Deleting Assignments Requires Reload of Field App

Question

OVERVIEW:

My organization just migrated from Workforce Classic to Workforce and we have implemented a process to delete Assignments from Workforce and after this process runs, the field users are unable to sync.  In order to retrieve new assignments, the field users must reload the field app on their iOS device.

BUSINESS CASE:

We delete closed, cancelled, and declined assignments from the Workforce Assignments feature service after they have been in that state for more than 2 weeks (and have been sync'd with our onsite corporate repository) to reduce our storage footprint and make the Workforce Dispatcher map easier to use.

ISSUE DETAILS:

What we have noticed is that users that have had an assignment deleted are unable to sync after the delete has taken place.  They initiate a sync on the field app, but the sync never finishes (usually takes 10-30 seconds to sync) after waiting 5 minutes plus, no sync occurs.  If the field user 'reloads' the project, subsequent syncs occur.

QUESTION:

We have paused our delete automation because we don't want to force our users to reload the project daily or even weekly.  Is this expected behavior?  Should we expect to reload the project on field devices if records are deleted from the Workforce Assignments service?

Thanks for the input...

- Jake

Brady · Answer

Hi Jake,

From our experience, do not upgrade to the new workforce.

We just migrated 1800+ jobs back into workforce classic with a lot of manual handling, FME, and python scripts to migrate 2k+ attachments.

We experienced long waits for notifications of new jobs outside what is expected from the auto-sync options.

There are sync issues with jobs not appearing on phones from IOS and Android. Attachments are not syncing properly and this was causing considerable distress on the despatchers and workers in the field.

We worked with Esri Australia and Globally to troubleshoot this and the issues have been reproduced. They are currently working on issues with hopefully fixes coming in the near future.

This was a very painful and time-consuming experience for us and we would be very wary of migrating again without extensive testing.

It doesn't help when you want to retain the created user and created date in the assignment layer as lose those on migration. I had to concatenate those into the description so as to not lose them.

JakeMatthys · Answer

Hi @Anonymous User,

Thanks for investigating and it is re-assuring to see that you were unable to re-create the issue, that tells us that we should expect to be able to delete assignments from the Assignments service and not adversely affect the Workforce project.

At this point it is difficult to speculate on how our Workforce project got wrecked, but we have been experiencing sync issues since we deleted assignments.  We are going to create a new Workforce project and migrate to a new project rather than focusing on fixing our existing project.  Again, thanks for confirming that we should be able to delete assignments without adverse affects.

- Jake

Anonymous User · Answer

Hi @JakeMatthys

I was unable to reproduce this. This is what I did:
1. Create a new project and add myself as a worker

2. Add 3 assignments and assign them to myself

3. Open the mobile app (I see the 3 assignments)

4. Finish one assignment, decline one assignment, and start one assignment

5. Then I sync

6. Then on the backend I deleted the finished and declined assignments

7. I pause the remaining assignment and then do a sync

8. Everything syncs fine.

9. I deleted the last assignment

10. Sync and the assignment is removed from my device.

Am I missing a step? Which part is not working for you?

Is this with ArcGIS Online or Enterprise? If Enterprise, which version?