topic Re: Survey123 Tricks of the Trade (Live): Automate Reports in ArcGIS Survey123 Videos

Survey123 Tricks of the Trade (Live): Automate Reports

IsmaelChivite — Thu, 06 Jul 2023 19:13:01 GMT

On July 6, 2023 we recorded a Tricks of the Trade session covering Survey123 report automation with Microsoft Power Automate. Thanks to all attendees! In this post you will find the recording, resources and Q&A.

Highlights

Survey123 includes a report service. With it, you can create beautiful PDF reports including maps, photos, tables and more. Build your own reports for compliance, to document the work you do, to share information with stakeholders in a format they are familiar with or simply to create high quality printable documents.

If you are not familiar with Survey123 reports, check this recording first.

Using the Survey123 connector for Microsoft Power Automate, you can automate report generation. This webinar demonstrates how you can trigger reports when a survey is sent, and on a schedule.

Recording

(view in My Videos)

Slides

Find the slides at the bottom of this post (They are attached in PDF format) or click here.

Q&A

Where is the April session recording covering the Reports intro? Here.
What is the price of Microsoft Power Automate? You can try Microsoft Power Automate for free for a limited period of time. Standard subscription pricing available here.
Is the new Create Report action Premium? No. The Survey123 connector (including all its triggers and actions) is not a Premium feature of Power Automate. However, report generation consumes ArcGIS Online credits (unless you are creating reports from ArcGIS Enterprise).
What if I don't have Microsoft Power Automate? How can I automate reports? You can use the Make.com connector to automate reports. Additionally, you can use the Survey123 REST API from Python or any other tool that works with REST APIs. FME Server is a good example of such a tool.
Can I use the Survey123 Connector and Power Automate with ArcGIS Enterprise? Yes. Check this Esri Technical Article for details.
Why my flow fails stops working after 2 weeks? Because the Survey123 connection expires after two weeks. Refresh the connection in Power Automate to keep it going. The team is working to address this problem.
Do I have to upload PDF reports into OneDrive before I can include them as an attachment in an email? Yes, unless you can find another way to do it! 🙂 If you worry about having the files in OneDrive, add a Delete File action at the end of your flow, once the file is attached to the email message.
How do I refresh my Survey123 connection in Power Automate? In Power Automate, go to Data -> Connections -> Survey123. Click on switch account and re-enter your credentials again.
Can I automate reports in Make.com? Yes, the report action is available in Make.com. The only thing missing is the WHERE parameter, which you will need in case you want to schedule your reports. We are planning an update to the Make.com connector soon to include the WHERE parameter.

Re: Survey123 Tricks of the Trade (Live): Automate Reports

KhemAryal — Thu, 06 Jul 2023 20:12:37 GMT

I am not able to create flow. I keep getting the error

Re: Survey123 Tricks of the Trade (Live): Automate Reports

MiltonSolano — Thu, 06 Jul 2023 20:17:43 GMT

Excellent presentation. It's a shame that the features for editing and updating items hosted on ArcGIS Online are Premium options. The option to update a URL Report after the report creation is a great idea, blocked with the premium paywall.

Re: Survey123 Tricks of the Trade (Live): Automate Reports

SayedWali — Thu, 06 Jul 2023 20:42:25 GMT

Hi Ismael,

Watched the video till the end and it's impressive, especially when it comes to editing a record in the feature layer by using ArcGIS action in flow.

However, it would be great if the Survey123 connection expiration is resolved. I face this issue every two weeks either for scheduled flow and "When a survey response... " trigger.

Re: Survey123 Tricks of the Trade (Live): Automate Reports

IsmaelChivite — Thu, 06 Jul 2023 21:45:06 GMT

Hi @KhemAryal Check the output of the Create Report tool. I bet the problem is there. For some reason, the PDF could not be created and then the next module fails because a required input for it is empty.

Looking at the Create Report parameters (the WHERE clause in particular) is important to diagnose the problem. I am guessing that the WHERE clause you included is not returning records. No records, no PDF... nothing to upload.

Re: Survey123 Tricks of the Trade (Live): Automate Reports

SayedWali — Thu, 06 Jul 2023 20:54:11 GMT

In Create report, make sure you take the url with the text (url of the first result file):

then follow other steps.

Re: Survey123 Tricks of the Trade (Live): Automate Reports

DevinCarlson — Fri, 07 Jul 2023 14:08:51 GMT

Thank you for posting this @IsmaelChivite - This video was very much needed.

I'm working on a scenario:

A S123 form is submitted. If ${Municipality} = 'x1' follow FlowA (Use Report Template A, email to one group of people)

If ${Municipality} = 'x2' follow FlowB (Use Report Template B, email to a different group of people)

I have the flow set up and it actually works (see image) but - If the S123 report is not created because it is not for that municipality, then the rest of that branch fails (makes sense - there is no report).

The where clause says: Municipality = 'x1'

and then for the other create report it says: Municipality = 'x2'

Here's my question - is this ok? Or is there a better solution? Power Automate thinks it failed because there is no report to upload. But I do not consider it to have failed because it created the correct report and emailed the correct content. Should I leave this alone or will this get me in trouble later down the road?

Appreciate any advice!

Re: Survey123 Tricks of the Trade (Live): Automate Reports

KhemAryal — Fri, 07 Jul 2023 14:36:09 GMT

@IsmaelChivite You are right. Report was not created in the output as I did not put correct syntax at Where clause.

what would be the 'Where' clause syntax if I just want to see the records for the last month. I can do for last 30 days but not all the months are 30 days. There should be easy way to do it but I kept failing. any suggestion?

Re: Survey123 Tricks of the Trade (Live): Automate Reports

IsmaelChivite — Fri, 07 Jul 2023 15:24:17 GMT

@DevinCarlson I think a 'condition' should help here. Check: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-automate/add-condition

Re: Survey123 Tricks of the Trade (Live): Automate Reports

DevinCarlson — Fri, 07 Jul 2023 18:57:08 GMT

Great! Thank you - I will try to incorporate this.

As always - appreciate your help @IsmaelChivite!

Re: Survey123 Tricks of the Trade (Live): Automate Reports

RobertAnderson3 — Thu, 20 Jul 2023 15:23:51 GMT

I'm glad to see some official comment on the 14 day timeout for the Create Report function on here, I'd been dealing with this but didn't see it noted in any documentation as a limitation.

I really, really hope that that timeout can be resolved quickly as it's a pain point for sure.

It happened to timeout while I was on vacation and since it was tied to my account, it caused problems. We were wondering if my colleague signed in with their credentials (we're both AGOL Organization Admins) if it would have worked or if things would break?

Re: Survey123 Tricks of the Trade (Live): Automate Reports

phess_luckstone — Thu, 03 Aug 2023 16:11:35 GMT

For your first demo, I followed everything you had mentioned. The pdf uploads to my one drive and opens perfectly from there, however when I try to open the attachment in the email. I get this error. Any ideas?

Re: Survey123 Tricks of the Trade (Live): Automate Reports

phess_luckstone — Wed, 09 Aug 2023 17:32:26 GMT

Just in case anyone follows this post and gets the same error as mine, I had to change the attachment content to body. This has fixed the broken/empty attachment in the email.

Re: Survey123 Tricks of the Trade (Live): Automate Reports

ChaselWood — Tue, 05 Sep 2023 18:05:35 GMT

Is there an applicable work flow for generating a report once a field has been changed to a certain status? Say we are QC'ing field data in the office and want to automatically set the report to generate once the "Approval Status" field is set to "Approved". We have Survey123 form layers being edited in an Online Experience for approval.

Re: Survey123 Tricks of the Trade (Live): Automate Reports

RobertAnderson3 — Wed, 06 Sep 2023 15:04:30 GMT

Are the edits being done by submitting Survey123 forms or are they editing the data directly?

You would need to use a Condition in the Automate flow, then set it to run only if it's Approved. Similar can be done using the ArcGIS connector if editing the data directly but I'm less familiar with that connector.

Re: Survey123 Tricks of the Trade (Live): Automate Reports

ChaselWood — Wed, 06 Sep 2023 15:06:39 GMT

The data is edited in an online Experience after submission, so looks like the ArcGIS Connector will be the path taken. Thank you!

Re: Survey123 Tricks of the Trade (Live): Automate Reports

RobertAnderson3 — Wed, 06 Sep 2023 15:18:25 GMT

No problem! There is a trigger "When a record is updated in a feature layer" that would be what to use I assume, can also find the forum section for the ArcGIS Automate Connector here: https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-for-power-automate/ct-p/arcgis-for-power-automate

Re: Survey123 Tricks of the Trade (Live): Automate Reports

MichelleWilliamsERM — Tue, 03 Oct 2023 01:44:32 GMT

Thank you for ALL this goodness.

At 14:50 minutes, you add a piece of code that gets covered by the black bar, would you add it here for us? I'd love to get the UTC transformed. I've tried a few things, but they aren't quite right.

Re: Survey123 Tricks of the Trade (Live): Automate Reports

Lucas_Halphen — Wed, 25 Oct 2023 22:11:29 GMT

Hello. I followed the steps as indicated on the video. But the process stops at the 3rd step. There is an error, it seems that the source URL is not found. Do I need to request our IT dept. to allow connection with OneDrive, Pwr Auto and S123?

The S123 that I am using has a template and a webhook.

Another question: ¿ I wonder how you put a long string of ${variable_name] into such small table boxes without expanding (or keeping the column size as needed)?

Re: Survey123 Tricks of the Trade (Live): Automate Reports

MichelleWong58 — Wed, 20 Dec 2023 19:44:50 GMT

I am trying to access the demo video but it is indicating that something is wrong. Is there a youtube link somewhere?