How do I create an app which allows people to edit and comment on information provided?

[ShonaFrost]

I want to create an app that allows engagement from parish and town councils about the priority of maintenance on a footpaths. A desk exercise has given an initial priority status and I want users to comment on that status i.e. do they agree with what we propose? I also need them to add further information to help us decide if their comments are valid  i.e. how often is the path used and to be able to add photos or other documents. The editing type apps sort of do what I want but they are aren't very non-user friendly and the crowd sourcing requires social media logins which we don't want to use.

Any ideas what might work better? Thanks.

[Anonymous User]

Hello Shona Frost,

It sounds like you may want to look into our Crowdsource Polling application:

Crowdsource Polling | ArcGIS for Local Government 

Best,

Katie

[ShonaFrost]

Hi Katie,

Thanks for your reply. I am looking at the Crowd Source Reporter as opposed to the Crowd Source Polling as it seemed to provide a bit more flexibility. I am however, struggling to get it to do what I want!

Thanks again for your help,

Shona

Shona Frost CGeog (GIS) FRGS

Staffordshire County Council

01785 277280

[AllisonMuise1 · Accepted solution]

Shona Frost‌

None of the crowdsourcing apps require social media accounts. They are provided as options for signing in only, and you can configure the app to completely hide any/all of these options.

Based on the workflow you describe above, I agree with Katie, that Crowdsource Polling is better designed for your task. While Crowdsource Reporter is designed for users to draw features of their own, Polling is designed for users to comment on features (footpaths) that already exist.

We have several Solutions that illustrate similar 'collect feedback/info on existing features' workflows:

Event Permit Review: uses Polling to solicit feedback from departments on proposed events such as parades, fairs, concerts, etc

Mosquito Population Surveillance: Uses Polling to monitor traps and to track which species are caught and in which number.

Public Comment: uses Polling to solicit feedback on proposed land use changes

If you have specific questions about working with either app, please post them and I will do my best to answer If I am misunderstanding your workflow, please elaborate further. There are quite a few users on GeoNet who have applied both Reporter and Polling to a variety of workflows who might be able to offer advice as well.

-Allison

[ShonaFrost]

Hi Allison,

Many thanks for your reply. I’m now going down the Crown source Polling route as suggested, the Reporter gave my users a bit too much choice on what they could do!

The Event Permit Review is pretty close to what I need and have got much of the way there. Couple of issues that I’m struggling with.

•      I can’t get the comments to come up under the feature box in the app once they are filled in
•      I want users to be able to attach documents.

The table and feature class don’t seem to be linked although I have set them as related tables as well as adding the relationship class to the geodatabase so not sure what I’m doing wrong.

The attachments are set on the table so again, not sure what’s not working. Any ideas from the community are very welcome!

Thanks

Shona

[AllisonMuise1]

I think your instincts are right on the comments - something is not quite right with the relationship between the features and the comments table.

1. The relationship must be a one-to-many relationship based on a relationship class created in a gdb prior to publishing

2. The primary key field on the feature layer must contain a unique value for each feature. I don't recommend using the OBJECTID feature for this as those values are subject to change if you move features into a new dataset. I suggest using a Global ID field or other field (footpath ID, footpath name) etc that contains unique values.

3. The foreign key field on the table must be of a type that can receive the values from the primary key field. No other values should be automatically written to this field. For these reasons, the foreign key should NEVER be an OBJECTID or Global ID field. If the primary key is a Global ID, the foreign key must be a Guid field.

Currently users cannot attach documents with their comments but this is coming in the December release of AGOL. If your feature layer currently has attachments on the table, you won't need to do anything to expose this functionality after this release a 'Browse' button will be automatically added to your comment form.

[ShonaFrost]

Hi Allison,

It's worked! Many thanks for the advice over the GlobalID and GUID fields. I followed the advice on the Crowdsource Reporter page to set these up originally but I have to say your instructions are far clearer. All I have to do now is await December's release so I can have attachments.

If I have any more issues, I'll post them here.

Thanks again,

Shona

[AllisonMuise1]

Yay! Glad that helped. I also write the doc for these apps so I'll take a look to see if I can clarify that language a bit, too.

[ShonaFrost]

Thought I recognized the hand of an ESRI expert in your replies!  This is the page where I got a bit muddled, but then that's nothing new for me!

Create Crowdsource Reporter Layers - Crowdsource Reporter | ArcGIS for Local Government 

Enable and disable comments

As well as voting, users can provide feedback on previously submitted reports in the form of comments. Commenting is only available on layers that have a related table for storing the comments. Set up the table and the relationship following these steps:

Thanks again.