• This was recorded live on 10/23/2024
• Topics covered:
  • CSV import
  • Excel import
  • Importable excel (bulk edit)
    • How to make changes to multiple poles at once
  • Other exports
    • IKE Report types
    • Google Earth (.kml)

Transcript:

 2:51: So I believe you can see my I office screen again and we are talking about importing and exporting. 

 2:58: So just to lay out the interface here, we realize that you have lots of tools in your work life tool belt if you will. 

 3:06: And IKE Office is just one of them. 

 3:10: And so we know that importing data, bringing data into IKE Office to utilize the information you already have is really important as well as utilizing the information from IKE Office in all of the deliverables that you need to do your work. 

 3:26: So we are really focusing on those capabilities today and keep in mind this is more of a high level overview and there's certainly lots of other capabilities than what we show. 

 3:42: So let's look at importing first. 

 3:45: So from IKE Office Pro, you'll click on that little mini screen on the top left corner, you can go to import and then we'll see two options at the top. 

 3:54: We have Excel and then we have CSV. 

 3:57: So, and we're gonna start with CSV. 

 4:00: We'll get back to Excel in a moment. 

 4:02: CSV import has been around for quite a while now and it's tried and true. 

 4:08: It's a fairly basic import though. 

 4:11: So you're just importing really high level information here. 

 4:14: It's not gonna show all of the details of your utility poles. 

 4:20: It's not gonna be all the details you perhaps need, but it's going to just provide a little bit of workflow enhancement, right? 

 4:28: So we start off by choosing a job to import into and this is where you can choose an existing job or you can create a new job, right? 

 4:36: So we'll just say this is a new Colorado job. 

 4:44: We wanna select a form to import into. 

 4:46: I'm gonna select the IKE PoleForeman RUS.

 4:49: So that means it's gonna reference equipment on the IKE PoleForeman RUS database. 

 4:55: And then I can click a file to import and use as my CSV import before I do that. 

 5:00: I'm just gonna show you what the file looks like that we're going to import. 

 5:05: So as you can see, it's pretty simple, we just have a call ID latitude, longitude, altitude type and owner for the pole. 

 5:14: So really just some high level information. 

 5:16: It's not gonna be information that you find in sub sub forms and kind of like more span information wire information. 

 5:22: We're not gonna be able to include that in the CSV import. 

 5:25: So I'll go ahead and drag that in and as you can see, I can do it a couple different ways. 

 5:31: I can either open the file selector from there or I can just drag and drop once I upload that. 

 5:37: I'm gonna be directed to map my CSV fields into my form and you can see it, it tried to pre-map some of the information. 

 5:45: For me, I don't have a status field, so I'm gonna skip that. 

 5:50: I do have an ID field. 

 5:51: It didn't match up the pole ID, but I can just choose that pole ID now. 

 5:55: And as you can see that information came through the type, I used different types than were available in this equipment database. 

 6:03: So it's not matching up. 

 6:05: So I need to just exclude that and same goes for the owner field as well. 

 6:09: So you can do that and still get some of your information across even if you maybe the information is not mapping up with the form you've selected. 

 6:18: I also have my Latitude and longitude available and you can see there's some other fields that I could have utilized as well, but I did not have that information in my CSV import. 

 6:27: So I will go ahead and import this job. 

 6:31: While Liz is importing that I do wanna mention there is a 500 pole limit for the CSV import. 

 6:36: So that is a common question we get in support. 

 6:38: You know, why isn't my import functioning correctly? 

 6:41: It's likely because you have more than 500 poles. 

 6:44: So if you have a large job, you need to import, you'll need to break it up into smaller chunks, but the limit is 500 there. 

 6:51: Yeah, that's a good point. 

 6:52: So as you can see, it's just an empty job. 

 6:57: I do have my locations on here. 

 6:59: You can see me moving throughout the pole and I have my IDs. 

 7:02: It was a great starting point to get, provide the field user. 

 7:07: some information that's already filled out and then they can assign this to them right here. 

 7:14: Just with the assigned tool so I can start typing in a user or I can select one that's set up. 

 7:20: I'm just gonna start typing Greg and I there. 

 7:24: And that will allow me to, to select a user, right? 

 7:28: And assign it. 

 7:30: Yeah. 

 7:30: And I, I do wanna highlight here, Liz that this is one of the key differences between standard IKE Office and IKE Office Pro is where you start your workflow.

 7:40: With standard IKE Office you're starting the jobs from the device.

 7:44: With IKE Office Pro you do have the option to do this import. 

 7:47: So when your fielders go out to the field, they have the device, they know what they have to collect, they have the GPS locations. 

 7:54: So it definitely offers a significant advantage in terms of fielding efficiency. 

 7:59: And a lot of these larger projects are make it or break it with cost depending on how efficient you are. 

 8:05: So this is a great solution to make sure that everybody is collecting the correct poles and that they're moving around efficiently in the field. 

 8:16: Yeah. 

 8:16: Great point, Greg. 

 8:18: Awesome. 

 8:19: So that's what our CSV import looks like. 

 8:22: If you had assigned it to the fielder, they would see, that job on their assigned tab on the device, they can also download other jobs that are not assigned to them. 

 8:31: But it just makes it really clear if you have a lot of jobs in your department and once you really specify what's assigned and what's not assigned, let's go back to import and now we're gonna talk about the Excel import option. 

 8:46: So this is a new feature. 

 8:49: As you can see, we titled it Excel beta. 

 8:51: That is because it is currently in beta. 

 8:54: So that just means that we know it works, but we wanna make sure that it provides everything that our users are really looking for in an Excel import. 

 9:04: So if you are learning, wanna learn more about how to use it, we definitely recommend using this guide. 

 9:11: We have this import guide that's located right here. 

 9:14: It's in the support portal. 

 9:17: So if I open this, I can see that support portal guide, right? 

 9:23: So this is really helpful, definitely recommend using it if you're gonna try out the Excel import. 

 9:31: So the first thing we do here similarly is select a form. 

 9:36: So much is based off our form, we're going to do that first and then you would download a template. 

 9:41: So, rather than guess at which fields need to be there and how they're referenced and all of that, we know that forms can get fairly complex. 

 9:53: And we want to give you a template to make this easier. 

 9:56: So you can see I just downloaded it. 

 9:58: I'll open that right up and while that's opening, I'm just gonna quickly answer a question from Tyler here from the audience “Is this import option only available for IKE Office Pro?” 

 10:14: Yes. The Excel import is only available in IKE Office Pro. 

 11:04: So we were just gonna review the template. 

 11:06: So this is the template that I would see for this particular form. 

 11:10: It's going to vary a bit by the form that you've chosen to use the template for. 

 11:14: So this is an IKE PoleForeman RUS database template. 

 11:20: So as you can see, we have all of these different fields that represent everything that's in the form. 

 11:25: So each of these is a sub form in the form and that means you can import anything about the pole in this file, right? 

 11:37: And I do wanna mention here, there is a pole limitation. 

 11:40: So similar to the CSV import, but we have 1000 pole limit on the Excel import there. 

 11:47: So just be aware of that when you're doing these imports. 

 11:51: Yeah, great point. 

 11:53: So rather than importing an entirely new job for you, which is certainly an option. 

 11:59: and it's something that you can also script too. 

 12:01: So that's always an option with Excel. 

 12:03: You know, there's ways to script all your existing data that you might have about your poles into that. 

 12:08: So you can upload and just fill in gaps in the field from there rather than have to start fresh. 

 12:14: So let's look at the other thing you can do with the Excel import, which is bulk editing existing data. 

 12:22: So I have this job. 

 12:25: It has a fair amount of information in it. 

 12:27: I can select that job and export the importable Excel. 

 12:34: This importable Excel is going to follow my template already, but it's gonna be prefilled with all the information for that job. 

 12:44: So I'll just open that up to show you what that looks like. 

 12:49: It takes a moment here. 

 12:52: So as you can see, I have really basically the exact same tabs that I just showed you, but now we have all of our information filled out. 

 13:01: So I have certain IDs

 14:19: Ok. 

 14:19: Looks like we might be back here. 

 14:21: And again, we apologize for that. 

 15:20: This is again the template that I exported called importable Excel for my specific job. 

 15:27: This will allow me to bulk update multiple poles so that I can not have to go into each pole and edit one field that I want. 

 15:38: This way I can look at existing information and edit what I feel like is needed. 

 15:44: So this is that importable Excel we're looking at now and we have quite a bit of information. 

 15:48: It's all the information about our, our pole. 

 15:51: So let's say, for example, we found out that, you know, our field staff said the down guy size was 7/16 but it ended up being 5/16. 

 16:07: So we could go in here and we could edit that and change that. 

 16:14: The nice thing about Excel, as you likely know is that you can just pull down to update something. 

 16:21: So that's a very easy edit. 

 16:22: Lots of people are familiar with working in Excel, so I won't go too much further into depth. 

 16:26: But you can imagine if I had a lot of poles to update in here more than six, this would be very convenient. 

 16:35: So I'm gonna save that and then I can go back into and I'll have to change what I'm sharing real quick, apologies, trying to save all our precious bandwidth here and, and only share what's required. 

 16:51: That's right. 

 16:54: All right. 

 16:54: So we're back on IKE office and as you can see I can go back into imports and now I'm going to use my same form that I know I've been using. 

 17:05: I don't need to download the template because I have my importable Excel that I just updated. 

 17:11: And now I can either add that to the same job as it was or I can even use this opportunity to change which job it's going into. 

 17:22: So now I can drag my files here or just navigate to find them. 

 17:29: And that'll be right there. 

 17:31: Great. 

 17:31: So there's the file I saved just now and I can import that with my updated down guy size. 

 17:40: Yeah. 

 17:41: And this is something we've gotten a lot of questions about and support, you know, hey, I have a large job. 

 17:46: , something is incorrect on it and I need to change this one thing, you know, on 3000 poles or something like that, which that's a lot of clicking in, I office to complete that manually. 

 17:59: So this is a great work flow for making those mass updates. 

 18:04: And yeah, I mean, we all know we spend far too much time duplicating data, copying and pasting things manually for reports. 

 18:11: So this will definitely save you some clicks. 

 18:14: That's right. 

 18:15: That's the goal, right? 

 18:17: So as you can see everything updated successfully, if I had had an error come up, like maybe I edited something that wasn't quite right. 

 18:26: I would see an error notification with an exact column in row to find my problem spot. 

 18:36: So keep that in mind, you can also click on these and open the actual pole or you can just say, OK, and that'll take you to your updated poles. 

 18:44: And as you can see, if we open these up, whatever anchors I have, let's find one with an actual anchor would have been updated. 

 19:00: So now we have our 5 16 C H S great. 

 19:06: All right. 

 19:06: Now moving on to exports. 

 19:11: So if I want to export a job, let's start out with another job and look at our KML exports. 

 19:21: So as you can see this is at the top of the list. 

 19:23: this is going to be our KML file that opens in Google Earth and I will have to change the sharing screen for a second again. 

 19:39: Alright, yeah. 

 19:39: And for those of you that are maybe unfamiliar with Google Earth, it's a great tool for visualizing data that you export from IKE office. 

 19:49: It's free from Google, you can download it. 

 19:52: Anybody can open a KML file as long as they have it and it's just a great way to share information with those customers that maybe don't have access to IKE Office. 

 20:04: Pretty much all the information is gonna be in here. 

 20:07: It's just not going to have all the obviously all the edit features that we have in IKE Office. 

 20:13: And it seems like the sharing is still being a little bit weird. 

 20:16: So I'm just gonna try sharing something else real quick. 

 20:18: Apologies again. 

 20:19: Let me try this one more time. 

 20:23: Great. 

 20:24: So as you can see now, we can see what's what happens when you actually click a pole in the KML. 

 20:30: You actually get a ton of information about that pole and all of its photos. 

 20:36: So this is this is gonna be a really great resource like Greg was saying. 

 20:39: the other thing that's nice about the KML is that if you pull down on the options right here and turn on the vector and point to point, you can also get more information about the spans. 

 20:51: So you're able to click on the spans and see what wires make up that span. 

 20:55: So this looks like it's just a power drop. 

 20:58: And let's see, maybe this one. 

 21:00: Yeah, this is a full span to another pole. 

 21:03: So we have all of our wire details there, which is helpful to see. 

 21:08: The point to point information is these little red stars and they are a bit funny to see from this view because we got some trees. 

 21:17: But that is where the field collectors stood to measure, make these measurements. 

 21:24: So that is where they stood to make those anger measurements. 

 21:29: Great. 

 21:32: All right. 

 21:32: So that's the KML export for Google Earth. 

 21:36: So in order to open that file, you do need to have Google Earth.

 21:41: And you can download that desktop application. 

 21:43: I think there's also a mobile version as well. 

 21:45: Yeah, that's right. 

 21:47: So if we're looking at other options, we also have the Excel. 

 21:52: I don't want to spend too much time on the Excel, but the Excel itself is a really good report has pretty much all your information about your poll available there. 

 22:04: So it's it's very helpful. 

 22:07: So for instance, all your images and their URLs are in there. 

 22:11: So you could even use these URLs to download the image. 

 22:15: Just alone, there's lots of functionality here. 

 22:19: I also want to mention that one option for IKE Office Pro customers, we do a lot of scripting applications.

 22:27: So if you have like a custom application documents or you know PDF or something that you need to fill out and you don't wanna have to hand jam that in the scripting applications are really great because you can get all of the information from your IKE Office data into the format that you need it. 

 22:48: So if that's something you're interested in, I definitely recommend talking to the solutions engineering team and, and they'll set that up with you. 

 22:56: Talking about other options, we talked about the portable Excel. 

 22:59: The JSON is a great tool as well. 

 23:03: If you're familiar with JSON files, I won't open this up. 

 23:07: It might be a little more technical but there is a ton of information in there. 

 23:12: It's also a great resource. 

 23:13: I encourage you to check it out. 

 23:15: You can look at files like that in either notepad, which is a tool that's always on, on Windows computers or visual studio code is a much better way to view those. 

 23:26: Then we have the IKE reports and the other PDF reports. 

 23:30: So these are also great resources. 

 23:35: We'll download the composite reports and look at that. 

 23:42: So as you can see, this composite report focuses on the composite photos, that means photos that are measurable and have the annotations on them. 

 23:53: But it also has the tag photos and a little bit of basic information about the pole. 

 23:59: For you, there's also the IKE report which is gonna have the full information about everything that's in your form and all of your photos. 

 24:11: So this is a lot more thorough and this one is on IKE Office as well, not just IKE Office pro. 

 24:16: The other two PDF options are just on IKE Office Pro. 

 24:21: I do wanna mention you probably noticed that that was that that might have taken a little bit longer. 

 24:26: That time to download is really dependent on how many photos you have. 

 24:31: So we know that these files can be pretty big, especially the IKE report. 

 24:35: That's probably the largest one because like I said, it has all the photos and all of the form information. 

 24:43: There's also the photo report which is a different variation of that with more with just the photos, just really large photos. 

 24:54: So keep that in mind as different options when you're thinking about your reports that you wanna just, there are some differences and file sizes, right list for the PDFs there. 

 25:06: Some of them can be quite large if you're looking to email PDFs of reports there. 

 25:11: So you have a few different options to try to keep that file size, manageable. 

 25:16: Certainly. 

 25:17: Yeah. 

 25:18: Another option for photos I did point out is that you can download the image URLs and use the Excel file to download those. 

 25:26: But another option is the image zip. 

 25:29: I'm not gonna download this right now but it's per pole, but you can get the entire image zip, which is just the raw photos as well as the composite photos. 

 25:40: all photos collected in the field through that pole. 

 25:43: So that can be a good option too. 

 25:46: I realize it's a little bit annoying that you know, this is a, you have to do it pole by pole. 

 25:53: It is quite a large download, it can be quite a large download because of a lot of photos. 

 25:59: And if we look at other options, the main other one that we are gonna have actually, I'm gonna is going to be our pole load analysis exports. 

 26:10: So as you can see when I clicked on this one on Broomfield, we have the IKE Foreman option come up. 

 26:17: That is gonna be our export that we can bring into IKE PoleForeman and perform our pole load analysis. 

 26:23: The nice thing about the pole load analysis export is that we do a validation check So if something has been missed, that would be key for the analysis, we have let you know about that. 

 26:39: So we have that for IKE Foreman. 

 26:41: We have that for SPIDAcalc. 

 26:43: We have that for O-Calc. 

 26:44: We have that for Legacy PoleForeman as well. 

 26:47: So we encourage you to move to IKE PoleForeman when you're able to.

 26:53: So that option that you're gonna see is gonna be dependent on what form was used and the equipment database or client file or catalog that was referenced there. 

 27:04: So keep, keep those things in mind. 

 27:09: Great. 

 27:10: OK. 

 27:10: And I'm just looking at the timing here, we had some connection issues, so we lost a little bit of time and I wanna make sure we get to some questions from the audience here. 

 27:19: So we'll go ahead and start with some of those questions and let's see here. 

 27:24: So while you're finding that one other option, I do, oh, go ahead. 

 27:31: All right, Mary has a question “Is export only available in IKE Office Pro?” 

 27:35: So there are varying options for what you can export in what format Liz if you just want to touch on that a little bit. 

 27:43: Yeah, so there's actually a lot of export options available in regular IKE Office. 

 27:46: You can see I'm in IKE Office Pro but I'll point out what is available in IKE office. 

 27:51: So the main thing that you're gonna notice is you have to select something in order to bring up the export options. 

 27:58: So that can either be a whole job, but you can do by clicking that circle which turns into a square. 

 28:03: Or if you only want to export one pole, you can click the little circle next to that pole, then this down arrow will show up and we can click that and see the export options. 

 28:14: It's going to everything on here. 

 28:19: So everything on here other than the importable Excel and the composite report and the photo report are gonna be available in regular IKE office. 

 28:26: So there's just those three extras on the export options with IKE Office Pro. 

 28:30: There's also some slight enhancements to some of these such as the KML details. 

 28:36: That's there's a little bit more detailed information in the IKE Office Pro export. 

 28:40: So good question there. 

 28:43: All right, next question here is from Nathan and Nathan asked, “What's the best way to get this data imported into Autocad or ArcGIS? 

 28:56: Yeah, so we have a lot of options for both of those. 

 29:00: It kind of depends on, you know what your end purpose is for GIS. 

 29:05: I'll talk a little bit more about that we do have for both. 

 29:08: Actually, we have an api end point that you can use to pull all your information from IKE office and get it into any format that you need. 

 29:17: That is a really big go to because you can do anything with the API And that is just for pulling, it's not for pushing at this point. 

 29:27: So just a heads up there and there's also really basic things that you can do such as ArcGIS Pro will utilize a KML. 

 29:37: It will also, you can also bring in excel into our GIS.

 29:43: AutoCAD I would need to follow up with that. 

 29:44: I think we have some more detailed information about AutoCAD specifically, but there is certainly a lot of methods to do that. 

 29:50: So Nathan will, we'll follow up with you more. 

 29:53: All right, great question there. 

 29:56: I have a question from Kevin and I see we're at the half hour point. 

 30:00: So I understand if you need to jump off, but we'll go ahead and answer a few more of these questions because we lost some time. 

 30:07: Yeah, apologies about that again. 

 30:09: All right, Kevin asked, please open the JSON file and Pole Foreman, it doesn't export properly for me. 

 30:15: So it sounds like Kevin, you may be referring to the legacy performing platform that was the version before the current IKE PoleForeman platform. 

 30:26: If you wanna submit a support ticket, we can look at the specific scenario for you send us a ticket from support@ikegps.com and I'll have one of our support engineers assist you with that on an individual basis. 

 30:39: So that's a great point. 

 30:40: Really quick, high level there. 

 30:42: I do wanna point out like for Legacy PoleForeman, there is the JSON but there's also a PoleForeman export. 

 30:48: You wanna use the PoleForeman export cause that will bring up a validation to see what you might be missing and sometimes that can cause errors as well. 

 30:55: Great. 

 30:56: Yeah. 

 30:56: Good point, Liz. 

 30:58: All right, Anna, “Can you show the O-Calc export and how it comes in? 

 31:06: I do not have O-Calc on my computer, but we can come back to Anna and show that I believe we have some resources for that as well that we can provide. 

 31:19: Yeah. 

 31:21: OK. 

 31:22: Question from David. 

 31:27: “Is there a way you can do the image that for multiple poles instead of having to click one by one every time? it is very time consuming for larger projects” 

 31:36: I definitely understand it is, it is quite time consuming. 

 31:39: We don't have a bulk export of that. 

 31:42: I do wanna reference though that we have a few other ways to download those pictures. 

 31:47: So like we showed with that photo report that's just gonna be photos. 

 31:51: So that might be a good alternative if it's fine to have them in a PDF file that is bulk and you can do that for the entire job or multiple jobs even. 

 32:02: And then we also have the Excel export which lists the URLs so if you are, this is also a great option for, it's a great opportunity for programmatically getting those files. 

 32:16: All right, next question here from Joseph. 

 32:22: Yes. 

 32:24: And Joseph asked, “is there a financial cost per pole for importing data into IKE office pro?”

 32:30: No, there is no financial cost for importing a pole into office pro there are if someone is on a legacy contract there, that's another story potentially. 

 32:44: But in general, no, we don't have cost. 

 32:50: OK. 

 32:51: And last question here from James “Is PoleForeman export only available at additional cost?”

 33:01: IKE Office Pro includes includes integration with any of our main PLAs. 

 33:09: So it's not an additional cost for if you're using IKE Office Pro. 

 33:15: I am not sure about the pricing details on standard lKE Office. 

 33:21: that would be something to talk with your account representative.

 33:36: All right, it looks like those are all the questions we have for today's session. 

 33:42: And actually one more question just came through. 

 33:44: I'm just gonna quickly cover this. 

 33:45: AJ asked “how do I make the transition from PoleForeman to IKE PoleForeman?”

 33:51: That is a great question and we do have a team that specializes in assisting customers make that transition. 

 33:59: So AJ we will reach out to you after today's session and set up a meeting to discuss with you further. 

 34:09: All right. 

 34:10: Well, that brings us to the end of today's session. 

 34:13: We ran a little bit over here but they're really great questions. 

 34:17: I wanted to ensure that we got to those, but we thank you for attending today and bearing with us as we have had some technical difficulties there. 

 34:25: But I'm glad we're able to get those worked out. 

 34:28: Be sure to give us a follow on linkedin for the latest content. 

 34:32: Everything regarding ike and challenges for the industry and how we're addressing those. 

 34:38: Be sure to give us a follow. 

 34:40: My team would be mad if we missed saying this stuff. 

 34:42: So we appreciate, this is a paid advertisement, the disclaimer here and yes, NESC and OSHA training classes. 

 34:51: So we do have online training classes available for those topics. 

 34:56: The last classes we hosted were very well intended, be sure to take a look at those. 

 35:02: If your team has interest in those topics. 

 35:06: All right. 

 35:07: And that brings us to the end of today's session. 

 35:09: Thanks for joining us and we look forward to chatting with you in the future. 

 35:13: Have a great day.