Arches Features
Arches features and capabilities are organized into three main groups: Data Discovery and Visualization, Data Management, Project and Task Management.
Data Discovery and Visualization
Clip from webinar, Intro to the Arches Platform, Part 1: Capabilities (timestamp: 13:46 – 16:00). This clip shows how to use different search filter tools (geospatial search, semantic & thesauri-enhanced search, and advanced search) to answer a specific research question.
SEARCH
Arches includes multiple ways to quickly discover data and explore deeper knowledge, leading to more efficient and informed decision-making and research.
- Semantic & thesauri-enhanced searches
- Searchable annotations
- Support for custom indexing
- Export search results
- Geospatial search
- Saved and Advanced searches
Webinar videos that explore some or all of these features:
Clip from webinar, Arches v5 Demo Site (clip timestamp: 12:32 – 16:56). This clip shows how to navigate the map functionality, including the use of the geocoder, basemaps, overlays, and map filters.
SPATIAL DATA / GIS
Arches includes essential geospatial tools in order to visualize and query resource locations, and can seamlessly integrate with fully-featured geographic information systems (GIS) for advanced functionality.
- Integrates GIS functionality
- Seamless management of Arches data in external GIS – e.g., esri
- Changeable basemaps–e.g., historical maps
- Overlays supported
- Satellite imagery
Webinar videos that explore these features:
Clip from webinar, Arches v5 Demo Site (clip timestamp: 21:47 – 24:22). After exploring a resource report, which includes a listing of resource relationships, this clip looks more closely at the related resources graph, which allows users to visualize the relationships between different resources.
RELATIONSHIPS
Arches enables the documentation and visualization of data relationships in order to reveal connections and to create a deeper understanding of the resources in a dataset.
- Explore relationships between resources –e.g., people, materials, activities, historic events, objects, iconography
- Discovery of previously unknown connections / new knowledge
Webinar videos that explore these features:
Clip from webinar, Intro to the Arches Platform, Part 3 of 4: Data Technology Concepts (clip timestamp: 15:03 – 20:43). This clip explores the concept of fuzzy dates in Arches in more depth.
TIME
Arches has the ability to store, represent and query temporal data in different formats, including dates that are fuzzy or uncertain. Time data that may not conform to a single time format can be fully integrated into Arches, which allows for more descriptive information and better data quality.
- Temporal search
- Fuzzy date support
- Visualization of time distribution in entire dataset – Timewheel
Webinar videos that explore these features:
Clip from webinar, Intro to the Arches Platform, Part 1: Capabilities (clip timestamp: 16:12-19:05). This clip explores how one implementation incorporated 3-D viewers into Arches.
REPORTS, VIEWERS & ANNOTATIONS
Arches is fully customizable, leading to the ability to create reports, viewers and extensions that are specific and purpose-built for a particular project’s requirements. The following features include enhanced ways to interact with and visualize data within Arches.
- Customizable reports using Report Manager
- IIIF viewers and image annotations
- High-resolution image support
- Extended 3-D viewers
- Interactive spectra charts with comparisons
- Customizable dashboards
Webinar videos that explore some or all of these features:
Data Management
Clip from webinar, Arches Webinar 01 – Arches Collector (clip timestamp: 3:58 – 8:07). This clip introduces the basic features of Arches Collector.
COLLECT & SHARE
Arches includes different pathways to import existing data, including csv, json and shapefile upload and mobile data collection. Data can also be synchronously added and updated using connections to other applications and services via the Arches API.
- Mobile data collection via Arches Collector or responsive workflow template
- Robust import / export with notifications
Webinar video that explores these features:
STRUCTURE & STORAGE
Arches has the ability to generate semantic data based on standards, which is important because it increases the potential for producing interoperable and sustainable data.
- Semantic, self-describing, & sustainable data structure
- Dynamic UI-generation
- Multiple ontologies–e.g., CIDOC CRM
- Cloud/server deployable
- API & linked data support
- Multiple data types supported
Webinar videos that explore some or all of these features:
Clip from webinar, Intro to the Arches Platform, Part 2: Data Management Tools (clip timestamp: 14:54 – 16:16). This clip features the addition of a new vocabulary term, or concept, via the Reference Data Manager in order to populate a dropdown list for data entry.
CONTROLLED VOCABULARIES
Arches integrates the use and management of controlled vocabularies in order to ensure data quality and meaningful searches through common terminology structured purposefully.
- Thesauri management —Reference Data Manager (RDM)
Webinar videos that explore some of these features:
Clip from webinar, Intro to the Arches Platform, Part 2: Data Management Tools (clip timestamp: 12:54 – 13:26). This clip shows how to enable different levels of user access to the data via the Arches Designer.
CONTROLLED ACCESS, AUDIT & REVIEW
Arches gives administrators the ability to control access to the data in an Arches implementation. This includes read/write/delete access at the card level as well as at the resource level. Data entry is logged based on user account and can be published immediately or held for further review.
- User & group secure access management
- Granular permission control
- Detailed audit of changes to data
- Provisional (unpublished) data; data review
Webinar videos that explore some of these features:
Project & Task Management
Clip from webinar, Arches Webinar – Arches Version 5.0 (clip timestamp: 9:09 – 19:26). This clip explores what Workflows are and shows examples of how they can be used.
WORKFLOWS
Arches Workflows is a developer tool that enables step by step data entry across one or more resource models in an Arches implementation. This gives Arches implementers the ability to create specialized data entry processes that interact with their existing Arches database schema.
- Comprehensive, flexible workflow (i.e., process) management
- Task tracking
- Notifications
- Project Status plugin
- Correspondence management and tracking
- Letter templates with auto completion
Webinar videos that explore some or all of these features:
Last updated: April 2022