. You can see who is active and inactive and gain a better understanding of who you will be able to communicate directly with during the mission.
- Tap Additional Materials to see if any resources are available to you. These can be valuable additions to the summary and description and may be necessary to execute your mission's objective.
When you are finished exploring the overview and have downloaded any maps or materials, proceed to the active mission.
To enter the active mission, tap the live mission map.
Active mission — Map familiarization
You have transitioned into active status and are visible on the map. When you initially enter the mission map, your current location is centered on the map.
- Orient yourself to the map. Inspect the mission area, note any relevant graphics or labels, and read any geomessages that are visible to you.
Any visible geomessages include you as a recipient and may be relevant to you.
- Check your map options, as there may be features there you are unaware of that may be useful to you during the mission. Review any bookmarks and determine whether the map contains layers.
- Review the basemap options, as the default basemap may not display the map information that is most relevant to you, based on your role in the mission.
- Use the Member Extent tool to see the locations of all the active mission members. This gives you better situational awareness of the spread of the active mission members.
Active mission — Responder actions
There are several tools into ArcGIS Mission Responder that allow you to provide information to others. These include the Tasks, GeoMessage, Reports, and Chat tools. These tools differ from other tools, such as walkie-talkies, in that they create lasting data that is stored and can be accessed later for analysis. Also this data is geolocated, which provides a better understanding of the situation.
A Responder user might be given a task that requires them to document an event and then submit a report as part of the task. Sometimes the best way to document or record events relevant to the mission is by using the GeoMessage tool.
- Open your task from the My Tasks panel and change its status to In Progress. This lets the mission analyst who assigned the task know that you have begun the work necessary to complete it.
- Return to the mission map to identify the location where the event occurred.
You may want to provide more context to the location by referencing other features around it. This can mean, among other things, providing cardinal directions, distances, or a combination of the two.
- Choose a feature on the map near where you are going place your geomessage. The feature should be easily recognizable and relevant to the mission.
- Open the Measure tool and find the distance between the geomessage location and the notable map feature. Make sure that your measurements use the most informative unit. For example, avoid using large units for short distances. Make note of the distance.
- Find the location of your geomessage and drop a Point of Interest.
- Add a title, a note including the distance to your previously chosen map feature, and a photo of the event. This will ensure that other mission members have the greatest understanding possible of what you are documenting.
- Broadcast that geomessage to the entire mission by not selecting any recipients.
After sending a geomessage, it's a good idea to confirm that it made it to the rest of the mission. The best way to do that is to check the My Messages panel.
- Open the My Messages panel and locate your geomessage.
- When you find your geomessage, tap it to confirm your details and view it on the map.
- Having sent your geomessage, you have completed part of your task and should let your mission analyst know. Open the Task Details screen for the assigned task.
- Create a brief note about how and why you created the geomessage to document the event. If there are any photos you chose not to include in the geomessage but wish to use to document the event, you can add them to the task from this screen.
- Because this task requires a report, you cannot move the task into Completed status until the report has been submitted. Tap the Submit Report button at the bottom of the Task Details screen.
- The report gives you the opportunity to include more details about the incident than you can include in a geomessage. Include as much information as is necessary for the report, including up to three images, before submitting it.
This completes your assigned task, but does not mean that your responsibility to the mission is concluded. Even though your geomessage was part of an assigned task, the information contained in it may be more relevant to certain mission members than others, and they should be alerted.
- The best way to make sure that the information in your geomessage reaches the mission members it needs to is to send a chat.
- Locate the chat tool and start a new chat session.
- Select the members who need to be directly alerted to the geomessage.
- Write your message, explaining why they, specifically, need to review your geomessage.
- Send your chat.
In this workflow, you used all the tools included in ArcGIS Mission Responder. However, you have not used all the functionality of those tools. Now that you're more familiar with ArcGIS Mission Responder and know how to access the tools, you can explore them. For details about the app and its tools, see Introduction to ArcGIS Mission Responder.