ArcGIS QuickCapture 1.3 Released!
We are excited to announce the release of ArcGIS QuickCapture 1.3. The mobile app has been updated across all supported platforms. QuickCapture designer has also been refreshed.
Here are the highlights.
ArcGIS QuickCapture Public Projects
Starting with this release, ArcGIS Hub Premium customers can share QuickCapture projects publicly. This is useful for crowd-sourcing, citizen science or community engagement initiatives. Public QuickCapture projects can be downloaded into the mobile app without the need to login with an ArcGIS account: People download the QuickCapture app from the app store for free, and use your QuickCapture projects for free as well. All what end-users need to download your projects is a QR code or Access code that you will be providing to them.
The way this works is simple: If your ArcGIS Online organization is licensed with ArcGIS Hub Premium, you will have a new option in the QuickCapture designer, within the Sharing dialog, to share your project with Everyone.
When you share your project with Everyone, your project is public. All you need to do for people to access your project is to share with them a link, access code or QR code. The sharing dialog will create these links and access codes for you automatically as shown in the animation below.
Just for fun, and to show you how a QuickCapture public project could be shared with the general public, we put together a Santa Sighting initiative. Did you see Santa in your neighborhood? Get QuickCapture out of your pocket, snap a photo and report! We used a StoryMap to present the idea, allowing people to download the project and look at the results. Check it out! Exercising the Santa sample will illustrate the experience for downloading the projects into your device.
Open the Santa Sightings StoryMap
Enhancements to the QuickCapture designer
With this update, we have added many new features into QuickCapture designer so you can create your projects more easily.
- User Inputs: User Inputs allow you prompt dialogs within the QuickCapture app so end-users can enter additional information during data capture. For example, you can use User Inputs to launch a 'Enter comments' dialog when a button is pushed. You can alternatively configure a User Input to display a 'Select Priority' dialog to classify a new incident captured as High, Medium or Low priority.
You can now easily configure User Inputs from the QuickCapture designer. For more details, check our https://community.esri.com/community/arcgis-quickcapture/blog/2019/10/06/understanding-user-inputs-i... bog post and our Configure a project—QuickCapture | Documentation help topic.
- Continuous mode for point features: Up until this release, point features could be captured from QuickCapture one by one. That is, you would push the button, and the app would capture one point at that location. Some of you requested that we also allow you to treat point features in continuous mode. When working in continuous mode, pushing the point button activates data capture for that feature as a stream. As you move, new points are captured. This is useful if you want to capture all location metadata (horizontal accuracy, speed, altitude...) as well as other device variables (time of capture, etc) along a route.
- Optional photos: You can now configure optional photos with your buttons.
Miscellaneous fixes and enhancements
There are many other enhancements and fixes in the designer and the mobile app. The full list can be found in our What's New help topic. In general, you will find many refinements in both the designer and the mobile app that make them much more robust. For example, the mobile app can more reliably work in poor-connectivity scenarios. Designer is also better at catching some logical errors in your designs. For example, designer will no longer let you publish a project where you leave required fields unpopulated.
Next steps
We are already working on version 1.4 and we will try to make it available in the Early Adopter Program in early 2020. Here are our driver tasks for 1.4:
- Designer enhancements:
- Configure online and offline maps in your QuickCapture project.
- Save as: A new option in the QuickCapture gallery to let you quickly make a copy of an existing project.
- Drafts: An enhanced publishing workflow so you can make and test out edits in a project without affecting your end-users.
- Mobile app:
- Split-screen: This feature is for tablet form factors only. Show the buttons and map all in one screen!
- Biometric authentication: To make your life easier when you login into the app.
Other projects we have in our backlog include:
- Add support for webhooks
- Add support for AppConfig to configure a custom ArcGIS Enterprise url
- Hands-free QuickCapture: Operate QuickCapture with your voice.