Auto-updating of Offline Areas

Question

I am having this reoccurring issue with Field Maps where the offline areas will not update as scheduled and sometimes manual updates fail.

Some information about the goal of this project:

I have field inspectors that go out to inspect sites every day. They use Field Maps and Survey123 to do so. After a site has been checked, the 'Priority' of that site changes from '1' to '3' and the symbology changes accordingly. The inspectors need to be able to see these changes in priority so they can plan for their day.

Some information on inspector set-up:

* Inspectors are using iPads
* Offline areas are created by in-office field staff

Some information about the workflow:

* Inspectors use Field Maps to navigate to a point in a hosted feature layer
* From the point, they click a link which directs them to Survey123 to fill out a survey
* The survey information is fed into a database
* The database updates the hosted feature layer through a custom 3rd party python script every evening
* The hosted feature layers shows these updates as they occur

Some information about the Field Map Configuration:

* Online map has one feature layer (inspection points)* Feature layer has a related table

* Online map is using an ESRI basemap
* The hosted feature layer has sync enabled
* The hosted feature layer is not a tile layer
* Field Maps online clears the map for offline use

Where the heart and soul of my issue is:

The offline areas will not update for the inspectors to download. When I view Field Maps online it shows that they did not automatically update, sometimes when I try to manually update, it just fails, sometimes it doesn't. Inspectors have indicated issues with update failures from their tablets as well when they try to 'sync up'.

Ideally, I could create these offline areas, the inspectors could go out for work, the feature layer would update with the Survey123 data and the inspectors could sync and get an updated offline area for their use for the day.

I am not sure where this issue is coming from, the Survey123 issue, the backload updating from the database, my map configuration. I feel like I've troubleshot and troubleshot. Any direction would be much appreciated.

cschooley · Answer

I have gotten a 'replica sync' error before but not always, provided by the Field Maps app on the iPad.

5/24/21, 9:42 AM FAILED for C637A1D8-F30C-4474-9300-B21547E005CA with error: Error Domain=com.esri.arcgis.runtime.services.error Code=404 "Unable to unregister replica." UserInfo={NSLocalizedFailureReason=Replica with GUID : {c637a1d8-f30c-4474-9300-b21547e005ca} does not exist on the server., NSURL=https://services.arcgis.com/MYFEATURELAYER, responseJSON={
    error =     {
        code = 404;
        details =         (
            "Replica with GUID : {c637a1d8-f30c-4474-9300-b21547e005ca} does not exist on the server."
        );
        message = "Unable to unregister replica.";
    };
}, NSLocalizedDescription=Unable to unregister replica.}

This has shown up once for me.

Sometimes when creating the offline areas for use, the online Field Maps will also just fail, without providing a reason why. There doesn't appear to be a real error code (at least not that I can see). It just fails sometimes.

AlexanderVencill2 · Answer

Does Field Maps give you an error code when it fails?

I am experiencing a similar issue in collector where offline areas will fail to download sometimes, but other times will return a timeout error and fail to download.