I am currently working on a project for our Housing department, where they would go out on site and inspect the Council Houses and use the Collector app to determine if it was vacant/occupied and if work was needing to be carried out. I was looking for some help to see if it is possible for me to upload a shapefile that is already created, to a feature layer and rather the reporter input new features, update the current points on collector and depending on what they put in a certain field it would determine the symbology (colour/symbol) depending on the outcome (vacant/occupied/work required). Is this possible, if so, any ideas/instructions would be greatly appreciated.
Here's a workflow that would probably work for you. Create a feature class that matches the schema in the shapefile. Add a domain for the outcomes (vacant, occupied, work required and "?" as a default value). In ArcMap, set the symbology for the domain field. Append the shapefile to the empty feature class. Publish the service. In Collector, the domain will show up as a drop-down.