AI assistants in Survey123 are maturing. In my last post on the topic – Survey123 assistants (beta) – I lumped a whole lot of exciting things together, that deserve to be unraveled. Now available in preview, the Survey123 assistant uses generative AI to do the following:
- Use a conversation to help you design a survey in the web designer.
- Translate survey designs in the web designer or in Survey123 Connect.
Design a survey through conversation
Using a conversation is a great way to get started with creating a new survey in the web designer. Of course you can change the type of question that is used, or modify the wording to suit your organization, but effort of laying out a series of select questions and all its options can be unnecessarily laborious. Be sure to give the assistant clear and specific instructions for a strong response. Here are some good examples to try.
First up is a sentiment survey:
"Create a post-event feedback survey. Start with a group of questions about the attendee's demographics, including age and zip code. Then, create another group for feedback on the event, with questions about session quality and venue satisfaction."
How about an inspection for damage assessment:
"Build a detailed property damage assessment form. The first section should capture the inspector's details. The second section should have questions about the property's location and the date of assessment. A third section should detail the damage, including photo uploads and a description of the extent of the damage."
Or a scientific data collection form:
"Create a professional water quality sampling survey for our environmental field crews. This survey will be their main tool for data collection at each site, so it needs to be robust. I need to capture the sample ID, pH level, water temperature in Celsius, and turbidity. It must also have a geopoint question to log the location. Please think about the entire field collection process and add other relevant fields that would make this a complete tool for a field scientist. For example, consider adding a spot for general notes, a photo of the water body, or a single-choice question for weather conditions during the sampling."
Commercial field operations don’t miss out either. Here’s a prompt for marathon registration form:
"I am the race director for our annual city marathon, and I need a comprehensive registration form that helps with both logistics and runner safety. Please start with the basics: runner's full name, date of birth for age group calculation, and t-shirt size (S, M, L, XL, XXL). I also definitely need a section for their emergency contact person and phone number. Now, make this form truly useful for managing a major athletic event. Add questions that would help with race logistics and safety. Think about things like placing runners in the right starting corral based on their estimated finish time, or a text box for any medical conditions we should be aware of. Feel free to add any other fields you think a race director would need."
You don’t need to accept the first response from the assistant, refine the survey with additional prompts. Then once you generate the survey in the web designer you can continue to refine it, by modifying, removing or adding questions, or changing any other settings that you would change in a manually created survey.
For more information, see Design a survey using a conversation.
Translate survey designs
Multi-language surveys are ideal when working with communities of respondents where many languages are spoken; however, survey translation can be a lengthy task. Utilizing AI for initial translations is an excellent time-saving approach. Translation generation absolutely should not replace human translators, but rather serves as a more efficient method to performing task – refine translations rather than start from scratch. The assistant can be used to translate surveys in either the web designer or Survey123 Connect. In both, you first nominate which languages you want the survey translated into, and then the assistant will create translations for text in the survey design.
For more information see
What is preview?
Please be sure to read this FAQ: What is Preview?, but in short, it’s a step between beta and general release. Preview features are documented, and we encourage you to use preview features and provide as much feedback on them as possible.
Note: Your ArcGIS Online administrator must configure assistants before you can access the Survey123 assistant (preview).
For more information see the product documentation, Survey123 assistant (preview).
