topic Re: Adding Survey123 signature to Power Automate flow in ArcGIS Survey123 Questions

Adding Survey123 signature to Power Automate flow

AshleyPeters — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 15:29:57 GMT

I have a flow set up in Power Automate following Ismael's Survey123 Tricks of the Trade blog post. I'm trying to modify it a bit so I can include photos from one question and a signature as email attachments in Power Automate. I've basically created two arrays, one for the photos and another for the signature. I've tried feeding those directly into an email, but I get an error with trying to attach the two arrays. I either need to find a way to combine the two arrays into one before I pull them into an email or find a way to embed the signature into the email. If I pull the signature into the email itself, Power Automate sends a separate email with the signature attached.

Has anyone else tried this? I'm fairly new to Power Automate, so my understanding of it is limited.

Thanks for any guidance!

Ashley

Re: Adding Survey123 signature to Power Automate flow

abureaux — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 16:03:27 GMT

You can only add one true array to a Power Automate email. If you want both arrays in the email, you can use Append to Array to join the two together.

If PA is sending more than one email, then some part of your flow has been nested into an Apply to Each which will loop through whatever array it is attached to. There is no way to know what that array is without seeing the flow since the is normally an automated action by Power Automate.

Re: Adding Survey123 signature to Power Automate flow

abureaux — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 16:06:50 GMT

An addendum. May be worth adding the signatures to a Feature Report and make it more "official" by attaching dates/times and printed names next to each signature, in addition to some task-specific identifiers (e.g., project number, client name, etc.) Otherwise, the signature is just floating around on its own, which I wouldn't advise.

Re: Adding Survey123 signature to Power Automate flow

AshleyPeters — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 16:08:10 GMT

Knowing I can only add one array is helpful. I had run across the append to array option, but hadn't found how to make that work with images. I keep making changes to my flow, but this is how it currently stands with just the single array.

Re: Adding Survey123 signature to Power Automate flow

AshleyPeters — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 16:13:04 GMT

The way I have the email set up, it includes every question in the survey and the recorded response. A feature report would probably be the ideal, as I don't like the signature as an attachment, but it seemed to be the most straightforward option (which is probably due to my lack of knowledge about Power Automate).

Re: Adding Survey123 signature to Power Automate flow

abureaux — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 16:27:16 GMT

Adding a Feature Report to a flow is very easy these days! And given that you are essentially using the email as a Feature Report, swapping to a proper Feature Report (which you can pdf) is likely the best approach.

Are you on AGO or Enterprise? There is a slight difference depending on which environment you are in.

I will refer you to my Power Automate guide. The guide walks you through each step of a more complex flow. It is appropriate for both Enterprise and AGO and has some good tips. It may be more in-depth than you need at this time, but it also links to other guides (including Esri's basic Create Report guide).

Re: Adding Survey123 signature to Power Automate flow

AshleyPeters — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 16:32:15 GMT

That does sound pretty perfect. I'm using AGO.

Re: Adding Survey123 signature to Power Automate flow

abureaux — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 16:37:15 GMT

Then you will have one less step to complete! Give it a shot and drop a message here if you run into any trouble.

Re: Adding Survey123 signature to Power Automate flow

abureaux — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 16:44:39 GMT

While I still recommend checking out my guide since it has a ton of best practices, here is a crash coarse to get you started:

Ignore the Red color of my "Create Report" step. Yours will be Green. I just customized mine.
Always choose "... of the first result file" when referencing that Create Report step. E.g.:
In the Create Report step, you want "Feature object ID" to be the "ObjectID" of your survey submission.

Here is the most basic of flows to attach a Feature Report to an email (again, not recommended to go this bare-bones. This just illustrates how few steps you need):

Re: Adding Survey123 signature to Power Automate flow

AshleyPeters — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 17:27:53 GMT

Thank you! I'll start working through this and let you know if I run into any issues. Thank you for this document and the guidance!

Re: Adding Survey123 signature to Power Automate flow

AshleyPeters — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 21:00:13 GMT

That worked beautifully except for one thing. I'm still having issues with the signature field. Instead of being included in the report, it is sent in a separate email as an attachment. Any ideas?

Re: Adding Survey123 signature to Power Automate flow

abureaux — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 21:07:12 GMT

Are you able to include some screen caps of your Power Automate process? That would help.

A couple things to look out for though:

Is the feature report the only attachment added to the email now?
Are Signatures added to the Feature Report, and if you manually generate a Feature Report from the S123 Website, do they appear as expected?

Re: Adding Survey123 signature to Power Automate flow

AshleyPeters — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 21:13:52 GMT

Yes, the feature report is the only attachment. The signature is coming in a separate email.

No, signatures are not appearing in the manually generated feature report from the S123 website.

Screenshot of the overall flow:

Screenshot of the successful report email in Power Automate:

Any other screenshots helpful?

Re: Adding Survey123 signature to Power Automate flow

abureaux — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 21:17:03 GMT

Can you expand the scopes and condition so I can see each step? From the email alone, there doesn't seem to be any reason for it to be sending more than one email. And if it did send multiple emails, they should theoretically only have the Feature Report attached.

Re: Adding Survey123 signature to Power Automate flow

AshleyPeters — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 21:19:27 GMT

Re: Adding Survey123 signature to Power Automate flow

AshleyPeters — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 21:20:23 GMT

I also sent you a PM with the feature report and a screenshot of the separate email I'm receiving.

Re: Adding Survey123 signature to Power Automate flow

abureaux — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 21:27:25 GMT

Hmm. Are you sure there isn't a rouge flow still turned on somewhere? Nothing there should be sending a separate email with an attachment.

Overall, your flow looks pretty good.

Re: Adding Survey123 signature to Power Automate flow

AshleyPeters — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 21:31:50 GMT

There was a random flow. I've got two environments I can work in and there was one still turned on in the older environment. I just fixed that. So the second email is fixed, that just leaves me figuring out the signature. I'm leaning towards it being related to how it is called in on the report template. This is what it looks like currently and I assume it needs to look more similar to the image call:

Re: Adding Survey123 signature to Power Automate flow

abureaux — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 21:38:05 GMT

One problem dealt with! Excellent.

So, images can be called either way you have there. It really depends on how the image is set up in the survey. Your PFLAppearanceMaintenance_image question is set up as an array, so how it looks there makes sense.

Without seeing the XLSX, I am not sure how your signature is set up. But, a nice simple way of determining how a question should be formatted is to have the website generate a sample template for you and then steal that snippet:

Re: Adding Survey123 signature to Power Automate flow

AshleyPeters — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 21:50:33 GMT

I got the signature fixed! My field type was set as image in the xlsx, but noticed it was set as a String elsewhere. I removed the String setting and made an update to the report template to set the size of the signature.

It is now working perfectly.

Thank you again for your help today!

Ashley