At the City of DeKalb our public works department responds to JULIE requests to mark water and storm sewer assets before excavation occurs. I have a web map that directs staff to those request sites that is updated via Python whenever a new request comes in.
Currently the communication is one direction, JULIE notifies us where to locate and we go mark it. However, starting in Jan. 2026 JULIE will require a response to every locate request. They’ve created an online system where this can be done manually but there is an API and I’m hoping to integrate that with my web map.
My current plan is to create a notebook and publish that as a web tool which I’ll consume in experience builder but I’m struggling with troubleshooting, processing time (nearly 2 minutes!) and passing parameters from ExB to the web tool.
Is anyone else considering using GIS as a way to respond to JULIE requests and care to share how you’re going about it?
We were just talking to the City of Aurora about this, but I don’t know that they’re on here yet. It sounded like they had a pretty interesting workflow for dealing with this.
Sounds like a great idea for some kind of workshop/panel discussion/focus group at ILGISA. I know JULIE changes are topics for both the public and private sectors. @BMcAlpine you may not be able to talk as freely as you want, but I’m sure you could lend some insights.
@cbergeson@jcarlson@MicahWilli@sspradling I know I guy who works at JULIE and does some python work… He also helped develop the api’s. Reachout to me and we can do a meeting if you want there are several approaches, some of it will depended on the volume and what will be the best bang for the your effort.
At the latest board meeting, there was discussion of having informal Special Interest Groups at some point during the conference. Perhaps we could suggest this as one of the topics folks could gather around and talk about.
I appreciate the feedback and really like the idea of doing an informal SIG at the conference. I’ll make a note and bring it up at our next program committee meeting.
I will say Burt, you have already been very helpful answering my questions and the API is working fine. Where I’m getting hung up is integrating that with the Esri side. Maybe ExB isn’t the way to go and I’m open to ideas but my public works guys are already familiar with a map driven workflow so I’d like to put it there…
I’m entirely outside of this, not working with utilities or the API, but is the issue that you need your Esri map to send an HTTP request to JULIE?
What about something like Power Automate or Make? Make could watch a feature layer or survey with a webhook and kick off a POST request to the API with conditions on it.
@cbergeson As for automation with esri I have lots of ideas. Howver, I need so more details on you current process. On thing might just be, store all the response info required into a Table/FC the submit it every 5,10, 15 minutes to the API with just a custom GP tool. You would need it email you or someone that can trouble shoot on error. I would suggest also storing the API response in the Table/FC. If you want reach out and we can investigae further. Power automate is also another option, but not free and not only in esri.
@jcarlson I am fine helping a SIG or anything at the conference. Anything JULIE releated I am cerntainly in. If you want we could look at doing a Q&A webinar too, if the membership wants it. Open to suggestions.
@jcarlson Nov is busy for me, my parents have a christmas tree farm and head down there to help get ready for most of Nov, but they have good internet. I can get one of our PR folks to join as well incase there are law questions.