Constant evolution in business means continuously improving, adapting, and adopting new spatial technologies. Over a five-year partnership that began in 2020, GEO Jobe collaborated with entrepreneur Laura Emerson at Express Mapping to develop custom workflows designed to automate and ease her daily GIS practices.
As Express Mapping’s business needs evolved, more custom scripts were added to handle a variation of complex problems and manual tasks within ArcGIS Pro. While these eight custom scripts successfully accelerated daily workflows, having decentralized tools eventually increased development time and added complexity to the ArcGIS Toolbox.
“Hiring GEO Jobe was a big investment for Express Mapping, but it has been worth every penny. The tools they built did not just save time. They gave us our time back.” — Laura Emerson, Express Mapping
System Architecture and Technical Solutions
In 2025, an analysis of these business problems led GEO Jobe to abstract the highest coupled functionalities and engineer a centralized tool with decoupled modules. This allowed multiple issues to be tackled simultaneously, reducing runtime, time-to-completion, and complexity.
“GEO Jobe had the vision to combine more than ten separate tools into one streamlined solution we now call Map Fusion. It is faster, cleaner, and incredibly efficient and it has been a total game changer for our ArcGIS Pro workflow.” — Laura Emerson, Express Mapping
Originally, five scripts were ingested to create a version-one fusion script. Continued process alignment with the client allowed progression to version two, which successfully adopted all eight original scripts into a single tool. This engineering overhaul achieved significant optimization metrics:
- Codebase Rationalization: Consolidated 2,800 lines of code scattered across eight different files into just 1,300 lines contained within one driver file and three helper files.
- User Interface Optimization: Reduced roughly 100 parameters across eight separate tools down to 40 parameters in a single tool. This interface was further optimized into 12 main parameters with 13 conditional parameters for special use cases.
- Conditional Parameter Visibility: Implemented condition statements within the Validation section of the ArcGIS Toolbox to dynamically control parameter visibility and modifications based on process selections. This keeps the tool streamlined with minimum parameters. For instance, a “Limit By” section can be quickly expanded by the client to reveal hidden parameters when managing duplicated APNs treated as unique IDs, and retracted just as quickly when finished. Combined with parameter Categories to provide folding tabs and default values, one tool now holds all the functionality of the original eight.
- Modular Execution: Programmed modular components out of the overlapping functionalities so they incorporate strictly when the active process demands it. By stripping out unnecessary processes, the system delivers an overall faster product without losing runtime.
“With Map Fusion, I no longer have to remember which tool does what. Everything we need for radius maps, property owner lists, and occupant lists now lives in one powerful tool.” — Laura Emerson, Express Mapping
Delivering Predictable Business Outcomes
Clear comprehension of a client’s business needs is critical to saving development time, setting obtainable goals, and building mutual confidence. Through deliberate process alignment, GEO Jobe mitigated system bloat and delivered a highly optimized solution.
“Working with GEO Jobe completely transformed how we run Express Mapping. Tasks that used to take 30 to 60 minutes now take 5 to 10. That kind of time savings is game changing for a small business like ours. GEO Jobe helped turn a long time dream into reality for us at Express Mapping. Thanks to their ArcGIS Pro tools, we have automated a huge part of our radius map and property owner list workflow and tripled what we can produce in just five years.” — Laura Emerson, Express Mapping
“GEO Jobe did not just build scripts for us. They built tools that truly fit how we work at Express Mapping. It feels like they are part of our team, not an outside vendor.” — Laura Emerson, Express Mapping
Looking forward, GEO Jobe aims to streamline this workflow even further by enabling scheduled runs of the tool, giving back even more operational time to the client.
About Our Company
GEO Jobe is a leading GIS software and geospatial solutions provider, serving more than 12,000 organizations globally. The company is most known for developing some of the industry’s most popular applications, including Admin Tools for ArcGIS, Backup My Org, Clean My Org, Manage My Attachments, and Symphony for ArcGIS.
GEO Jobe offers U.S.-based 24/7 Support for organizations using Esri’s ArcGIS© System. GEO Jobe also offers professional services focused on Esri’s ArcGIS System, including custom software development, enterprise solution implementation, data science and UAV data collection.
Founded in 1999, GEO Jobe has been in operation for more than 25 years and an Esri business partner since 2002, and is currently a Platinum Partner.
