Can free public AGOL accounts use collector?

[ThomasColson]

I created one of those "Free" AGOL public accounts and attempted to log into AGOL on an Android device running collector 10.2.3. It refused the login attempt with "Please use an organizational account". The Collector documentation is not clear on what user groups can access the application and/or its content:

"Because Collector for ArcGIS is a feature of ArcGIS Online, you will need an ArcGIS Online free trial or paid subscription or Portal for ArcGIS account to use the app."

Does that mean ONLY paid subscription and/or organizational accounts can use the collector app on mobile devices?

If that's the case...what is the logic behind that? Imagine a municipality wanting to publish a collector app so citizens can report water line breaks, downed trees...whatever using mobile devices. I can't imagine that ESRI thinks that the City of Boston is going to create 3 million accounts in its AGOL organization portal....

I can access the collector app just fine using my organization account.

The whole point here is to be able to create mobile apps that citizens can use to interact with gov't. Is ESRI supporting that?

[NickHetrick]

Yes only organization accounts can be used with collector. We generally create a generic account for projects that field staff use with collector for specific projects and then remove them when we are done this works for internal since you can have multiple users logged in with the same account. This would not work for the public but you could also use the ArcGIS app (Green Icon) to allow editing from multiple users as a workaround.

[ChelseaRozek]

Take a look at Crowdsource Reporter. It allows the public to report issues on desktop or mobile devices without having to download any apps or log in anywhere. Survey123 also allows for public input and could be just in the browser (no app download). You can also create your own mobile apps with App Studio, though I don't personally have experience with it. At this time, Collector does need a named user from an organization, so we use it for internal use only. Organizations should not be allowing users to share a named user account per ESRI policy.

[ThomasColson]

Thanks for the update, Crowdsource does look useful. As an update to my original post, a lot has change in 4 years, and due to laws and licensing, we have to go through a lot of flaming hoops to enable public data collection. The documentation has since clarified the question.Regarding your latest post, I'm a big fan of S123, and have grand visions to use the web page version of it for a very neat and cool public ####### reporting application. Stay tuned......

[AngelBarnett]

ArcGIS Field Maps is now the best option for data collection without an AGOL account.