GIS people to the GIS people. Quartic excels at providing highly technical solutions to complex problems. However, fast response and general staff augmentation can be just as necessary, which was an immediate need for the City of El Cajon. Its small GIS team expertly tackles all problems. Quartic was brought in to assist their efforts, reduce their workloads through automation, provide new capabilities, and upgrade/maintain their overall enterprise GIS system. Quartic provides Senior GIS Programmer/Analyst expertise to support El Cajon’s GIS needs as they occur.
Several of the City’s ArcGIS products were upgraded on both the backend and frontend. The City supported daily operations using Environmental Systems Research Institute’s (ESRI) Enterprise ArcGIS System 10.7.1. Their work used to be done primarily in ArcGIS Desktop ArcMap and ArcCatalog, but now since ArcGIS Pro is available, those older user interfaces are slated for retirement in early 2026. Services published to ArcGIS Server were based on ArcMap runtime, which has been retired as of ArcGIS Server 11.
The database was reworked and is now in alignment with best practices that better support versioned editing and logical groupings of data. Actively edited data in stand-alone file geodatabases are now stored in the centralized enterprise geodatabase. ArcGIS Server was upgraded to 10.9.1 to access newer capabilities allowing the City time to re-publish all services with ArcGIS Pro runtime and prepare for the 11. x version migration. A new SQL Server enterprise geodatabase was built, and all existing data was migrated from the old database.
This database structure implements smarter versioning and avoids using feature datasets as storage folders. Almost all actively edited data resides in the enterprise geodatabase, consolidating it into a single production editing environment. ArcGIS Pro is the go-to; new attribute rules maintain data quality and encourage program use. With Quartic’s professional GIS support and Esri’s current software, the City has successfully resolved many legacy issues. The GIS team now has access to current software capabilities, has better organized and maintained data, and has renewed confidence that the GIS system is in good shape and more able to support City operations going forward.
The City of El Cajon has been working with Quartic to streamline, automate, and upgrade many routine GIS data maintenance tasks. Manual GIS maintenance consumed too much of the city's GIS staff's valuable time. Since the work has been completed, the team has been able to be more efficient and put their energy towards other priority projects.
Municipalities often share GIS data with neighboring jurisdictions and regional government agencies. El Cajon is no exception. The City of El Cajon shares data with regional GIS agencies: SanGIS and SanDAG. Keeping data current between government organizations can sometimes be a challenge. Quartic helped the city improve these data-sharing processes. The previously manually downloaded data from the SanGIS/SANDAG Regional Data Warehouse has been automated. Python scripts have replaced labor-intensive download, extract, and data enrichment processes. These scripts also perform data administrative tasks such as cleaning up disk space.
With all of these changes/upgrades, there are no longer questions about where the data is located. The team knows that all the SanGIS data is up to date at the beginning of each month and can rely on its currency and authoritativeness. The new database is more performant than it was before. The team learned that migrating from ArcMap to ArcGIS Pro has a bit of a learning curve, but that was quickly shaken off with the proper guidance.
With the initial upgrades complete, Quartic is now assisting El Cajon with several other projects that have been on the back burner. The variety of the GIS work is great and exactly what Quartic is established for; providing quality professional services for all GIS-related tasks. For example, the team has published the City’s historical imagery, created new enterprise feature classes with enforced data quality checks, published new services, and built web apps and experiences for internal and public-facing audiences. Together the team developed a City asset dashboard, an ArcGIS FieldMaps application for fire inspectors, and a Survey123 application for bicycle registration, and helped update the City’s organizational theme for its ArcGIS Hub and web applications.
"The Quartic Solutions Team has really helped my GIS vision come to life here at the City of El Cajon. Quartic can take a project and run with it, they listen to what you really want, and then they create that dream that you've always wanted to do for your City.” - GIS Analyst, City of El Cajon
