Best practices for survey123 photo storage

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07-27-2021 06:26 AM
AaronManuel2
New Contributor III

I'm interested in hearing how everyone is storing their photos captured through survey123. The way arcgis online stores them as attachments works great when viewing them on the arcgis online platform. But it makes it difficult to use them in other ways.

E.g., we have google drive, and I can put links to google drive photos in fields on features in SDE. Whether a user is a looking at the feature in arcmap or in a webmap, they can click on a link to open the photo. There doesn't seem to be a way to do something like this with survey123 photos.

The other 2 issues are, #1 - a project with 100s of surveys each with a few pictures can eat up a huge amount of arcgis online space. #2 - there is no real way to organize the photos, they are all attached to individual points.

So I'm curious what other people are doing. Are you leaving your photos on AGOL? Do you have a workflow for migrating them to some other platform? 

Thanks.

 

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DougBrowning
MVP Esteemed Contributor

I agree having them in AGOL is causing all kinds of space issues.  By the time the service is 10-15 GB we have a lot of trouble getting it to export.

We run on field seasons so my workflow may be different but it may help.  At the end of the summer I download the service and import the records into SDE.  I run a python script that extracts the photos from the downloaded GDB using a field from the form to rename the photos to something meaningful.  The script creates a directory for each PointID on the network.  We use IIS to web enable that directory.  Then in my features I have a PhotoLink field that uses the set format http:/something.com/PointID.  We like this also for exporting to Excel.  All the photolinks come with and they all still work.

Then to get a little fancier I wrote a simple script that creates a index.html page of all the photos in that directory.  That way users do not have to click on each photo.  I then got even fancier and write any comments into the Exif info of the photo.  I use this in the HTML page so you can see the photo comments right there.

Example of screen shot (all photos are the same just as a test)

sample.png

This is a little more advanced but the script was pretty easy.  With scripts I am able to extract, rename, folder, and create HTML for 8,000 photos in around 10 minutes.

This may not be for you but it works great for us.  Good luck

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7 Replies
DougBrowning
MVP Esteemed Contributor

I agree having them in AGOL is causing all kinds of space issues.  By the time the service is 10-15 GB we have a lot of trouble getting it to export.

We run on field seasons so my workflow may be different but it may help.  At the end of the summer I download the service and import the records into SDE.  I run a python script that extracts the photos from the downloaded GDB using a field from the form to rename the photos to something meaningful.  The script creates a directory for each PointID on the network.  We use IIS to web enable that directory.  Then in my features I have a PhotoLink field that uses the set format http:/something.com/PointID.  We like this also for exporting to Excel.  All the photolinks come with and they all still work.

Then to get a little fancier I wrote a simple script that creates a index.html page of all the photos in that directory.  That way users do not have to click on each photo.  I then got even fancier and write any comments into the Exif info of the photo.  I use this in the HTML page so you can see the photo comments right there.

Example of screen shot (all photos are the same just as a test)

sample.png

This is a little more advanced but the script was pretty easy.  With scripts I am able to extract, rename, folder, and create HTML for 8,000 photos in around 10 minutes.

This may not be for you but it works great for us.  Good luck

ToriMetz
New Contributor II

That's awesome! Did you pull the script off GitHub or did you write it up yourself? Still trying to get my Python legs underneath me and that process of AGOL to GDB is something I am trying to achieve.

DougBrowning
MVP Esteemed Contributor

Mine is here.  It assumes you exported the GDB already from AGOL.

https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-survey123-questions/match-survey123-photo-attachments-to-featur...

It comes from here but I added the naming from a field part.

https://support.esri.com/en/technical-article/000011912

The exif part requires ExifTool and a Python wrapper.  I usually do not use packages but the only way I can figure it out.  This part is more complicated to install but not too bad.  If you want to see it let me know and I will post it.

I also have a script that just makes a index.html without using Exif at all.

Hope that helps

AaronManuel2
New Contributor III

Thanks Doug this seems like a possible solution. I feel like this is some good work that can help other people too.

I have a project coming up that is the main reason I'm looking into this. The main difference between this project and what you are describing is that my project is going to be continuous. I suppose I could still run a process a few times a year to export a certain amount of the records, and then remove them from the AGOL feature.

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DougBrowning
MVP Esteemed Contributor

Look into Ops Dashboard also.  We made a photo review one that may work better for your use case.

Photo Dashboard.gif

AaronManuel2
New Contributor III

Yes I think I'm going to make dashboard for our crew supervisor who is in the office most of the time. Looks good.

Is this dashboard pointing back to your web directory?

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DougBrowning
MVP Esteemed Contributor

This one points to a repeat in our 123 photos form actually.

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