GetUser() When Offline and Disconnected

[DanielMiranda2]

I have seen a few discussions about GetUser() not working when using Field Maps in a disconnected environment:

Form Calculate GetUser() Offline - Esri Community

Some discussion above was a bit muddled because not everyone was tested in a disconnected environment. Ultimately, no solution worked while offline.

Solved: Field Maps, Offline Map, Arcade Calculation Expres... - Esri Community

BUG-000155887: Arcade expressions fail to calculate when using offl.. (esri.com)

The two above links seem to suggest that this is in fact, a bug that may be addressed down the road.

Has anyone come up with a way to get the current user's information in Field Maps when offline? Or do we have to wait until a bug fix/enhancement is released? 

The only workaround I could think of was to use editor tracking fields, but these fields are not populated until after a data point is collected. So form calculations needing this information will not have it unless the user re-edits the newly added point. This is not a great solution.

When we use Field Maps, many users like to create IDs in their data that includes their initials. This should be easily automated.

[DanielMiranda2]

I have done some more research into this and believe I have found a more viable solution.

What specifically does not work when offline is:

 GetUser($layer).fullName

 Using firstName or lastName also does not work. When I checked the Field Maps mobile app error log, the actual error for the Arcade expression is "field_not_found."

So clearly, a user's full name is not part of the dictionary returned by GetUser. So instead, I tried the following:

GetUser($layer).username

I figured, the editor tracking fields clearly have access to usernames, so maybe GetUser() does too. This DOES work while offline. When I say offline I mean my device is in airplane mode and I am using either an offline area created on the device, or an offline area created in Field Maps Designer. I tested both.

In my specific case, our organization uses first initial and last name as part of their usernames, so I can still get the information I want. I won't mark this as a solution though, as it is not quite as good as retrieving a full name. I also find it frustrating that this is not documented anywhere in the Field Maps references or the Arcade reference.

[DougBrowning]

They said at Dev Summit that full name does not work yet since it is not part of the offline info and they are working to find a way to support it.

[MitchellGrafstein]

I created a bit of a workaround for this if anyone is interested.  I would imagine this workaround is not practical or applicable for all use cases, but it is still something.  I literally have not tested this offline, but I see no reason why it would not work, since the table in question could be synced and available offline.  (I will test that in the coming weeks, but I figured the concept was worth sharing.)

For an unrelated task, I created a table with key (field) names, and lookup values to search for, then "value" field names, and values to return.  I initially put last_edited_user to try and populate this, but that only hits the form on submit (so it couldn't actively apply from the lookup table.) 

Instead, I used the GetUser($layer) [thanks for that formatting by the way], and searched on the table I added to the form.

var result = null // set the result variable to null so this expression will return null if the search field is empty/null

var key_name = 'key_name' // the field that contains the keys which are field names that will be used in the FeatureSet filter
var key_lookup = 'key_lookup' // the field that contains the lookup value from the form

var lookup_field = 'lookup_field' // the field that we will search on which contains field names as values
var lookup_value = 'lookup_value' // the field that contains the desired value

var lookup_fields_of_interest = [key_name,lookup_field,key_lookup,lookup_value] // the list of the fields of interest which are set above

var key_name_search = "last_edited_user" // the lookup value used to filter the FeatureSet --> key_name=@key_name_search
// in a sense, key_name_search is a nested key found in the key_name field
// key_name _search is also the field in the form we're interested in
var lookup_field_search = 'toughpad_user' // the value to look up in the lookup_field --> lookup_field=@lookup_field_search


var username=GetUser($layer).username // only used for searching on the logged-in username
// if(!(IsEmpty($feature[key_name_search]))){ // code to use if searching for a field in the form (which matches the key_name field in the table)
if(!(IsEmpty(username))){ // code to use if searching for the username of the logged-in user

var search_value = username // the field in the form/feature used for the lookup --> key_lookup=@search_value

var lku_fset = FeatureSetById($map, /* LKUs Table Feature Service - treatment lkus tbl */ "18f0b3902e4-layer-30",lookup_fields_of_interest,false)

    // had to explicitly name the field in the filter, using @Variable for the field name was not returning the proper values
    // tested if variable name matching the field name mattered, it did not, could not use @Variable for the field name in the filter
    // MG - 2024-04-23
    result = First(Filter(lku_fset, 'key_name=@key_name_search AND lookup_field=@lookup_field_search AND key_lookup=@search_value'))[lookup_value]

// }
}
return result