What is the Data Exchange?
The DroneDeploy Data Exchange is a powerful data solution designed to empower DroneDeploy’s most advanced customers.
While the Analytics Dashboard is designed to answer many of the questions you might have about DroneDeploy, there will always be questions you have that are unique to your business, or require information that DroneDeploy doesn’t have access to. For all of those questions, we have the Data Exchange - a tool that gives you access to all the structured data we have about your organization so you can report on it the way you want and combine with other data sources.
What types of data are available?
The DroneDeploy data instance includes several tables that can be used to analyze your usage on the platform. The entire customer model can be seen below.
(Right-click the table + Open the image in a new tab to zoom in):
Activity
This table contains all of the activities in your organization. This includes all
- Captures (Captures, Processing)
- Analysis (Annotations, Issue, Live Stream, Overlay, Link Shares)
- Views (Annotation Views, Map Views, Media Views, Report Views, Link Share Views)
- Exports
- Admin (Folder, Organization)
made within the organization. In the world of Kimball/Star schema, you can think of this table as a 'Fact'.
Annotation
User-created annotations such as location, distance, area, surface area, or volume measurements on a Plan.
Export
Record of all files and their formats sent using the Export function within the DroneDeploy application. This includes auto-exports.
Folder
A folder contains zero or more projects/sub-folders to organize data in DroneDeploy into groups or locations.
Issue
Log of all user-created issues on images, 3d models, maps, panos, or walkthroughs. One can assign priority and users to specific projects through issues.
Overlay
Allows users to upload or import via integration (Procore, BIM360 etc.): CAD design surfaces, shapefiles, DXFs, GeoTIFFs, and other imagery to aid in analysis on DroneDeploy maps and walthroughs.
Flight Record
Record of flight-specific information such as aircraft model, duration, maximum speed and altitude.
Support Tickets
User-created support tickets.
Plan
The Plan object originated as a Flight Plan (a set of commands, such as a drone flight path, given by the pilot to capture a map area), but has become the core object that holds the drone/robot path, and also the resulting data (map, 3D model, walkthrough, panorama etc.) that resulted from the execution of that plan. This is true even if one uploads data to our MapEngine via the UI or API without specifying or executing a Flight Plan using DroneDeploy.
Project
A project refers to an individual project/site/location.
User
All users and their default roles, both internal and external
User Group
Custom groupings designated by the organization. Note that users can be part of multiple groups.
What types of questions can be answered with the data?
The DroneDeploy data instance includes several tables that can be used to analyze your usage on the platform. The data provided can answer questions like:
- When was the first and last activity date for my organization?
- How often are my pilots capturing each month?
- How many external users do I have in my organization?
- What is the capture rate for each group within my organization?
- How many active projects did my organization have this month?
- What are my most viewed projects?
- Where are my projects located?
- … and many more.
The increased value comes from the ability to join DroneDeploy data with your organization’s own internal data. Combining data from different sources can expand the analytics possibilities and enable you to answer more advanced questions like:
- What level of drone usage has Department X (e.g. as defined in MSFT Active Directory) done to date?
- What is the latest reality capture data for Asset ID 1234 located at X,Y?
For example, here is a chart that shows activity count by employee department (as defined in the company directory)
Frequently Asked Questions:
How is this different from the GraphQL API?
- While our GraphQL API is great for automating workflows and querying/mutating data for individual objects (plan, annotation etc..), the Data Exchange is designed to pull all data on all objects (annotations, maps, projects, users, activity, and more) into your data warehouse.
- The GraphQL API returns documents (No-SQL), where as the Data Exchange is designed to be integrated with SQL.
How do I get access to the Analytics Dashboard?
For more information, please contact your Customer Success Manager or Account Executive.