topic Re: Alternative to Esri's Survey123 Reporting System? in ArcGIS Survey123 Questions

Alternative to Esri's Survey123 Reporting System?

JoeFlannery — Tue, 28 Jan 2020 19:03:52 GMT

We love the power and functionality of Esri's Survey123 for ArcGIS, but we simply cannot afford the 2.5 credits per report output. Has anyone discovered an alternative reporting system?

Joe

Re: Alternative to Esri's Survey123 Reporting System?

RobertBorchert — Tue, 28 Jan 2020 19:07:20 GMT

Just create a table in your database and then use a relationship to relate that table to a feature class. You people can make comments in the table. However, that will only work with Collector/Editors

Re: Alternative to Esri's Survey123 Reporting System?

AprilChipman — Tue, 28 Jan 2020 21:56:23 GMT

Does using Integromat with HTML/GMAIL modules to send feature reports also consume AGOL credits?

Re: Alternative to Esri's Survey123 Reporting System?

PeterMacKenzie2 — Tue, 28 Jan 2020 22:17:20 GMT

You could build a data driven page in ArcMap/Pro with the required template and include your data* as dynamic fields from your survey. Photos should come through as dynamic content and it can save you the cost of generating a report in AGOL/Survey123 website. (I've done it in the past before the feature report generation became available.) I hope this helps.
*: either download your survey data as a file geodatabase or use the feature layer from AGOL/Portal.
(The on-premise version of the Survey123 website is coming at some point and it supposed to include the feature report generation functionality when it becomes available for Server/Enterprise.)

source: Why does Survey123 Feature Report generation cost so many credits?

Zoltan Kovacs‌ suggests using ArcGIS Pro in this link.Depending on how you want the end user to trigger the report generation, this is one idea. Geocortex Reporting Series 5 has report capabilities integrated with AGOL but would require you to buy into Geocortex.

Re: Alternative to Esri's Survey123 Reporting System?

DougBrowning — Tue, 28 Jan 2020 23:12:43 GMT

I have done data driven pages and ReportLab in Python. Design formatting in both options is not fun. Images in both are also not fun.

Others I have seen are SQL report writer.

Re: Alternative to Esri's Survey123 Reporting System?

JoeFlannery — Wed, 29 Jan 2020 12:49:49 GMT

Thanks to all of you for sharing you experiences and suggestions.

I am intrigued by the Integromat workflow and will study the blog postings authored by the Survey123 team to see if this could work for us.

https://community.esri.com/groups/survey123/blog/2019/06/02/getting-started-with-survey123-and-integromat

https://community.esri.com/groups/survey123/blog/2019/06/04/survey123-tricks-of-the-trade-integromat

Re: Alternative to Esri's Survey123 Reporting System?

AprilChipman — Wed, 29 Jan 2020 14:09:48 GMT

Using the Integromat workflow still costs AGOL credits.

Re: Alternative to Esri's Survey123 Reporting System?

JoeFlannery — Wed, 29 Jan 2020 14:59:31 GMT

Well, that's a bummer! Thank you for confirming your suspicions.
Charging 2.5 credits per report export, which equates to 25 cents per report, reminds me of the days when color copiers first came out and we were charged 10 cents per page to print. Quite expensive.

OK, I'll look into Plan B; Robert and Doug's use of ArcGIS Pro and maybe ReportLab - Ugh

Re: Alternative to Esri's Survey123 Reporting System?

BKS — Thu, 11 Feb 2021 17:18:53 GMT

@JoeFlannery curious how you made out and what direction you decided on. Did you go with ArcGIS Pro? or something else?

Also, @PeterMacKenzie2 suggests that the on-premise version of Survey123 website (when it becomes available) is supposed to include the ability to run reports. However from my reading, there are some limitations that must be avoided to make this happen. But even if you are able to avoid the limitations, it seems like you still need to open your ArcGIS Enterprise to the public facing AGOL reporting service. Has anyone heard anything different? I would imagine that those who really could take advantage of such reporting (e.g. those like us that are looking to have report to support each asset inspection), would also be the type that have enterprise-wide data constraints that require all data to be stored on premise (or at least in-country - this is a Canadian organization). Any info you might be able to share would be appreciated.

Cheers, bks

Re: Alternative to Esri's Survey123 Reporting System?

JoeFlannery — Thu, 11 Feb 2021 21:03:37 GMT

BKS:

A group within my company is using Survey123 with 30-40 fieldworkers on a large client project with sites across the USA. They have developed a stand-alone reporting system that does not use the S123 reporting system. I think they are using SQL Server Reporting System (SSRS) in some fashion. I am not in close communications with this internal group, so I cannot elaborate further. Even though the S123 report export credit cost went down to 0.5 credits per report, given the number of reports produced in a week, they had to come up with their own solution. Sorry that I cannot help with a more complete answer for you.

Sincerely,

Joe

Re: Alternative to Esri's Survey123 Reporting System?

BKS — Fri, 12 Feb 2021 02:02:03 GMT

Hi Joe,

Thanks for the info. Appreciate the response. We would have only about 70 reports per year but they'd be quite lengthy. If I could even find out if it is in the plan to include eventually I think we could make due for a while. Hate to custom something up and then find out it becomes available in on-premise Survey123 website one day.

Brian