topic Re: Survey123 feature class as a related table in ArcGIS Survey123 Questions

Survey123 feature class as a related table

GordonSumerling — Tue, 23 Aug 2016 04:43:06 GMT

Hello All,

I need to understand how it might be possible for my Survey123 feature class to be a related table to a polygon feature in the map.

In essence I have a farm field feature class and I want to perform an inspection against this. Conventionally, I would create a feature class to represent the farm in ArcMap and then create a related feature class in ArcGIS that is the inspection feature class. Now I could use this in collector. However, I want to take advantage of the field manipulation capability of Survey123.

The inspector already knows the farm ID so he just needs to perform the inspection with survey123. So the question is how do I publish the survey123 feature class and then relate it to the farm polygon feature class in ArcGIS Online?

Cheers

Gordon

Re: Survey123 feature class as a related table

IsmaelChivite — Tue, 23 Aug 2016 23:16:00 GMT

Hi! You can take a couple of approaches here. The simplest one is to use relates in ArcMap or ArcGIS Pro map documents. Through a relate you will be able to say click on a Farm polygon and navigate to all its related inspections over time. Here how you do it:

First add your Farms polygon layer (from a shapefile, file geodatabase or other source) into your map. Then add your Survey123 feature layer.
Once you have both layers in the map, you can create a relate between both layers by right-clicking on the Farms feature layer and selecting the Join and Relates option in the context menu.

I like relates because you can create them across layers coming from very different sources: a database, a file, a feature service. The not so good aspect of relates is that they are useful in ArcMap and ArcGIS Pro, but not in web maps or web applications.

The other approach is to use geodatabase relationships. The beauty of them is that these relationships can be discovered by many different apps including Desktop and Web apps. The issue with geodatabase relationships is that their creation is much more involved, forcing you to bring your Farms and Inspections into the same enterprise geodatabase or hosted feature service, and also make sure Survey123 can work against your inspections table using the submission URL setting. If using the submission URL, ensure that you inspections table is actually a layer and the first in your feature service.

This blog post is a bit obsolete but still describes very well what the differences are between relates and relationships. This help topic is a good reference too.

Re: Survey123 feature class as a related table

GordonSumerling — Wed, 24 Aug 2016 21:32:37 GMT

Hello Ismael,

i am am going to use the second option here. Just to verify the submission URL, I can have many feature layers in this as long as the inspection feature is first in the layer list as I cannot specify the position in the feature service when using the submission URL. For example "feature service/0"

cheers

Gordon

Re: Survey123 feature class as a related table

IsmaelChivite — Wed, 24 Aug 2016 22:01:32 GMT

You are a brave man!

You are correct: you must make the inspection table a layer (must include a shape field with points) and it must be listed first in the feature service. Survey123 will look for the layer with index 0.

Updated response June 15: In 2.0 and newer versions, you can create a survey that works against an existing related table. In Connect, go to New Survey, then select Feature Service and pick your feature service from the gallery. Once the XLSForm is loaded, eliminate the questions relative to the parent layer. Eliminate the rows with the begin and end repeat statemnts. Then change the FormID value in the Settings tab so it references the name of the related table you want to edit.

Re: Survey123 feature class as a related table

GordonSumerling — Wed, 24 Aug 2016 23:15:20 GMT

Hello Ismael,

This worked!! Excellent. I now have Survey123 writing to a related feature table in ArcGIS Online.

Thank you for your assistance.

Gordon

Re: Survey123 feature class as a related table

YuSun — Fri, 02 Sep 2016 17:13:32 GMT

Hi Ismael,

I found this post very helpful with our potential product work flows.

Quick question, I guess this process should work on the portal as well?

is there are system requirements for the portal version to achieve this? we have 10.3.1 and I know a lot fixes and enhancements are done in 10.4

Thanks!

Re: Survey123 feature class as a related table

IsmaelChivite — Fri, 02 Sep 2016 18:31:25 GMT

Yu Sun‌ Yes, the process described above will work with Portal for ArcGIS. My recommendation is that you work with Portal for ArcGIS 10.4. Survey123 can work with Portal 10.3.1, but the configuration is more difficult. Portal 10.4 also includes some important fixes. For details, please have a look at thehttps://community.esri.com/groups/survey123/blog/2015/07/29/survey123-and-arcgis-for-server blog post. If you need to go 10.3.1, go for it but just be aware there are some additional steps involved. When working with Portal for ArcGIS, most of the issues people report are caused by the use of non CA-signed ssl certificates in the Portal's Web Adaptor. Please ensure you are using a CA-signed ssl cert.

Re: Survey123 feature class as a related table

GeomatiqueTI — Fri, 14 Oct 2016 14:38:40 GMT

Hello M Summerling,
For everything to work, Did you create your survey with the rowid, parentrowid fields and the esrifieldtype ?? Is your table must contain a shape fields?
I ask because I find it extremely interesting, but I already have my relationshipClass table inspection and I wonder if I have to redo the structure of my inspection table by turning it to point layer with the new fields.

Thanks

Re: Survey123 feature class as a related table

GordonSumerling — Sun, 16 Oct 2016 22:22:35 GMT

Hello Patrice,

In order to make this work.

First of all I created the Survey table, with all the attributes I was looking for.

I then downloaded the Survey table in a File Geodatabase. This creates the structure I needed.

I then related the Survey table to the feature class I wanted it to work with.

Then in ArcMap I added both the feature class and survey table. With the survey table the first item in the table of contents.

I then published this to ArcGIS Online.

Finally I updated the Survey123 project in access to point to the URL of the published feature service.

The key here is I did not try and replicate the Survey123 feature class in ArcMap. I let Survey123 generate the feature service for me then I copied it back to ArcMap and finally republished it. That way everything is as it was designed in Survey123.

Cheers

Gordon

Re: Survey123 feature class as a related table

BrandonKeinath1 — Thu, 08 Dec 2016 21:34:32 GMT

Hi Ismael,

Has there been any progress to make Survey123 look at other layers? I'm confused how I make a table the first layer in ArcMap.

Thanks,

Brandon

Re: Survey123 feature class as a related table

BrandonKeinath1 — Thu, 08 Dec 2016 21:36:24 GMT

Hi Gordon,

Can you be more specific about how you were able to make the table the first layer in ArcMap? I'd also like to use survey123 to edit related tables but I'm struggling to make it the first layer.

Thanks,

Brandon

Re: Survey123 feature class as a related table

TL2 — Thu, 08 Dec 2016 22:15:11 GMT

in Data Frame Properties>General.

Re: Survey123 feature class as a related table

GordonSumerling — Thu, 08 Dec 2016 22:17:52 GMT

Brandon,

The workflow I used is as follows:

Create a new Survey123 project in Survey123connect and load to ArcGIS Online
Download the feature service to a file geodatabase
In the file geodatabase create your primary feature. Ensure it has a common ID with the survey123 feature class.
Create a geodatabase relationship between the primary feature class and the survey123 feature class using the common ID
In a Map document add both layers with the Survey123 feature as the first item in the table of contents
Publish as a new feature service in ArcGIS Online (The survery123 feature class should be ~/FeatureServer/0)
In the Survey123connect app, open the spreadsheet and switch to the settings tab
Update the submission_url parameter to match the feature service for the ArcGIS Online Feature Service
In the Survey123 project folder delete the .iteminfo file
In ArcGIS Online delete the original associated survey123 folder
Republish the Survey123 project and it should associate with the specified feature service.

Hope this helps

Gordon

Re: Survey123 feature class as a related table

BrandonKeinath1 — Fri, 09 Dec 2016 17:05:05 GMT

Thanks for the quick reply Gordon. I'm still a little confused so let me try and clarify my question. I'm looking to have a feature class to table relationship and use Survey123 to add rows to the table. When I read your step 4 it sounds like you are still using two feature classes (primary feature class and survey123 feature class). Is that right?

Thanks for your help

Brandon

Re: Survey123 feature class as a related table

BrandonKeinath1 — Fri, 09 Dec 2016 17:29:34 GMT

Thanks Tucker. After I enabled the unique ids I made the table layer 0 and the feature class layer 1. After that I was unable to publish the hosted feature service. It always resulted in an error and the service wouldn't publish. When I make the feature class 0 and the table 1 it works again. Any ideas? Have you succeded in publishing a service with the table as layer 0?

Re: Survey123 feature class as a related table

GordonSumerling — Sun, 11 Dec 2016 22:26:53 GMT

Hello Brandon,

You are correct. I have a primary feature class of the feature being surveyed and the Surevy123 feature class. From what I understand there is no facility yet via this methodology to have a standalone table.

Cheers

Gordon

Re: Survey123 feature class as a related table

BrandonKeinath1 — Mon, 12 Dec 2016 21:08:37 GMT

Thanks Gordon. I'm disappointed that it doesn't work yet, but happy to understand your workflow. Thanks for taking the time to explain it!

Best,

Brandon

Re: Survey123 feature class as a related table

JamesTedrick — Mon, 24 Apr 2017 17:42:17 GMT

Hi Brandon,

It looks like you're running into a fundamental publishing issue with ArcGIS Server. That being said, this should be easy to work around- specify the name of the table (TroubleCause) in the form_id setting to point the survey at your table; the publishing order won't matter.

Re: Survey123 feature class as a related table

CinthiaEichhorn — Fri, 19 May 2017 20:14:36 GMT

Hi Gordon,

In steps 3 & 4, there is a CommonID. For related tables to work in ArcGIS online, does the relate need to be based on GlobalID/GUID fields? Also, for the custom url is there a specific syntax to enter the URL into the submission_url? In making calls to Survey123 (rather than to the feature service in AGOL), I start with arcgis-survey123://?ItemID=

However, in this situation, I have copied the feature service URL into the submission_URL field. Then, I deleted the other items as shown in the steps. When I publish the form to ArcGIS online, Survey123 Connect for ArcGIS issues the message, "The custom feature service submission_url is not compatible with this survey (Feature service information unavailable). So I am curious if there is a specific syntax for calling the submission_url.

Thanks,

Cinthia

Re: Survey123 feature class as a related table

AhjungKim4 — Wed, 19 Jul 2017 16:01:11 GMT

Ismael, thank you for posting the update. I tried what you had described and was able to create a Survey123 form using a related table of an existing hosted feature service. However, my submission via Survey123 creates orphaned records. What I want to do is to view an existing feature in Collector and if it requires inspection, use a link in Collector pop-up to launch Survey123 (iOS) and fill out the inspection table which is related to the parent feature I selected in Collector. Is this a possible workflow with current release?

Updated response June 15: In 2.0 and newer versions, you can create a survey that works against an existing related table. In Connect, go to New Survey, then select Feature Service and pick your feature service from the gallery. Once the XLSForm is loaded, eliminate the questions relative to the parent layer. Eliminate the rows with the begin and end repeat statemnts. Then change the FormID value in the Settings tab so it references the name of the related table you want to edit.