How best to handle survey point intersecting overlapping polygons?

[Ed_]

say i have two types of polygon features A and B in a feature layer and i want to return a message based on the feature type and its year. So the message would vary based on the feature type and its year.

Now the thing is that there quite a few overlapping (kinda like stacked on top of each other (data is 2D) and not dupes) polygons. In such a case can S123 Connect query handle a point intersecting overlapping polygons? 

[DavidSolari]

As mentioned in the docs, if you ask for an intersecting polygon using pulldata it'll grab whatever comes back first. If you want to ensure you only get one possible choice back you'll have to keep your polygons nice and tidy.

[JenniferAcunto]

If you have a field in your overlapping polygons that you can use to determine which of the overlapping polygons to grab from, you can add a where clause to the end of your pulldata query. 

Query a feature layer

[Ed_]

yeah we ended up concatenating field values from the overlapping polygons (historical mines, different types, surface and sub-surface) and show messages to the the end users depending on what has been captured in the concatenated values. Concatenating works because the end message disclaimer may not always from the first (spatially) polygon. 

if you have any other suggestions please let me know 🙂

Update: actually concat did not work properly so ended up using outStatistics to consider all overlapping polys

[brierTurnbull]

I have had success by messing with draw order. The polygon drawn last will be the one that returns data, so you could add a new attribute to your layer's attribute table that assigns tiers of priority. After that you'd go into advanced symbology and change your draw order field to reference it. 

This would really only be feasible in a layer that has few polygons or is already easy to mass sort though.