Permit demo

You can tell a permit demo by:

• a Demo chip on its tile, and a Permit demo bar in the panel;
• a permit number that starts DEMO-, for example DEMO-EX-2026-0001;
• a PDF headed PERMIT DEMO: NOT A REAL PERMIT, with a faint diagonal watermark on every page.

An app whose Mighty Dig is not connected to a project yet is all demo. You sign in as one of the Sample people (the demo sign-in at the top of the panel), so you can try each role: applicant, reviewer, issuer, person in charge and area authority. Dial before you dig is never lodged: the answers and plans are samples and nobody is contacted. Demo permits stay in this browser.

To have real permits, a permit admin sets up the project in the Mighty Dig Console, and whoever builds the app connects Mighty Dig to it. In a demo, Set up Mighty Dig in the panel's header starts a project, where the app shows links to Mighty Dig.

The permit types

The tiles show the permit types this app offers. These are the usual ones:

The small label on each tile says what it does: Checks the map, Measures clearing or Record.

Raise a permit

Where is the work?

• Area, Line or Spot: click the corners on the map. Double-click, press Enter, or click the first corner again to finish. A line suits a trench; a spot suits a pit or a pothole.
• Type the corners: give the place without the mouse. Choose Area, Line or Spot, then type one corner per line as latitude, longitude (for example -33.8705, 151.2093), or, where the project has a map grid, as easting, northing in that grid (the box names it). Or paste a GeoJSON or WKT shape. The corners show on the map as you type, with how many there are and the area or length; a line that cannot be read says why. Then Continue.
• Find a place: type an address and pick it. The map flies there, and you draw, or choose Put a spot at the place.
• Put a spot where I am: a spot at your device's location, on site.
• Pick a shape on the map: click a shape that is already on the map to use it.
• Use a sketch: take the shapes drawn with the app's own drawing tool.
• Or start from a permit type tile, then draw.

Continue

When the shape is done, Continue sits right under your pointer. Click it, or press Enter.

Check and fill

One screen shows the whole permit. Mighty Dig fills what it can from the map and from your last permit; check each value. The main button at the foot says what is still to do, and takes you to it.

As you go, the permit is kept as a draft (Draft saved, with the time). It is in My permits: open it there to carry on where you left off, on another device too, or Discard it.

• What the area touches: the layers checked and what was found, such as services, rail, heritage, property and road reserves.
• Dial before you dig: see Dial before you dig.
• The work: the safe work method statement and its version, the size and deepest point, the method and the plant.
• Deeper digs: from the depth your project's rules set (for example 1.5 m in New South Wales, or 4 ft in Washington), the permit also needs the ground support, the competent person, the ground advice and its date, and the area secured.
• Photos: add them now, or later from the permit.

Depths and distances show in your project's units: metres, or feet and inches.

The start date is the first day that gives the notice your permits ask for. An earlier start asks a few questions about the short notice.

Near an asset

Some consents and notices are needed only near an asset, such as a power pole, a stay wire or a high-pressure gas main. Mighty Dig checks the map for them. When the map cannot tell, because it has no layer for that asset or did not look far enough, check and fill asks you once, in the rule's words, for example: Is the dig within 2.2 m of a power pole or stay wire, and deeper than 0.3 m?

• Answer Yes or No. Tap your answer again to take it back.
• Your answer is kept with the permit as yours, not as measured. The permit and its PDF show it under Declared, not measured, with your name.
• No means the consent or notice is not needed for this dig. If the dig later goes deeper than when you answered, it is needed again. Yes means it is needed.
• In a draft prepared for you, each answer is a proposal: tick it yourself before you sign, or send the draft back.

Sign and submit

Tick I have checked the area and the details, then Sign and submit. You get the permit number, and the reviewers and issuer find it in their Waiting for me list.

Signing in and signing

Signing in

With a Mighty Dig account

• Your first time: your project's permit admin invites you, and Mighty Dig emails you. Within 7 days, sign in with your work email: Mighty Dig emails you a code, the 6 numbers in the email. The code does not sign you in. It lets you add a passkey on this device (your fingerprint, face or device PIN), then you sign in with the passkey. Check your name as it shows on permits when Mighty Dig asks.
• After that: Sign in in the panel opens Mighty Dig's sign-in in a small window. Use your passkey. A code alone never signs anyone in: your passkey is the second factor, always.
• On a device without your passkey: choose Sign in with a passkey and scan the QR code with your phone, whose passkey signs you in. On a device of your own, you can instead have a code emailed to you and add a passkey on it.
• Lost every device: use one of your recovery codes on the device you have now. It lets you add a new passkey there, then you sign in with it.

With your ArcGIS account

Where your project signs in through your organisation's ArcGIS portal, choose Sign in with ArcGIS and sign in as you do to your maps. The panel then shows Signed in through and your portal's name. Your roles come from your portal groups, checked each time you sign in. You still sign each step with a passkey on your device: the first time, the sign sheet asks you to Add a passkey on this device. A login several people share can read and comment, but never signs.

If a browser blocks the small window, the sign-in takes the whole page and brings you back to the app.

Signing

• Your passkey signs. You sign each step with your passkey: your fingerprint, face or device PIN. In a demo, the sample people sign without one.
• The sign sheet shows exactly what you are signing: the permit, the step, your declarations, the conditions and the dates. Signing writes exactly that, and nothing else changes.
• Prepared for you: when another system or an assistant prepared a permit for you, each value it proposed shows where it came from. Tick each one only if it is right for this work, or send it back.
• If the sign sheet opens in its own window, sign there. The panel carries on when you are done.
• The same person can never issue and accept the same permit.

Waiting for me

Waiting for me lists the permits that need you next: to review, issue, accept, start, close or take back. It sits at the top of the Permits tab.

• Open one, do your step, and the next one opens by itself.
• When the list is clear it says Nothing is waiting for you.
• If someone changes a permit while you have it open, the panel says Changed since you opened it before you sign.
• Mighty Dig also tells you by email (or Teams, where your project uses it) when a permit waits for you. The link in it opens the permit where you use Mighty Dig. Choose how often in your account.

Your account

Your account is at dig.mightyspatial.com/me, and Your account in the Console opens it.

• Your projects: each with Open the app, and Admin where you are a permit admin.
• Your passkeys: add one on each device you sign with, named so you know it (for example "Work laptop"), and remove one you have lost. It also says how many recovery codes you have left. Each signs you in once if you lose your passkeys.
• How Mighty Dig tells you: what has waited for you lately, then email: each one as it happens, one digest a day, or no email. Quiet hours hold emails until they end; a suspension still comes at once. Your time zone sets the clock for both.
• Before You Dig Australia: connect your own BYDA account once, and Mighty Dig lodges your enquiries with it. The secret is checked with BYDA, kept encrypted and never shown again.
• Your assistants: the AI assistants you have allowed to work for you, and a way to stop each one.

The permit's life

Some projects use only Submit. Others take the permit all the way to hand back. The panel shows the steps your project uses, and only to the people who can take them.

Each permit shows the rules version it was raised under. A later change to the project's rules does not move a permit already in hand.

On site

Potholes

Log a pothole, then click where it is on the map. Its depth goes in where you click. Add the service it found, its size and material, how it was found, and who found it, then its photo.

Photos

Add a photo, or Take a photo on a phone. Each photo keeps when and where it was taken, who added it, and a fingerprint that shows it has not been changed. Choose what it shows: before, locator, pothole, shoring, during, incident, after or reinstatement.

A wrong photo can be withdrawn, with the reason. It stays in the history.

Crew sign-on

Each issued permit has a site QR, on the permit and on the printed PDF. The crew scan it with a phone, read Your details (what signing on keeps, and why), give their name and company, and confirm I was briefed on this permit and its conditions. No account is needed. Anyone at the site sees only the permit, its dates and the map; the crew's details are seen only by the people running the work. Forget me on this phone clears what the phone keeps.

Each sign-on records whether the person was on site. At the end of the day the person in charge can sign the crew out.

If a QR gets into the wrong hands, an issuer or a permit admin can make a New site code. The old QR stops opening anything; print the permit again for the new one.

While the work is on

Your project's rules can ask for records while the work is on. What is due shows at the top of the permit, one line each, with the button that records it. Each record has its own sheet and is signed like a step.

Inspections

Inspect the dig as often as the rules say: each shift, each day, every few days, or after an incident, rain or ground movement. After rain or movement, the person in charge or the issuer records it with Rain or ground movement, and where the rules say so an inspection is due before the work goes on. Mark each check (supports, edges, water, spoil and plant, access, and the air where it matters), say whether the dig is safe to work in, and sign. If it is not safe, the sheet becomes the written report: what you found, the action taken, and who you told and when. The issuer is told at once.

Incidents

If a service is struck or nearly struck, or someone is hurt, record the incident: what happened, the service and its owner, the damage, whether anyone was hurt, and whether emergency services were called. If the work stops, the permit is suspended with the incident named.

Then record who was told, when, and their reference: the asset owner, the regulator, the one-call centre. The permit shows each deadline until it is met, and the people running the permit are told if one is missed.

Consents and notices

Record the consents the work needs (road, rail or heritage approvals, with their number and dates) and the notices sent before the work (to a regulator or an asset owner, with when they were sent). If the rules require one, issue or the start of work waits for it, and the permit says what is missing. After the work, record any completion notice the rules ask for.

Certificates

Where the project requires certificates (for example a locator's or an issuer's), each person's certificate is recorded with its number and expiry, and checked when they issue or accept. An expired one stops the step until it is renewed.

Changes

Every change is a signed step. The history keeps what the permit said before and after, who changed it, and why.

Dial before you dig

Before anyone digs, the owners of buried services (water, power, gas, phone) send their plans for the area. In Australia, Mighty Dig prepares the enquiry to BYDA from your drawing, and the plans join the permit.

• Lodged when you sign: the enquiry goes to BYDA when you sign the permit, under your own BYDA account where the project uses one.
• Your own enquiry: you have already lodged one that covers this area. Type its number; Fill from the enquiry brings in the owners.
• Ready to lodge: where the project is not connected to BYDA yet, the enquiry is kept ready and lodged once it is.
• Simulated: when the panel says so, no real enquiry is lodged and nobody is contacted. The answers and plans are samples.

Where the work is (road reserve or private land, and road, nature strip or footpath) and the site address are filled from the map. Always check them: they are filled to save typing, not to decide for you.

Each owner's answer and plans are added as they arrive, and you can carry on meanwhile. A permit cannot be issued until every owner has answered and while any plans are out of date. Plans are usually good for 28 or 30 days; extending a permit checks them again.

The section and 3D

The section along the dig

For a trench drawn as a line, the permit shows a section along it: the ground, the bottom of the dig, and the services that cross it.

• The ground comes from the map's elevation.
• Services from the owners' plans are drawn at an assumed depth, shown dashed, because plans rarely give a surveyed depth.

The dig in 3D

In an app with a 3D scene, Show in 3D draws the dig as a volume below the ground, from the surface down to its deepest point. Permits in 3D shows every permit's volume together, coloured by state, so you can see digs that are close or overlap.

Download the dig as a 3D model (glTF) to open it in a BIM or twin viewer.

Permits and the large view

The Permits tab lists the project's permits in a section for each permit type, with Waiting for me at the top. Search by number, place or words, and narrow the list with Filters. Each permit shows its state and what it is waiting for.

Open a permit to see it on the map, its history and signatures, its conditions, potholes and photos, and its files.

Large view opens the permits as a dashboard: totals by permit type, a filter, and a table you can open permits from. On a phone it opens as a sheet from the bottom.

Pop out opens a permit as a page in its own window, to read, print or keep.

No signal

On site with no signal, the Permits tab still lists the permits this device has opened. Each opens as the copy kept on this device, read only, with when it was kept.

• Nothing can be signed until Mighty Dig can be reached again.
• A comment written with no signal waits on the device and is sent once, when the signal is back.
• Kept copies stay for 14 days from when they were last read. Signing out clears them.

The PDF and downloads

The permit PDF is the permit on paper: the map to scale, the summary, what the area touches, dial before you dig and the plans, the dig, the sign-offs, the conditions, the potholes and photos, and the change history.

As the work goes on, the PDF also lists the crew on site, the inspections, any incidents and who was told, the consents and notices, and the certificates relied on. It is made to the long-term archive standard (PDF/A), with dates, times and measures as your project writes them.

Each PDF carries a check code and a QR to the live record, so anyone can check that the permit has not been changed since. A permit demo is marked as a demo in all of them.

Links to Mighty Dig

Where your app shows them, the panel's header has links to Mighty Dig itself. Each opens in a new tab.

The app's builder chooses which links show (Links to Mighty Dig in the widget's settings). An app run for a client may show only Open in Mighty Dig, or none.

Where permits are kept

• Mighty Dig never deletes a permit. A change makes a new version; the history keeps every earlier one.
• The service is backed up every hour to a second place in Australia, with a copy that cannot be altered.
• Until the app is connected, permits are permit demos, kept only in this browser. The panel says where at the foot of each permit.
• The map's layers are read with your own sign-in to the map. Mighty Dig never sees it.
• The address search uses open address data where the app has set it up (its credit shows under the address once filled), and sends it nothing about you or your permit.

What Mighty Dig keeps about you, and why, is in its privacy policy.

Who to ask

• Which permit you need, or how to fill it in: your supervisor or the project's permit team.
• Your access to a project, or your role on it: the project's permit admin.
• The map, its layers, or access to the app: whoever looks after this app, often the GIS team.
• Mighty Dig itself: tell the project's permit admin, who passes it to Mighty Spatial.

If something does not work

• “Permit sign-in is not set up yet”: the app is not connected to Mighty Dig, so permits are permit demos.
• The sign-in or the sign sheet does not open: allow pop-ups for this app, or let it open in this tab when the panel offers it.
• “This browser cannot use a passkey here”: sign in with the passkey on your phone by its QR code, or open Mighty Dig on the device your passkey is on. A code alone never signs you in.
• “Read the notice about your details first”: read Your details above Sign on, then sign on.
• “Changed since you opened it”: someone else changed the permit. Read what changed, then sign.
• “The history does not check out” or “A signature does not check out”: stop, and tell the project's permit team.
• “The address search could not fill this”: type the address in.
• Drawing does not start: press Esc, then choose Area, Line or Spot again.

Start with Mighty Dig

1. Sign up with your work email. Mighty Dig emails you a code; with it, add a passkey on this device and sign in with it, then name your organisation, and keep your recovery codes somewhere safe, such as your password manager.
2. Your organisation starts with a demo project of sample permits, ready to try, and a 30-day trial. Done with it? An organisation admin presses Hide the demo project in its Settings: it and its sample people leave the Console and the app, nothing is deleted, and Show the demo project in Organisation settings brings it back.
3. Make your first real project with New project.

Console home shows how many permits wait for you, then each of your organisations with its projects. Each project has Open, and Settings for its permit admins. An organisation's admins also get Organisation settings and New project.

Colleagues join a project when a permit admin invites them. Once your organisation holds its email domain, colleagues can also find it and ask to join (see Project and organisation settings).

A new project

New project opens one page. Fill it from the top; the button at the foot says how many things are left.

• Name and organisation: the name as people on site know it.
• The project area: click the map at each corner, then the first corner again. Or find a place and set a radius around it, or add a file (GeoJSON, KML, KMZ or a zipped shapefile, up to 5 MB) whose polygons become the area.
• Place and time: the country, the state or province and, where the country has one, the time zone fill from the map once the area is on it, anywhere in the world; check them. Then the time the working day starts.
• The rules: the place picks the project's rule pack, shown in a line such as Rules from New South Wales, Australia (version 2): deeper-dig rules from 1.5 m. In the UK, choose the nation too. For a place with no pack, choose Somewhere else: the project starts on Mighty Dig's own rules (deeper-dig rules from 1.2 m), and you set the local rules yourself.
• Permit types: tick the ones the project uses. Each starts as a demo: its permits say PERMIT DEMO until an admin switches the type on in its rules.
• People (optional): paste up to 50 work email addresses and choose their roles. Each gets an email to sign in. You can invite more later.

Make the project with your passkey. Its rules start as version 1, taken from the pack.

Rules

A project's rules say what its permits need. Open them with Rules in the project's settings. A change stays a draft until you publish it as a new version, and permits keep the version they were raised under.

For each permit type

• Name and reference prefix: 2 to 6 capital letters or digits, fixed once a permit has a reference.
• Demo or switched on: a demo type's permits say PERMIT DEMO. Switched on, they are real permits.
• The steps, and who signs each: from Submit alone to the full life of review, issue, work, close and hand back.
• Photos needed before issue and before close, and whether issue needs a pothole logged first.
• Notice wanted in working days, with questions to answer at short notice, and the depth from which the deeper-dig rules apply.
• A checklist the permit asks for.
• The pre-start check: what the person in charge ticks at the dig before work begins, each from a depth if it needs one.
• While the work is on: how often the dig is inspected, and after each incident or rain; the full written report when the dig is not safe; who is told of an incident, and by when; the consents issue waits for; the notices before and after the work; and the certificates people must hold.
• Consents near an asset: the network, the kinds of asset, how near and how deep, and the question the applicant answers when the map cannot tell.
• Working days: the weekend, and the public holidays and shutdowns, filled from the pack.

For every permit type

How long the owners' plans stay valid, and how far from the dig an issuer must give a reason.

Publishing

• Add a note for the next version, then Publish with your passkey.
• A second permit admin approves a change to a permit type in use, switching a type on, and any rule made less safe than the place's pack sets. Copy the link for them; they approve with their own passkey.
• Each rule says where it came from, for example Set from New South Wales, Australia.

People and access

A project's people are on its admin page: People in the project's settings, or Admin in your account.

• Invite a person: their name, work email, organisation and roles, and an end date if their access should end. They get an email to sign in within 7 days.
• Each person shows as active, invited or suspended, with their roles, when they joined, when they last signed in, and when their access was last reviewed. Edit changes their roles or end date, suspends them, or removes them.
• Another permit admin changes your own access.
• Access review takes you through everyone's access, so none is kept longer than it is needed. Audit log lists every change to people and settings. Backups shows the latest backups and restore test.

The roles

How people sign in

Each project chooses how its people sign in, with Sign-in in the project's settings.

• Mighty Dig accounts: a passkey; a code emailed to a work address adds one on a new device. Keep them on for people outside your organisation's portal, such as subcontractors.
• Your ArcGIS portal: your organisation's ArcGIS Online or ArcGIS Enterprise accounts sign in. The page shows the steps to register Mighty Dig in your kind of portal, with the address to copy. Then give your portal's address and the client id.
• Roles from portal groups: choose portal groups and the roles each gives. At each sign-in, people get the roles of the groups they are in; in none of them, no access.
• Shared logins: mark a portal login that several people use as shared. It can read and comment, and never signs.

The portal only says who people are. Each step is still signed with a passkey on the person's own device.

Project and organisation settings

A project's settings

• Permit types: each shown as Demo or On. Change them in the rules.
• Connected apps: the apps that keep this project's permits, each with Disconnect. An app is connected from its builder (see Connect to Mighty Dig).
• API keys: for your organisation's own systems. A key prepares drafts and reads; people still sign every step. A new key is shown once.
• Webhooks: an address of your own systems that hears about this project's changes as they happen. Its secret, shown once, lets your systems check each message came from Mighty Dig.

An organisation's settings

• Name, New project, and Assistants: whether AI assistants may work for its people.
• People: say yes or no to anyone asking to join; make someone an admin or a member; remove them. Removing someone here leaves their access to projects as it is: each project's permit admins change that.
• Email domain: claim it, add the TXT record the page gives to your domain's DNS, then check it. Once it is held, choose whether colleagues join as soon as they ask, or an admin says yes first.
• Break-glass key: if Mighty Dig is ever down, this key opens a read-only copy of your organisation's permits, each with its history and PDF. It is shown once, so keep it somewhere safe. Making a new one stops the old one. Mighty Spatial gives the copy's address when it is needed.

Experience Builder

For whoever builds the app in ArcGIS Experience Builder: install the widget, add it next to a map, and connect it to a Mighty Dig project.

Which build

Use the build made for the Experience Builder your app is made in. A build never goes into an older Experience Builder.

Another version needs its own build: ask Mighty Spatial.

Install in ArcGIS Enterprise

A portal administrator does this once per portal.

1. Put the build's whole MightyDig folder on a web server the portal can reach, in a new folder for each release (for example /widgets/mighty-dig/0.1.1/MightyDig/). The server serves it over HTTPS to anyone, allows the portal's address (CORS), and serves .json as application/json.
2. In the portal: Content, My Content, Add Item, An application, Experience Builder widget. Give the address of its manifest.json and add the item.
3. Mighty Dig is now under the custom widgets in Experience Builder.

Install in a Developer Edition app

1. Copy the MightyDig folder into the app's client/your-extensions/widgets/.
2. Restart the client's dev server (npm start in client), so the widget is built cleanly.
3. Publish the app as usual (Download in the builder). The download carries the built widget.

Add it to the app

1. Add a Map widget first, then Mighty Dig. It can sit on the page, in a sidebar or in a widget controller.
2. In its settings, pick the map, say which layers are services, vegetation, heritage and the rest, and pick the permit types the app shows. See The widget's settings.
3. Connect to Mighty Dig. See Connect to Mighty Dig.

The widget needs no portal privileges of its own. The map's layers are read with each person's own ArcGIS sign-in; Mighty Dig never sees it. This guide ships with the widget, as userguide.html in its folder.

The widget's settings

The settings pane sets only what the app owns: the connection, the map and its layers, which permit types the app shows, the address search and the colours. The rules (steps, notice, questions, checklists and conditions) are the project's, set in the Mighty Dig Console.

Connect to Mighty Dig

Connect to Mighty Dig, at the top of the widget's settings, opens a small window:

1. Sign in to Mighty Dig, or start a free trial project.
2. Pick the organisation and the project.
3. Check the app's addresses: where it is published, and where people will open it.
4. Approve with your passkey.

From then on the project's rules apply, and the panel's sign-in is Mighty Dig's. Links in Mighty Dig's emails open each permit in this app.

To let people sign in with their ArcGIS accounts, the project's permit admin sets up the portal in the Mighty Dig Console (How people sign in). Nothing changes in the app. The app's own ArcGIS sign-in is never passed to Mighty Dig.

The app's addresses

• Connect approves the address the app runs at: in ArcGIS Enterprise, the portal's.
• An address many apps share, such as experience.arcgis.com, can only run the demo.
• A new address means Connect again, or a permit admin adds it in the Mighty Dig Console.
• In the Developer Edition the builder runs on your computer, so Connect asks where the app will be published and approves that address. Your computer's own address works for a day, on demo and trial projects only.