topic Re: Dispatching Field Maps Tasks in ArcGIS Field Maps Questions

Dispatching Field Maps Tasks

MDBowser — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 01:28:48 GMT

With ArcGIS Workforce retiring, and replaced with Tasks within the Field Maps App - what are we supposed to provide for our dispatchers for Task Assignment?! Is there an equivalent to Workforce for this? The documentation on this is super limited at this point.

I understand there is the Field Maps Designer for deploying this, however, this is for the technical GIS staff to deploy. The solution I require is something for dispatchers to assign and manage work assignments (tasks) for mobile crews.

Did Esri just abandon this component of ArcGIS Workforce and require users to develop it on their own?

Anyone in the know, please help!

Cheers,
Mike

Re: Dispatching Field Maps Tasks

ChrisDunn1 — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 16:58:00 GMT

Hi @MDBowser ,

Because Tasks work with a single hosted feature layer instead of the multiple layers needed for Workforce, the layer can easily be brought into a variety of editing clients for dispatching. You can use the Web Editor, Experience Builder, Map Viewer, ArcGIS Pro, Field Maps, or a variety of Instant Apps (such as Manager or Sidebar) to create a custom dispatching experience to suit your needs. This will also allow you to leverage forms and arcade to streamline and further customize your dispatching process.

If you have any specific dispatching needs you're trying to achieve let me know and we can offer some more specific guidance.

Chris

Re: Dispatching Field Maps Tasks

MDBowser — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 17:30:33 GMT

Hey Chris,

Thanks for your reply. I guess I understand the concept, however wouldn't it make sense for Esri to have put together a dispatching instant app or experience builder template to facilitate this transition for users that have been utilizing the workforce dispatching application? Something that can have a consistent look and feel, provide at least parity to the functionality of workforce, so they are not left hanging with a new project of developing their own? I think this is especially important when there is such a short timeline for deprecation. Perhaps there is something out there already you recommend or you can provide this feedback to the project manager of this functionality? Perhaps you can loop in Esri's Liz Armstrong into this thread?

Re: Dispatching Field Maps Tasks

LizArmstrong — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 17:53:42 GMT

Hi there,

Tasks is very flexible framework, as Chris mentioned, and we have a range of options for you to create custom dispatching experiences that match your custom tasks workflows.

We do have a great option to get up and running immediately. Our Instant Apps' Manager template provides a dispatching experience that you can very quickly spin up in less than 5 minutes to use for dispatching tasks.

Give it a try and see what you think. Happy to take down any specific feedback about your dispatching needs.

Also, I want to take this opportunity to clarify something. Our deprecation notices give customers a "heads up" that we will be retiring the product. In our deprecation notice, we outline the retirement dates which are with ArcGIS Online in the Q3 2026 update and from ArcGIS Enterprise 12.2 in the Q3 2026 release. Hopefully this provides some clarification about how much time you will have to transition from Workforce to using tasks in Field Maps!

Re: Dispatching Field Maps Tasks

MDBowser — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 18:00:00 GMT

HI Liz,

Thank you for your reply. Do you have a demo or video of sorts of the manager instant app used in a dispatching context? I did deploy this and had a look, and on initial glance did not look very useful from a dispatching perspective - this looks mostly geared towards reviewing attribute tables. I do not see here one would setup creating and assigning tasks to mobile workers.

A side question: will there be functionality to assign a task to multiple workers?

Thank you again for your help!

Mike

Re: Dispatching Field Maps Tasks

Laura — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 19:45:17 GMT

I just want to comment in support of assigning a task to multiple workers.

Re: Dispatching Field Maps Tasks

Laura — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 19:49:46 GMT

I've configured our tasks to support work order management rather than focusing on training and deploying the workforce. Field crews are now using Field Maps, and supervisors are assigning tasks through Experience Builder. I designed an editor interface that matches the format they're familiar with, allowing them to easily create tasks directly within the app.

The GIS team should collaborate with the supervisors to define the types of tasks that can be assigned, ensuring everything is set up properly in advance because you will choose a task type rather than type out what the task is every time.

Re: Dispatching Field Maps Tasks

LizArmstrong — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 23:53:00 GMT

Hi,

We do not currently have a video demo illustrating managing tasks with the Instant Apps Manager template but we intend to do a Tips from the Team video on that. Meanwhile, I can highlight the key functionality in the Instant Apps Manager template that Workforce also had:

Ability to create, edit (including assign), and delete individual tasks
Ability to batch create, edit (including assign), and delete tasks
Ability to see a map and a table view of the tasks
Ability to sort and filter tasks based on various criteria like due date, assignee, etc.

If you have other dispatching requirements, I'm happy to take those down and share it with the teams that build Instant Apps and Experience Builder.

Tasks does not currently support being able to assign a single task to multiple workers. Would you mind sharing your use case for that and I can log it as an enhancement request? I'm not sure if it would fit your scenario but there is a way to have an unassigned task list where workers can pick up work.

Re: Dispatching Field Maps Tasks

LizArmstrong — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 23:53:39 GMT

Thank you for sharing. Would you mind sharing your use cases for why assigning tasks to multiple workers would be helpful?

Re: Dispatching Field Maps Tasks

Laura — Wed, 22 Oct 2025 13:19:30 GMT

One example of how we're currently using tasks is at our city cemetery. We have two full-time field workers who often work together on assignments. When new tasks come up, they're typically not specific to one individual, so we end up leaving them marked as "unassigned"—which, frankly, gets frustrating.

It would be much more efficient if we could assign tasks to both workers simultaneously. That way, instead of having them filter their Field Maps for unassigned tasks, they could just see what's relevant to them directly.

Re: Dispatching Field Maps Tasks

ChrisDunn1 — Wed, 22 Oct 2025 15:11:52 GMT

Hi @Laura,

While there is no way to, for instance, pick multiple users from a drop-down list as the assignee, it is possible to assign tasks to multiple assignees with some changes to the task layer and the task configuration.

Essentially, you can create a field that contains all of the assignee names, and use a task filter that looks for the current user’s username anywhere in the field. To do it:

- Create a text field called “all_assignees” or similar

- When creating or assigning tasks, populate that field with the names of all mobile workers who need to see the task, i.e. “mobile_worker_1, mobile_worker_2, mobile_worker_4” etc.

Think about how this should work from the dispatching side. Maybe you use templates for the different options, maybe you use calculated values based on a “Crew” field so the dispatcher can pick the crew and the crew usernames are automatically added to the field. Maybe you use arcade to intersect with a site boundary and assign the workers that way. There are a lot of ways to automate creation of this list to keep dispatchers from having to enter names manually, it will really depend on your workflow and data.

- Create your task filter. You could edit the “Assigned to Me” filter, or create a new one. The top filter in the list will be the default filter when opening the map. Use the expression:

all_assignees like ‘%CURRENT_USER%’

Note that `all_assignees` is the example field name I used above, so use whatever field you created to hold the list of names.

This will result in any person listed in the field seeing the task in their list when they open the app

After that, any additional changes to the tasks configuration will depend on how you want things to work. Would the workers still pick up tasks individually? Or would they always tackle them as a team? You may want to adjust the “pickup” action accordingly to only change the status and not the assignee.

I’m happy to go over things in more detail if this looks like a solution that would work for you.

Chris

Re: Dispatching Field Maps Tasks

MDBowser — Wed, 22 Oct 2025 21:36:21 GMT

Thank you for the information.

I have been pouring over the documentation trying to understand how this relates to the Workforce functionality that is being deprecated and I am struggling to understand what functionality exists vs not. In workforce I can assign a task to a mobile worker - this is linked to the data collection map for that specific assignment. How does this work with Tasks now? If my mobile worker has 4 different data collection maps in field maps, how does the assigned task steer them to the correct map to begin data collection? And on this note, how does one expose all these tasks for a dispatcher to pick from? From what I can see here - this functionality is lost as this is all based on one data collection map?

The challenge we have here is we literally just pitched workforce functionality for our org to get buy in as a solution for work order management for field data collection - and they loved the functionality. Now we have to retract that, which is pretty frustrating. So I need to flush out what we can and can not do with this new paradigm. Perhaps you have a functionality matrix between workforce vs tasks you can share?

Thank you for your help.

Re: Dispatching Field Maps Tasks

Laura — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 13:19:12 GMT

You enable a tasks layer per map in field maps designer.

Re: Dispatching Field Maps Tasks

NICK_COG — Fri, 24 Oct 2025 17:46:19 GMT

Liz,

Wanted to let you know I have found the manager instant app particularly useful, our staff has been able to use it without issue.

It would be awesome if you could configure the filters in the dispatch map to be 1:1 with the filters created in the Field Maps Designer, rather than having to recreate the attribute filters manually.

Re: Dispatching Field Maps Tasks

ChrisDunn1 — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 14:15:45 GMT

Hi @MDBowser,

One of the key things to remember is that Tasks rely on a single feature layer as a way to be more flexible within our system. When you enable tasks on a layer, or create a new tasks layer from scratch, the appropriate fields are added to the layer, such as task type, assignee, due date, priority, etc. The layer can be added to any map, app, dashboard, or experience. That layer can be designated as the Tasks layer within a map using Field Maps Designer. This is a change from Workforce, where the assignments in a workforce project were managed in multiple layers that were joined "behind the scenes" by the application itself.

If the mobile worker opens a map where the Tasks layer has been enabled in Designer, then they’ll see the features in the to-do list experience. That layer is still just a feature layer, so dispatchers can create new tasks in the layer using any method you would normally use to add features: map viewer, web editor, an instant app, ArcGIS Pro, python, power automate, or even Field Maps itself.

The number of task maps and layers is really up to your needs and preferences. You could have one tasks layer with many different types of tasks and have them all available in a single map, or use filters on the layer to have specific maps for specific types of tasks. You could have a separate tasks layer and map for each task type, or site, or any other way you want to organize your task features. Filters, layer views, custom popups, everything you can do with a layer will work with a tasks layer.

If you’d like to go over this in more detail, feel free to reach out via arcgisfieldmaps@esri.com and we can set up a call to talk about how you can adopt Tasks for the project you had originally pitched Workforce for.

Chris

Re: Dispatching Field Maps Tasks

Debert — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 20:52:14 GMT

For me, having a handful of distribution techs that cover a very large area- and not knowing which tech will be in the area first- would be a reason not a assign the task to a single person. In fact, most task would be left open to the tech that arrives or is closest to the task area.

Re: Dispatching Field Maps Tasks

JeffSilberberg — Thu, 30 Oct 2025 15:28:04 GMT

Want to say thank you to those who have contributed to this thread! Very valuable information.

Now, my question: do any of you have any pointers on how to interface a system outside of AGOL into this functionality? A Python Script or a Velocity script are my first two thoughts for getting tasks assigned to workers into the system from an external application.

Also, in regard to assigning a task to multiple users, I have a use case where moving a piece of machinery takes two or three people to do it safely.

TIA --