Survey123 end-users can get lost in a 'sea' of blank basemap when offline, when the end-user is located well outside the basemap's extent. It can be almost impossible to find where the offline map is by scrolling around:
Blank area outside an offline basemap extent
This has happened where we have more than one offline basemap, in order to divide up the operational area into small enough offline basemap downloads for their device (e.g. MBs not GB). And the end-user has picked the wrong offline basemap, so only sees blank.
We need to assist users when lost. Some ideas are:
- Pointer: somehow point the user towards the offline extent. Could be a big arrow pointing towards the blank area. Or:
- Nested extents: fill in the blank area with a low-zoom map. This implies allowing a second larger but coarser extent. Or:
- Basemap Picker: it could outline all the offline extents on a new overview map, with a blue dot showing where the user is located. Or:
- XLSForm: in Survey123 Connect, detect the users location. Then set the default basemap (per individual map Question) to the nearest offline map, using the map parameter in the body::esri:style column. If not near any basemap, then alert the user to ask for a basemap. An issue is that XLSForm has no way of finding out which downloadable offline basemaps have been downloaded to the individual device.
