Capture Life Cycle of Feature Class/Shapefile in Metadata and Automate Model Building

deleted-user-lwkurIII0T1f

I think it would be great to have the ability to allow the quick creation of a model from the history log file.

It would be helpful to have a reader-friendly description of the creation history, similar to viewing a model in model-builder, saved as part of the shapefile’s properties that can be viewed in the normal properties window so a user can see the process of how that shapefile was created. This "history-log to model" function would help automate model-building, as I frequently can’t remember the exact steps I took in more complex analytical processes that I would like to automate in the future, so having the steps and shapefile/feature class predecessors delineated somewhere and a tool to create a model from the history log file would help to reproduce the process after one has gone through trial and error to ensure that the process is successful.

KoryKramer · ‎03-21-2017

Hi Jennifer Grimes‌. Have you looked at Viewing tool execution history—Help | ArcGIS Desktop ?

From your Idea description, it seems to me that the history log file will resolve most of the issue.

Now, if you want to revise the Idea and description to more specifically state that you'd like functionality that will allow quick creation of a model from the history log file, that would be a new Idea that I haven't see put out there before.

I'm also curious whether you've looked into using Tasks in ArcGIS Pro: What is a task?—ArcGIS Pro | ArcGIS Desktop

deleted-user-lwkurIII0T1f · ‎03-21-2017

Thank you KKramer-esristaff! I have edited the original post. Also, I will have to look more into Tasks in ArcGIS Pro. From a glance, the functionality appears slightly different than what I was hoping to accomplish, but I could be wrong. I wanted a way to track my unique experimental processes and related/predecessor shapefiles such that, after trial and error, the final successful shapefile will essentially be embedded with the proper metadata from which a model could be quickly created. I thought it would be great for a simple way to create your own models. I will look into Tasks more, but I believe this would still be a wonderful new function for the ESRI suite. Thanks!

KoryKramer · ‎03-21-2017

Great. Thanks for clarifying the description to make it more specific to creating a model from the history log file.

I agree, Tasks is not exactly what you're looking for, but as it is new functionality in Pro and provides step-by-step guidance on completing a workflow, I thought you might be interested in learning more about it:)