Building apps in Studio

Studio is where apps are built. It opens from the Studio button on the apps page, for editors, administrators and owners. Its menu on the left: People, Apps, Datasets, Styles, Orthophotos, Plan sheets, Jobs, and for administrators and owners Usage, Activity, Work log, Plan and usage and Invoices (and Branding where it is turned on).

#Apps and folders

Studio → Apps lists the workspace's apps with their address, visibility, version and dates.

• New folder makes a folder where you are; open a folder by clicking it, go back up with the path at the top.
• Tick apps and folders, choose a destination in Move to (or Top level) and Move — many at once.
• A folder's Rename and Delete folder are in its row. Deleting a folder moves what was in it up one level; no app is ever deleted with a folder.
• Find an app searches every folder.
• New app, at the bottom: a Name, an Address (lower-case letters, digits and hyphens — it becomes part of the app's link) and a Visibility. A new app is filed in the folder you are in.

Visibility: Private — the workspace's members; Public — anyone with the link, without signing in.

#An app's page

Open an app in Studio to set it up. Open shows it as users see it.

#Name, address, visibility

At the top. Save keeps the change.

#Who can open it

A private app is open to everyone in the workspace, or to only these people: a list of the workspace's members, each a Member or a Manager of the app. A manager also changes the app's settings and this list, adding people from the apps they already share with them; opening an app to the whole workspace is for the workspace's owners and administrators. Owners and Cartema support open every app whatever the list says. Once a workspace keeps one app to listed people, every new app starts that way too, with whoever made it as its manager; open it to the whole workspace afterwards if it is meant for everyone. An app that belongs to a client is opened by that client's people and the workspace people assigned to it, whatever its list; see Clients.

A person kept to some apps sees only those apps on the apps page, and in Studio only those apps' data and their own: the datasets they imported and their private layers. Of a table that several apps share, each showing part of it through a layer filter, they see only the rows their apps show — in the table, its CSV, the map preview, exports and counts — and changing the table itself (its name, its fields, deleting or replacing it) is left to whoever sees all of it. Administrators are kept to their apps like anyone else; to use Studio at all, a manager needs the Editor role in the workspace.

#Editing in this app

Off or On — whether the app's data can be changed from its map. See Layers and editing.

#Map settings

• Initial extent — the area the app opens on. It is automatic at first: it frames the layers the app opens with switched on (so a zoning plan or a regional boundary left off does not stretch it), ignores the odd feature far from the rest, and follows every change to the app's layers. Type other edges and it is set by hand, staying as typed; Use the layers' extent makes it automatic again.
• Coordinate systems offered — those users can choose at the bottom of the map; the first is the default.
• Basemaps — Map, Light and Satellite, and which one opens by default.

#The layer tree

The app's layers, top to bottom as they are drawn over each other, in the folders the map's layer list shows them in. Folders can hold folders, as deep as you need; the arrow beside a folder's name opens and closes it here.

Arranging the tree

• Drag a row by its handle. A line shows where it lands — above or below another row — and a folder lights up when the row would go inside it, at its top. A folder moves with everything in it. While dragging, the foot of the list takes a row to the end of the tree.
• From the keyboard: focus a row's handle, then ↑ and ↓ move it among its neighbours, → puts it into the folder just above it and ← takes it out of its folder (the other way round when the page reads right to left). The arrow buttons beside the handle do the same: Move up, Move down, Out of the folder, Into the folder above.
• New folder, under the tree, makes an empty folder at the top, its name ready to type. A folder's New folder inside makes one inside it.
• A folder's name is edited in its row. Visible by default on a folder: off, its layers start switched off when the app opens. Open when the app opens: whether the folder starts open in the map's layer list.
• Delete folder removes the folder only: what it held moves up one level, in its place. No layer is removed with a folder.

Adding layers

• Add layer…, under the tree, adds a dataset at the top of the tree.
• A folder's Add layer here adds a dataset straight into that folder, or New empty layer… makes a new layer to draw into and puts it in that folder (save the tree first: leaving the page drops changes not saved).

Each layer

Column	What it sets
Label	The name users read
Dataset	The data behind the layer
Style	How it is drawn (the dataset's default style if none is chosen)
Filter	Show only some features: FIELD = value, value. Only those features leave the server — on the map, in the table, search, exports, copies and the phone — and a feature drawn in the app is given the filter's value, so data shared by many apps stays each app's own
Definition query	Show only the features that meet a set of conditions, on top of the filter — see below
Visible by default	On when the app first opens
Identify	Answers a click on the map. Turned off, the layer's attribute values reach only the workspace's owners, administrators and editors and the people who may edit the layer: for everyone else it shows its features without values — in identify, the attribute table and its statistics, selections, history and exports — it is left out of search, and copies of its features carry their shapes only
Editable	Its features can be changed from the map, when the app's editing is on

Save keeps the tree as a new version of the app; the map shows the same tree. One dataset can appear several times with different filters and styles — for example one layer per block.

#Definition query

A layer's definition query shows only the features that meet a set of conditions — for example Status is "active" and Year is at least 2020 — as a definition query does in other GIS programs. In the layer's Definition query column, Add (or the number of conditions it already has) opens the editor:

• Each condition is a Field, an Operator and a Value, written as in the attribute table's query: Is, Is not, Less than, At most, Greater than, At least, Contains, Starts with, Is empty, Is not empty or Is one of (values separated by commas, semicolons or lines). The operators offered follow the field's type.
• Up to ten conditions with + Condition, matched All (every condition must hold) or Any (one is enough).
• Count says how many features the layer would show, out of those its filter keeps.
• Apply puts the query on the layer, Remove the query takes it off; Save the layers to keep the change.

The query is applied on the server together with the filter, everywhere the filter is: the map, the attribute table and its CSV, identify, selections, search, zoom to layer, the editing tools, exports, prints, offline packs for the iPhone and the support assistant's answers. A feature the query leaves out is, for that layer, not there. Its legend lists only the classes the layer can show: those its features hold, or, on a layer people edit, every class but those the query keeps out (with Status is "active", the other statuses are not listed).

The query is set in Studio by the workspace's team. The app's own people never see it or change it, and it may use fields kept to the team: the layer simply shows fewer features. The editor warns when a condition uses such a field: a client's editors cannot read it, but which features the layer shows, and which of their edits it refuses, can tell them something of its values. An edit made through the layer must keep the feature inside the query — a change that would take it out is refused — and a new feature takes the value of every is condition it leaves empty when All conditions must hold. A condition on a field the data no longer has shows nothing, and the editor says so.

A definition query chooses what the layer shows; it is not a permission — to keep rows from people, use the app's filter or clients. The same data can be added to an app again as another layer, and Studio's data pages follow the apps' filters, not their layers' queries.

#Publish

Publish marks the app as published: only published apps appear in Cartema for iPhone. On the web, users always see the app as last saved.

#History

Every change to an app is kept as a version: who, when and what, naming the layers it touched (“Layers added: Roads, Rivers”, “Layers switched off: Parcels”, “Style changed: Wells”, “Map settings”). The newest 20 are listed; Show older versions adds more. Restore first says what restoring that version would change in the app as it is now, and restores on Restore v…; it brings back an earlier version's layers, names, extent and basemaps. Styles and data are not changed by restoring.