Reimagining customizations in favor of extensible Commercial-Off-the-Self (COTS) solutions in the move to the ArcGIS Utility Network

As technology advances, GIS must deliver high-fidelity spatial data beyond corporate boundaries—powering digital workflows, enabling integrated systems, and supporting use cases from embedded maps and outage sharing to network intelligence and mobile access. Esri’s ArcGIS Utility Network (UN) meets these demands with a modern, service-oriented architecture (SOA) that replaces legacy client-server models of the Geometric Network (GN). This enables enterprise-wide data delivery, supports digital twins, and enhances transparency across operations. While these advancements unlock new capabilities, this is a complex transformation, and the available options and numerous paths can be daunting.  

In the second blog post in this series, we examined how implementation patterns like the ArcFM Configuration for the Utility Network enable utilities to maximize the value they get out of the ArcGIS Utility Network without costly custom implementations.  

In this blog article, we will dive deeper into the concept of reimagining customizations in favor of extensibility which relies on configurations that are far easier to implement and maintain as technology evolves.  

Extensibility capabilities 

Utility companies around the world have widely adopted Esri’s ArcGIS and Schneider Electric’s ArcFM to meet business needs, enforce processes, ensure data quality through automation, and support custom integrations. These utilities have often extended the core capabilities of these products to better align with their unique requirements. Historically, many of these extensions focused on custom commands and tools, automated attribute updates in response to actions (known as autoupdaters), edit tasks, QA/QC validations, field editors, subtasks, and action handlers. 

With the transition from ArcMap and ArcFM on the Geometric Network (GN) to ArcGIS Pro and ArcFM Solution XI built on the ArcGIS Utility Network (UN), many existing customizations will need to be reimagined rather than simply ported. This is because, fundamentally, Esri and Schneider Electric recognize the need for utilities to be supported by more robust, commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software that can deliver value out of the box and be easily updated to bring ongoing advances to users and ensure cybersecurity.  

While the underlying business processes for a utility may remain largely the same, this technology shift creates a valuable opportunity to reassess workflows, streamline steps, improve efficiency, and introduce modern interfaces where appropriate. A shift in focus from homegrown customizations that are cost and labor intensive to maintain toward products with built-in extensibility will prove a massive benefit to the utility industry as a whole.   

Key differences between the ArcGIS Geometric Network and desktop-centric GIS and the ArcGIS Utility Network and enterprise-centric GIS 

To best orient this discussion, let’s identify the primary differences between the ArcGIS Geometric Network (GN) and the ArcGIS Utility Network (UN) when it comes to extensiblity: 

1. In the GN world, connectivity and asset management were largely feature-class–centric, driven by geometric coincidence and configuration rules. This model encouraged custom traces and various client-side extensions. In the UN, this behavior is embedded in core network constructs such as domain networks, subnetworks, terminals, network attributes, and rules, shifting more logic into the data model itself. This negates the need for custom traces and various client-side extensions. Instead, those same functions can be achieved with configuration-based extensibility, a software development principle that will be discussed at length in a moment. In short, configuration-based extensibility makes it easy to tailor software to unique business needs while eliminating the need for custom code that requires manual updates with each technology release.    
2. In the GN world, many automatic attribute edits triggered by custom events (known as autoupdaters) were used in the GN to make editing faster but required extensive custom code maintenance.  Now, in the UN, many of these customizations can be implemented with configuration based on the principles of dynamic workflows (which will be explained below) reducing the need for bespoke code and making data behavior more transparent. 
3. GN-based QA/QC rules that previously validated connectivity through custom logic can often be replaced by Utility Network rules and network topology validation, providing a more consistent and centrally managed approach. 
4. In the GN world, workflow capabilities, job management, and organizing versions to accommodate many contributors were critical tools provided by ArcFM Session Manager, which required extensive customization to maintain. When leveraging the UN, these critical capabilities become even more important as even more users are expected to contribute and view the GIS and the underlying framework has changed to enable configuration. The emphasis shifts to the need for ArcFM Session Manager capabilities that can accommodate complex workflows and services from many different applications that flow into ArcGIS Pro to coordinate edits, review, and posting in a multi-application, services-oriented environment while leveraging the concept of configurable dynamic workflows. 

ArcFM extensibility in the ArcGIS Utility Network era 

The core constructs of the ArcGIS Utility Network and ArcFM Solution XI are designed to handle everyday use cases out of the box, especially for small and midsize utilities.  

For organizations with more complex or specialized requirements, ArcFM has introduced an extensibility framework to replace traditional customizations in addressing advanced needs and bridge gaps between standard capabilities and business specific processes. ArcFM’s extensibility framework relies on configuration within the administrative application, ArcFM Solution Center, and ensures that configurations remain intact seamlessly with each new technology release. Gone are the days of costly custom code that requires months of re-writing for every upgrade, updating each client’s machine after each upgrade, and resolving the DLL unregister/register issues.  

Dynamic workflows unlock integrations, interoperability and automated editing and more 

 Conceptually speaking, the extensibility framework is primarily based on dynamic workflows which allows implementers to tailor the ArcFM solution for a wide range of scenarios including integrations with non-GIS systems, interoperability between ArcFM applications, automated attribute updates in response to actions (autoupdaters), tasks, actions, and more.  

Essentially, dynamic workflows are a configurable set of chain reactions that can be designed against business processes. So, if A happens, you want B to follow. Instead of altering the data itself, workflows respond to actions that can be reconfigured as business process change and/or will be updated as part of software upgrades without the recoding required of custom extensions.  

In a more utility specific example, a dynamic workflow often consists of a series of “assignments” linked by business logic to accomplish a task. An “assignment type” defines a specific task for a user to achieve within the broader workflow. For example, a Field Assignment is a mobile user’s task of collecting markups to a design in the field. When the user completes the markup task, the dynamic workflow advances the job to the next assignment, which might mean creating a session for an editor to incorporate markups into the GIS in ArcGIS Pro using ArcFM Editor XI. 

Image Caption: An example of a dynamic workflow. Dynamic workflows are engines that create a highly flexible, configuration environment to write custom workflows, tasks, actions, and tools across the ArcFM XI ecosystem of applications.   

Types of dynamic workflows 

In ArcFM’s extensibility framework, there are three types of dynamic workflows.  

1. Hosted Workflows 

Hosted workflows run on a persistent state machine in the cloud, capable of communicating with external services and messages via our message broker (Azure Service Bus). These workflows define how your editing sessions in ArcGIS Pro or designs in Designer XI will execute and enforce the business process. Using Hosted Workflows, tools, and components enforces business processes and helps users consistently follow standard procedures across the organization

2. Client-Side Workflows 

These workflows are executed within ArcFM Solution XI-series applications to support organization-specific business processes. For example, the ability to reassign a session to a colleague when you are going on vacation is facilitated by a client-side workflow.  

3. ArcGIS Server Workflows  

This type of dynamic workflow manages the autoupdater framework, allowing for the development and execution of custom business rules in response to changes in the data. From data validation to automating creation, modification, or deletion of features based on spatial queries or connectivity, autoupdaters can substantially improve data quality and user productivity. The benefits of autoupdaters include:  

• Automating and enforcing attribute standards that a utility must maintain, such as assigning asset IDs when features are created.  
• Automatically calculating regional boundaries or deriving phase and voltage values from network properties at the time of feature creation. Standardizing how features are created to ensure consistent, high-quality GIS data entry across editors and teams.

Action Handlers automate reconcile and posting processes tailored to unique business processes  

Action Handlers provide a way to extend the reconciliation and post-processing performed by ArcFM Geodatabase Manager XI with configurable actions. The application runs custom business logic or out-of-the-box action handlers that are configured based on your organization’s needs. Action handlers are implemented as webhooks, a real-time HTTP-based API that allows ArcFM Geodatabase Manager XI to quickly inform other systems of versions being processed, including responding to behaviors from those systems when appropriate. 

Benefits include: 

• Automating GIS data management tasks in ways that minimize impact on user productivity during regular business hours, for example, by scheduling background processes. 
• Automating repeatable tasks—such as data maintenance routines, data sharing workflows, and data quality checks—during posting or other key points in the data lifecycle. 

Key takeaways 

Extensibility in the ArcFM Solution XI Series provides parity with the ArcFM Classic, allowing ArcFM implementations to align with the utility business operations. Even more importantly, it offers significant advantages over traditional customization by providing a sustainable, upgrade-friendly approach to tailoring functionality. Instead of hardcoding changes that can break during updates, extensibility leverages configurable frameworks, REST APIs, and modular components, enabling utilities to adapt workflows without compromising core stability. This approach reduces technical debt, accelerates deployment, and ensures compatibility with future releases, minimizing costly regression testing and maintenance.  

While many customizations will be left behind in the transition to the ArcGIS Utility Network, by embracing extensibility, organizations gain flexibility to innovate while preserving the integrity of the solution, enabling long-term scalability and easier integration with evolving technologies. 

If you would like to engage Schneider Electric experts to review your current customizations and create a roadmap for transitioning them and/or leaving them behind on your grid modernization journey, please contact your Schneider Electric account executive.  

Read our final article in the series, Reimagining ArcGIS Integrations in the Move from Esri’s Geometric Network to the ArcGIS Utility Network, to learn more about how to optimize integrations in a modern network environment.