Updating Inbox List from Records Submitted to Related Table

Question

I am looking to create a workflow that involves an initial survey in the field to search and capture predatory invasive species, then a follow-up survey in the lab to record data related to necropsy results.

This seems like a pretty standard workflow that could be accomplished with a linked lab survey populating a table related to the field survey and using a Inbox query to select the captured species records.

After the captured predator is necropsied I would like it to be marked complete and removed from the Inbox list. How would I accomplish this? Is there a way I could have the related necropsy table update a Complete: Yes/No field in the field capture table?

dougbrowning · Answer

If you are just having them edit a Yes/No field I would take a look at ArcGIS for Excel.  You can link the feature service in then put in a filter in Excel and it would show them as they came in.  Then they can edit the Yes/No with a drop down box from the domain.  Got to be careful on what they can edit but a View could fix that up for you.  Users may be more comfortable in Excel and no app to learn.  Each repeat table would be its own tab.

Other idea is they opened up simple editing in Dashboards now.  Then you could have fancy charts on how many are still open, have live refresh, color coding, checkmarks when done, and all of that.  Would be way slicker than using 123 just to edit a field.

Hope that helps

DustyJordan · Answer

Hi Ryan, you have the right of it. Instead of manually updating a field in the parent table though, I was hoping I could somehow update that field based on the submission of the necropsy record to the child table. I'm not sure this is possible, but I'll keep digging around and read through that documentation you linked.

The feature layer/table structure would look something like this, I think:

* Feature Layer 0 - Location Data* DateTime
* Observer
* Location
* Weather Conditions
* Etc.* Related Table 1 - Capture Data* Captured? Yes/No
* Necropsy Complete? Yes/No
* Etc. * Related Table 2 - Necropsy Data* Inbox Query where Captured=Yes AND Necropsy Complete=No
* Submitted Record Updates Table 1 record to Complete=Yes
* Completed Necropsy are removed from the Inbox "to-do" list.

EDIT: I realized as I wrote this out and thought about it for a second that I could probably accomplish this by just having the field survey form contain fields for writing to layers 0 and 1, and the lab survey form just write to tables 1 and 2. I would just need to limit the necropsy data repeats to 1.

ryanuthoff · Answer

If I understand correctly, you want to remove surveys from the inbox in your initial survey after you marked it as complete? If that's the case, I believe you can do that using the inbox query expression and just create an expression that says "complete='yes'" or something like that. You could include that field as a hidden field in your survey and just set the default value as "no." Then you can manually change it to "yes" later, which should remove the survey from your inbox.

You can find more information about that in the "Enable the inbox" section here.

Now it might get a little more complicated when relating your necropsy table back to your initial survey and marking surveys as complete that way. I had an idea.....but as I was typing it out, I realized it might not work. However, I'll go ahead and give you the documentation here. It shows you how to use a custom S123 URL to open a previously sent survey, which you could use to open your initial survey. However, it requires you to know the GlobalID of the record you want to edit, which you won't have in your necropsy survey. So it might not work, but just putting it out there in case it gives you any ideas.

Others might have some better ideas, but that's the way I know of how to (sort of) accomplish it.