Syncing and photo attachments.

[JamesPreston]

I have a dataset with photo attachments enabled, published as a service, hosted on our organistaion AGOL server, and published in a map. Using the map on my device in Collector I can collect some data points, with photos attached. I can then sync that data. If another user wants to collect data, they can then use their device to download the map. At this point I have noticed that the user also downloads the associated attachments.

When there are only a few attachments, this is not a problem. Although once several dozen attachments are present, it slows the download considerably. This dataset will contain upwards of several thousand attachments as it grows, and I am concerned that new users will be spending a long time downloading the map.I am also concerned that we could possibly run into errors with large downloads. Also there could be storage capacity issues on our devices.

Are attachments completely part and parcel with the services? Is there any way to disable the attachments downloading with the service/map? If not, is there any way to mitigate any of my concerns I have outlined above?

One solution that I have considered is to regularly download the data in a file geodatabase, strip out the attachments and re-create the service with an empty attachment relationship. This is not ideal, as I am having to do far more data management than I would like.

[RussRoberts · Accepted solution]

Right now attachments posted to the service will come down when other users sync their data. We are looking into ways to improve this in a future release where attachments are only posted to the service and not pulled down on sync but right now there is no way to restrict this.

Russ

[JamesPreston]

Thanks, Russ.

[MatthewPalavido]

Russ,

I'd like to voice my support for this functionality as well. It is really causing us some headaches with our field data collection. We have a lot of photos being taken of our infrastructure and we don't really need to access the photos in the field, only take them and sync them back to AGO or SDE.

Thanks,

Matt

[JamesPreston]

Hi Russ -  I was wondering how your team is getting on with adding this functionality to the app? Is it expected in the next release?

[MichaelDavis3]

We have dealt with this by using a scheduled task to go to our database, archive the full size attachment to a folder structure, and then re-attach a reduced resolution version for viewing on mobile devices.

Not perfect, but it does significantly reduct the database size.