Maintaining complete and accurate field-level metadata in Esri geodatabases is a critical but often tedious component of data governance. Manually populating attribute definitions for every field in ArcGIS Pro is time-consuming and prone to inconsistency, especially on large or frequently updated datasets. This presentation introduces a streamlined, repeatable workflow that leverages FME Workbench and Microsoft Excel to automate the injection of field-level metadata into FGDC CSDGM-compliant XML, eliminating the need for manual entry through the ArcGIS Pro metadata editor.
The workflow begins with schema and metadata documentation developed collaboratively with data stakeholders in a structured Excel template. FME Workbench is then used to read the Excel metadata, remap attribute columns to FGDC-standard XML element names using the AttributeManager transformer, and merge the results into an exported metadata XML file via the XMLTemplater transformer. The completed XML is imported directly back into ArcGIS Pro, populating the Fields section of the metadata record with definitions and sources for each attribute. Additional steps address field alias management through an ArcPy Jupyter Notebook script, and a quality control check using the ArcGIS Pro Generate Schema Report tool ensures field names match between the metadata Excel and the published feature class.
Attendees will leave with a practical, replicable approach to scaling metadata workflows across their organization, reducing manual effort while improving consistency and compliance with data governance standards.
