Elements XS

"Asset Management With or Without a Map"

Overall: We use Elements to plan and track maintenance to assets. It helps with coordination and accountability. It helps managers see the great work their employees are doing. It helps plan budgets for assets, personnel, and supplies.

Pros: There is a lot I like about this software. After having used it for years, I wish now that I'd done more out-of-the-box configuration than customized workflows. The software is good for mobile devices and was redesigned from its previous version for that purpose. The documentation is getting better, and I hope that more users start using the forums. I like the look and feel of the user side and administration side. Whenever a product allows you to customize more, it becomes more complex, which is no one's fault; it's just a universal law. Thus it is with Elements. It's tricky to build even simple workflows at first because there's so much you _could_ do to make a workflow, so they offer those additional, if ill-used, options all the time. And, over time, we do end up using some of those more complex options.

Cons: In order to avoid reinventing the wheel, Novotx went for a solution that consumed other products to get stuff done. It can use ArcGIS Server, ArcGIS Enterprise, ArcGIS.com, and uses Geocortex Essentials, Reporting, and Workflows to do mapping and customized behavior. As a natural consequence of this, the administrator has to go to a lot of places to make Elements do stuff. Some stuff is done over here, some is done over there, and yet other stuff is done in this other place. Various UI improvements could be made as well, like which things pop up in other browser tabs versus which things pop up to replace the content I was looking at. Customizing the user experience as an administrator can also be a challenge since it's not all done in one place. And lastly, the word "type" is too frequently and too often for me to full understand what the software wants in parts. Examples in the documentation would be nice. Lastly, there isn't a great way within the administrative side of the software to document what you're doing, why you set things up this way, or record changes. That has to be done in Google Docs, Word, or whatever other word processor your organization uses.

"Elements XS"

Overall: Novotx was able to import in our spreadsheet of users and other data that we had from previous programs. We first started using ElementsXS for our utility locates (811). Using Elements has helped with this since we are able to see where the locates are needed on the map and it sends the results back to the 811 processing company. We are able to get a visual view of how our hydrant maintenance is going, since completing tasks in Elements can update an attribute in my GIS map that will change the color of the hydrant. So this provides managers a way to visually see what has and hasn't been done without having to go individually through each task. I was able to create GIS related dashboard reports that are accessed in Elements that display feature counts and water and sewer line mileage so that users don't have to go get that information from a different web page. Users can stay in the Elements interface to access almost all of the information they need.

Pros: It is highly customizable and easy to use. Mapping of open tasks is really useful. Being able to update GIS feature attributes when tasks are completed is awesome to save, for example, the last flush date and chlorine residual of a hydrant, so this can be displayed when they click on the hydrant on the map. I like being able to create custom workflows and forms so the tasks can be processed exactly how we want.

Cons: This isn't really a con of the product, because all software is unfamiliar when you first get it, but there is a learning curve if you want to create custom workflows for the tasks on your own. Novotx can train someone for this and if you have an employee with some programming knowledge then it would be easier, but not entirely necessary, to train.