Introduction to GIS resources at SLU

 

As an employee and a student at SLU, you have access to several GIS resources. The objective with this document is to introduce employees and students to the GIS infrastructure at SLU. The most important and basic information are listed in a concise manner, including the most common GIS related things an employee or student at SLU wants to do.

The SLU GIS Support - contact information

If you have a GIS related problem have a look at http://pluto.slu.se/gispub (see below), you can also send us an email: gis-support@slu.se. All the staff at SLU GIS support gets all emails sent to this e-mail address, and we work together with you issues and questions.

GIS Support Pages

GIS-support has a website at SLU with info and instructions for students and employees at SLU. Here we post info (pages) with instructions and answers to frequently asked questions. It is a good idea to look here if you have a problem or a question: http://pluto.slu.se/gispub

Employee or student?

These instructions apply to all who have a login into the SLU network, both employee and students. In case you are a SLU teacher or supervisor, you can simply give these instructions to any student who needs to start apply GIS on your project or in your class. However, if you are organizing a course with a large number of students using GIS for a limited period, it could be a good idea to inform GIS support in order to minimize problems related to access to software and online resources. So, if you are a student, courses applying GIS might give you instructions that differ from these, for example when it comes to installing GIS-software. You also need to know that accessing data, software and licensing server at home (outside SLU Campus networks) requires the use of the SLU VPN connection.

GIS Forum - Mailing List

There is an email list where you can receive notifications from SLU GIS support about software, resources, infrastructure etc. at SLU. The GIS Support uses this email list to send out urgent notifications on for example network malfunctions or issues with online resources. You can register (and remove) yourself to the email list.
Instructions: http://pluto.slu.se/gispub/subscribe_to_gisforum_listserver

ESRI - online resources

SLU has an "enterprise account" at ESRI. ESRI makes the GIS software ArcGIS. ESRI also have two online-resources: one for sharing maps online (ArcGIS Online: arcgis.com) and one for E-Learning (My ESRI: my.esri.com). In order for employees and students to get access (using the SLU user), some procedures need to be followed (see below).

Access to ArcGIS Online

To get access to ESRs online resources, you need to "activate" (or add) your SLU user at SLU’s account at ArcGIS Online. You can simply do that yourself! Just make a first login at SLUs account at ArcGIS Online: http://gis-slu.maps.arcgis.com.

Note that you need to login correctly! See instructions below.

(In case of a larger group / entire class, SLU GIS support can do this)

Access to ESRI E-Learning (web courses, etc.)

You will find extensive instructions here: http://pluto.slu.se/gispub/how_to_get_access_to_esri_web_courses

To get access - (short version):

1. First, you need to "activate" (or add) your SLU user in ArcGIS Inline, see previous step!

2. Then you need some assistance from GIS-support.
IF you are having a course, your teacher might already have fixed this!
Otherwise, contact GIS-support@slu.se directly, and ask for "ESRI access".

3. Wait for an email sent from ESRI.

4. Go to https://my.esri.com and log in using your SLU credentials.
Need to be done as described in previous section!

Note! The information in the e-mail can be misleading. You do NOT need to create a "public user"!
Sign in with your SLU user.

5. Do a "connect to organization" with the code ("token") in the email from ESRI.

ArcGIS software

ArcGIS is a trademark for software products from ESRI (esri.com). There are two ArcGIS programmes in use at SLU: ArcGIS Desktop and ArcGIS Pro. ArcGIS Pro is a newer product with some fundamental changes compared to ArcGIS Desktop. ArcGIS Desktop on the other hand is a fully functional GIS software, and might even have some functionality that has not yet been implemented (correctly) in ArcGIS Pro. If you have used ArcGIS Desktop, it is relatively easy to start using ArcGIS Pro. The ArcGIS programs are installed in most computer rooms on SLU Campuses. On your own computer (private or SLU employee computer), you need to install ArcGIS yourself.

Installing ArcGIS on your computer

SLU also offers license for ArcGIS Desktop and ArcGIS Pro installations on your computer for all SLU students and employee (private or SLU computers). If it is not already on your computer, you can simply install the software yourself.

Note 1: there is no ArcGIS installation for Mac operating systems, only Windows!
Note 2: if you are not on SLU campus, you will need to connect to the SLU network using SLU’s VPN connection: https://pluto.slu.se/gispub/how_to_set_up_vpn.

You can find instructions for installing ArcGIS Desktop and ArcGIS Pro on GIS Support pages. The latest right now is:
- ArcGIS Desktop:  https://pluto.slu.se/gispub/install_arcgis_desktop_10_8_1.
- ArcGIS Pro: https://pluto.slu.se/gispub/install_arcgis_professional

Normally you install the latest version. However, if you want to share documents with other ArcGIS users created in earlier ArcGIS versions, you might need to pay attention to which version of ArcGIS you need to have installed.  All installation packages can be found here: \\gis.slu.se\GisProg\Esri\ArcGIS.

There is an optional way to license ArcGIS Desktop using a so-called license file. This option is sometimes used in case of longer periods out of Campus with extremely limited internet connection. In addition, GIS courses might also use this way of licensing ArcGIS Desktop. In this case, instructions are usually provided in the course.

Other GIS software

It is important to know that there are other GIS programmes to install on your computer!
For example QGIS (www.qgis.org). QGIS is one of the most used GIS freewares.

Geodata

As an employee or student at SLU, you have access to GET (Geodata Extraction Tool):
- https://maps.slu.se
Here you can order and download Swedish geodata from several Swedish authorities, for example Lantmäteriet (The Swedish Mapping, Cadastral and Land Registration Authority). Note that even though some geodata are freely available directly from several authorities, the download procedure are much easier in GET, more geodata are available and additional values are added. Geodata are checked for errors and layerfiles from some sources are fixed and translated to English.

/Anders Larsolle  2021-10-10