Locking fields in ArcGIS to maintain integrity of last_edited_user field

[GeoffreyWest]

I have a Collector for ArcGIS application which records the last_edited_user from the field, however post-processing needs to occur and overwrites my users from the field to my desktop user. Is there a way to lock the last_edited_user to maintain my initial edited user? I am using ArcGIS For Server 10.2.1 and SQL Server Database 2008 R2.

[JakeSkinner]

Hi Geoffrey,

Before your post-processing, you can Disable Editor Tracking.  After the post-processing is finished, you can then Enable Editor Tracking.  This workflow will not affect the editor tracking from the field collectors.

[GeoffreyWest]

This sounds like the likely solution, my post-processing is in the form of a field calculation and a search cursor in a python script.  From a conceptual point of view, would I disable editor tracking at the beginning of the script and enable at the end?

[JakeSkinner]

From a conceptual point of view, would I disable editor tracking at the beginning of the script and enable at the end?

Yes, that is correct.

[GeoffreyWest]

This leads to another caveat, since this feature class is consumed by a feature service, it is locked and I receive this error. 

EDIT: if I use arcpy.disconnectusers it stops my feature classes.

Traceback (most recent call last):

  File "C:/PeterScripts/Harbor.py", line 56, in <module>

    arcpy.DisableEditorTracking_management(SDEFeatureClass)

  File "C:\Program Files (x86)\ArcGIS\Desktop10.2\arcpy\arcpy\management.py", line 3529, in DisableEditorTracking

    raise e

arcgisscripting.ExecuteError: ERROR 000464: Cannot get exclusive schema lock.  Either being edited or in use by another application.

Failed to execute (DisableEditorTracking).

[JakeSkinner]

You can disable schema locking on the service:

ArcGIS Help (10.2, 10.2.1, and 10.2.2)