Latest Contributions by MarikaVertzonis

AI assistants in Survey123 are maturing. In a separate post you can read about the Survey123 assistant and how to use a conversation to help you design a survey and translate survey designs. Also as exciting, is our progress in extracting information from images using natural language prompt (by generative AI). Over the last year our early adopters have provided great feedback about this capability, and it is now included in the Survey123 web designer as a beta feature for everyone to try. Consider the following scenarios: When recording a traffic violation, after capturing a photo of the vehicle, you want to enter the details of license plate number, vehicle color, and vehicle model into separate questions in the survey. During a hydrant inspection, from the hydrant photo, you need to describe the state of the hydrant: in good condition, need maintenance, or is missing. In both examples, the respondent could manually enter these details directly into the questions in the form themselves. But if many records are being captured, any opportunity to automate data entry is good, to minimize errors and to save time. The respondent can always correct the response that is generated, but human data validation is more efficient (and accurate) than human data entry. Let’s focus on the traffic violation scenario above. The survey author would configure each of the text questions in the survey to perform a calculation on the image question to extract the information required:   In the web designer, choose to edit the calculation of the text question (say License plate number) Select Vehicle image, and Analyze image from Extract property from the question  Enter the prompt “Extract the license plate number from the vehicle”   Once the survey is published, the web app will automatically populate the questions that have been configured using the assistant, once they capture a photo:   To use the image analysis tool (beta), the following must be configured by an ArcGIS organization administrator: Disable the Block Esri apps and capabilities while they are in beta toggle. For more information see Blocked Esri apps. Enable the Allow use of AI assistants by members of your organization toggle button. For more information see Allow AI assistants Enable Analysis tools in the Survey123 website organization settings. For more information see Organization settings  EDIT NOVEMBER 2025 - text analysis and audio transcription are now also in beta. Learn more here, Make your Survey123 forms smarter with AI-powered image, text, and audio analysis ... View more

AI assistants in Survey123 are maturing. In my last post on the topic – Survey123 assistants (beta) – I lumped a whole lot of exciting things together, that deserve to be unraveled. Now available in preview, the Survey123 assistant uses generative AI to do the following: Use a conversation to help you design a survey in the web designer. Translate survey designs in the web designer or in Survey123 Connect.   Design a survey through conversation   Using a conversation is a great way to get started with creating a new survey in the web designer. Of course you can change the type of question that is used, or modify the wording to suit your organization, but effort of laying out a series of select questions and all its options can be unnecessarily laborious. Be sure to give the assistant clear and specific instructions for a strong response. Here are some good examples to try. First up is a sentiment survey: "Create a post-event feedback survey. Start with a group of questions about the attendee's demographics, including age and zip code. Then, create another group for feedback on the event, with questions about session quality and venue satisfaction." How about an inspection for damage assessment: "Build a detailed property damage assessment form. The first section should capture the inspector's details. The second section should have questions about the property's location and the date of assessment. A third section should detail the damage, including photo uploads and a description of the extent of the damage." Or a scientific data collection form: "Create a professional water quality sampling survey for our environmental field crews. This survey will be their main tool for data collection at each site, so it needs to be robust. I need to capture the sample ID, pH level, water temperature in Celsius, and turbidity. It must also have a geopoint question to log the location. Please think about the entire field collection process and add other relevant fields that would make this a complete tool for a field scientist. For example, consider adding a spot for general notes, a photo of the water body, or a single-choice question for weather conditions during the sampling." Commercial field operations don’t miss out either. Here’s a prompt for marathon registration form: "I am the race director for our annual city marathon, and I need a comprehensive registration form that helps with both logistics and runner safety. Please start with the basics: runner's full name, date of birth for age group calculation, and t-shirt size (S, M, L, XL, XXL). I also definitely need a section for their emergency contact person and phone number. Now, make this form truly useful for managing a major athletic event. Add questions that would help with race logistics and safety. Think about things like placing runners in the right starting corral based on their estimated finish time, or a text box for any medical conditions we should be aware of. Feel free to add any other fields you think a race director would need." You don’t need to accept the first response from the assistant, refine the survey with additional prompts. Then once you generate the survey in the web designer you can continue to refine it, by modifying, removing or adding questions, or changing any other settings that you would change in a manually created survey. For more information, see Design a survey using a conversation or watch this video, Create a survey with an ArcGIS assistant   Translate survey designs   Multi-language surveys are ideal when working with communities of respondents where many languages are spoken; however, survey translation can be a lengthy task. Utilizing AI for initial translations is an excellent time-saving approach. Translation generation absolutely should not replace human translators, but rather serves as a more efficient method to performing task – refine translations rather than start from scratch. The assistant can be used to translate surveys in either the web designer or Survey123 Connect. In both, you first nominate which languages you want the survey translated into, and then the assistant will create translations for text in the survey design. For more information see Translation assistant in the web designer Generate translations in Survey123 Connect   What is preview?   Please be sure to read this FAQ: What is Preview?, but in short, it’s a step between beta and general release. Preview features are documented, and we encourage you to use preview features and provide as much feedback on them as possible. Note: Your ArcGIS Online administrator must configure assistants before you can access the Survey123 assistant (preview). For more information see the product documentation, Survey123 assistant (preview). ... View more

The following information is out of date. Please refer to the latest information on assistants at Survey123 assistant (preview) and Survey123 analysis tools (beta)   AI assistants can be used in Survey123 to do the following: use a conversation to help you design a survey in the web designer extract information from images, audio, and text, in the web app translate survey designs in the web designer or in Connect Survey123 assistants leverage large language model (LLM) and machine learning technologies. Specifically, Microsoft Azure OpenAI service is used for the Survey123 assistant and Microsoft Azure AI Translator Service for the translation assistant. Survey123 assistants follow the data security and privacy guidelines of ArcGIS Online. These capabilities are disabled by default and only enabled when an organization administrator has opted in. To enable these features, organization administrators need to:  Navigate to the AI assistants section on the ArcGIS Online organization settings page and turn on the Allow use of AI assistants by members of your organization option. Go to the Survey123 website, open the Organization -> Settings tab, and under the Extensions section turn on the Survey123 assistant and Translation assistant. Whilst these assistants are in beta, please join our early adopter community to learn more and provide us with feedback. Before clicking the following links, be sure to register and sign into the Early Adopter Community. Survey123 assistant (web designer) to design a survey, to process images captured and extract recognizable information, or for audio transcription and text analysis Translation assistant (web designer) Generate translations (Survey123 Connect)   Similar but different, are smart assistants in the field app. Configured for image questions, smart assistants can perform image classification, object detection, and object redaction. These capabilities rely on machine learning models that are located on the device and do not use online generative AI services. For more information see Smart assistants.   ... View more