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Utilizing photos collected in Field Maps

TimSolomonson

Myself and members of my organization collected a bunch of data points on a company outing using the Field Maps app. These point features included photos and a few other attributes. I'd like to view these images in ArcPro, and eventually create a dynamic map where those images and attributes can be viewed in a StoryMap outside our organization. I have yet to find a way to get to the photos outside of the Field Map app itself. I'm a relative novice to the ArcOnline and Field Maps applications, but have moderate skill in ArcPro.

Any help is greatly appreciated! Thank you, Tim

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JeffShaner

Hi @TimSolomonson - this article may help you in how to extract photos from attachments in ArcGIS Pro. You will need to export the feature Ωservice as a FileGDB first. Then you should be able to use the photos directly within your story maps.

You could consider using the layer in an ArcGIS Dashboard as well. Dashboards will recognize attachments directly.

Hope this helps!

andrewRaaf

Extracting photos in another tool is not an acceptable solution. The Field-Maps app should simply save Jpegs to the phones photo memory. We really need this feature. The photos should not be locked up in the Arc ecosystem. #FreeTheJpegs and update the app to just save a copy of the jpegs to the phone's camera roll. Then we can use our own photo mgmt software without using a bunch of BS tools just to get access to our own photos. Thanks.

nancyvonmeyer

I agree that there needs to be a solution. it's now November 2022

JustinReynolds

What am I missing here? The response here seems to be on the up and up. The OP has access to ArcGIS Pro and the feature service (hosted or referenced). Each piece of software mentioned is in the ESRI ecosystem... they have all the pieces that is. Everything can be brought straight into Pro or Story Maps via ArcGIS Online, where the data was submitted to, the photos included.

The photos don't live in the Field Maps App, they where submitted to the datastore in AGOL 1 feature at a time by multiple people throughout the outing.

Even if it is all about access to the photos and Field Map's DID save them to the device and you wanted to cut ArcGIS out of the picture, you would still have to transfer them to a computer which require the use another tool to extract them from everyone's camera rolls and yet another piece of software to get them all in one place and yet another piece of software to create a product of them. At least here they are all in one place and with proper associations to their features and there is the option to be used natively in ArcGIS Apps.

If this was an offline workflow and everything failed to sync, then that is another matter, but that was not indicated.

While FM saving to the camera roll would be nice to have, one easy solution is to just own your photos to start with. Take the photo with whatever photo app you want & maintain them in whatever photo mgmt software you want on your device, simply attach them to your features in FM from your camera roll rather than choosing to use the built-in camera app where ESRI won't save to the camera roll. It is a pretty common workflow to have an app running in the background, take a photo, and then bring your app back to the foreground to attach the photo.

For example, on certain projects our staff are required to use something like Theodolite or Solcator for taking photos so that we have a stamped and unstamped versions and attach both in FM.

At an enterprise level, the last thing I want is for 100's or 1000's of users to be managing their own photos with xyz app across 100's of projects. I wouldn't even want 1 user managing the photos on 1 project. I want the attachments in my database in real-time, associated with their feature data so that I can do whatever we need to with them and whenever we need. Having the photos save to the camera roll might even be a security risk or NDA breach on certain projects. It is also kind of nice not having my phone bloated with a bunch of work pictures and videos.

I get it though, some users create the feature service and deploy the map as well as collect data in the field and then have to process the data and attachments at the end of the day; but, I'm still not sure what exactly are we seeking a solution to? The map can be embedded into StoryMaps where the photos would be accessible via the feature's popup or a dashboard can be built. The photo's can be extracted with Pro with direct access to the feature service and these can be used to create a Story Map. Attachment extraction can be automated with the REST or Python API's or FME or a host of other cloud services. You can own the photos in your camera roll and attach to Field Maps instead capturing directly in Field Maps so that you have direct access to the free, unadulterated jpegs on your device. Maybe having a map level option to save photos to the device is the solution, then the owner of the map can decide what happens.

nancyvonmeyer

Justin - I wanted to have "citizens" collect information about features and then process the features in ArcGIS Pro - i.e. add to our trails dataset feature class and then we publish that as a publicly available web map. Story maps and dashboard are not the applications. Obviously you have much more skill at this and it is not as obvious to me and I can not find documentation on how to manage and use field map collected pictures in a relatively simple manner. , so when I add the collected features to my arcgis pro project to process the collected data, I don't see the photos which I was using for location verification. Please enlighten me.

andrewRaaf

The solution we (I) am seeking is to have Field Maps save a copy of the JPEG to the phone's photo memory. Everyone's workflow and project needs are different so I'm not going to waste space defending the "why" of needing this feature. The old ESRI collector app used to save the JPEGs like this so it's certainly possible. #FreeTheJpegs.

nancyvonmeyer

I am onboard with you andrew - please let me know if you find a solution

JustinReynolds

Hey Nancy,

In order to see the attachments in ArcGIS Pro you need to select the features of interest and open the attribute pane and browse through the list of selected items in the pane (using the up and down arrows works well). If a feature has attachments they will show up in the attachments tab in the attribute pane.

I'm with you that it would be nice if ArcGIS Pro had an attachment viewer or manager, or suite of built in tools to help that way there was something readily available and intuitive. I didn't dig too deeply, but doing a quick search for ideas on the subject here in the community I didn't come across any posted ideas for such a thing so that might be a good one to post.

Given that the attribute pane is about the only option in Pro, if I had to review and process photos in Pro I would spend a few minutes getting things setup to improve the my workflow a bit. It would look like the following.

Create an integer field (short or long) to hold the number of attachments that a feature has.
Calculate the field by counting the number of attachments using a 1 line arcade expression
Filter out any features that do not have attachments
Sort the features by the number of attachments and select all features
Open the attributes pane & select a feature (the button can be found on the ribbon on the Map or Edit tabs)
Click attachments then double click to open the attachment.

Steps 5 & 6 are the only steps needed to see the attachments, steps 1 through 4 are quality of life.

If you are wondering how I changed the display name of each feature in the attributes pane to show the ObjectID and the number of attachments this is done in the layer's properties. Below is an example.

JustinReynolds

Hi Andrew,

No doubt it is possible. In Field Maps, this was either by design, planned future functionality, or an oversight. We now have seen apps where we are forced in either direction (it saves the photo or doesn't) and it seems that being forced one way or the other is the true undesirable outcome. Given that there are arguments for both sides, the solution is to give the owner of the layer or perhaps the map the option to decide this behavior.

Perhaps a new Field Maps Idea is in order?

Field Maps: Add an Option to #FreeTheJpegs

In the meantime, call it a solution or a workaround, but take the photo with xyz mobile app and attach the photo in Field Maps... the jpegs were never not free and it cuts ESRI out of the process.

SineKelly_AEC

Hey Justin, please may you provide some advise or guidance on how to extract or view the photos in Pro? When opening the feature service from AGOL in Pro, I would have hoped that the photos would be visible in the pop-ups, but they are not. Is there a way to achieve this?

We need to export a point layer with photos attached, as a fgdb or shapefile (can be flexible on format). is this possible?

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