Esri Community’s "How They Helped Me" series features members sharing meaningful professional accomplishments and how those were made possible by assistance from others on the platform. These stories illuminate the often unrecognized threads of connection between Esri Community users and the impact that knowledge sharing can have on others around the world.
Every summer, the Town of Marana in Arizona must prepare for the looming monsoon that can unleash intensive rainfall. Before peak activity arrives, the Town must complete a full round of manhole inspections to identify and address water infrastructure needs, ensuring the system is ready to handle heavy volumes. It’s a critical project and in July 2025, I set out to make inspections faster and smarter.
As the GIS Enterprise Administrator for the Town of Marana, I rely on many sources to keep pace with the GIS and Esri products we use to serve our municipality. When faced with questions about ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Survey123, and even ArcGIS Enterprise, I’ll frequently turn to Esri Community to see if past questions or solutions can help address challenges. Believe me when I say that the Esri Community has come in handy more often than not during my GIS career!
My goal for the 2025 inspection cycle was to build a map that would enable field crew members to tap on individual manholes, automatically returning each manhole’s unique identification number directly to a Survey123 form. Eliminating manual data entry in the field would speed up the process and significantly reduce the risk of human error. The concept was solid, but I soon ran into technical hurdles I couldn’t work through on my own. As I’d done many times before, I turned to the Esri Community for help and, after researching past questions and solutions, I shared my predicament in a post: S123 Form Clickable Map NOT working to return attribute from a polygon
Rapid Solutions from Esri Community MVPs
In under an hour, Esri Community MVP @Neal_t_k spotted my post and replied with several promising suggestions that cracked the door back open on a way forward. (Yay!). Some pieces were still proving elusive, though, and I needed more help. Another MVP, @abureaux, chimed in with a successful recommendation that ArcGIS Field Maps be used to select points before launching into Survey123. While that wasn’t quite the within-Survey123 solution I needed, it was another move in the right direction. The collaborative back and forth lasted no more than a few hours before @Neal_t_k broke through with a final answer. (WooHoo!).
I needed to use Esri Units in the Calculation Field to overcome the challenge I was running into in the Survey123 Connect XML file. This meant using a geopoint (type) with a text (type) that contains the following in the Calculation column of the XML to be used in Survey123 Connect.
Image: Partial XML to see the geopoint and text in the “type” column, and the
beginning of the “calculation” column.
The Calculation
pulldata(“@layer”, “getValueAt”, “attributes.AttributeFieldName”, “https://ServerName/server/rest/services/LocationInREST/FeatureServer/#?distance=10&units=esriSRUnit_Foot”, ${NameOfGeopointTypeInXML})
The Calculation Explained
- The pulldata(“@layer”) with the getValueAt retrieves the data from a single attribute – attributes.AttributeFieldName in a feature layer
- The data is pulled from the REST Service in the listed URL https:// and be sure to include the REST Service #
- And the ?distance=10 with the &units=esriSRUnit_Foot calculates a circular buffer of 10 feet around a point (Note: The first parameter is a ‘?’ followed by a ‘&’ for any additional parameters)
- The ${NameOfGeopointTypeinXML} is the name of the geopoint question in your XML
Image: ArcGIS Survey123 Form in Connect to view the automatically returned attribute
of a Manhole Number when that asset is clicked.
Help for the Town of Marana is Help for Many Others
Deploying this new process has made a tangible difference for the Town of Marana. Field crew members working through the inspection cycle are moving faster than before, with each stop requiring less time for data entry. By design, the new process also reduces the risk of errors, boosting safety and reliability for our residents. The time field workers reclaim through that efficiency is used for other important tasks.
A page visit counter for my original post shows that many others have “stopped by” to read the thread in the year since it was published. It’s a reminder that working openly to solve problems in a connected Esri GIS Community creates value that extends far beyond the single person who spoke up and reached out to others. Every question answered can be a resource for someone else navigating similar challenges.
Thank you @Neal_t_k and @abureaux! Your expertise and willingness to help made this solution possible.
