Offline Basemaps for Survey123 and Collector

[DanielMcIlroy]

So I have been looking into setting up .tpk files for our field teams, and one of the things that I have realised is that if you are using both Collector and Survey123 is that you will need to save the same .tpk in two seperate locations on the field device.

Is there any plans to have a central location to store .tpk files so that they can be stored only once but used in both applications?

This would be super handy as some of our .tpk files cover all of Australia and can be reasonably large.

[JamesTedrick]

Hi Dan,

Thanks for asking about this.  We're starting to explore this as part of better integrating the ArcGIS field apps - I can't provide any timelines or promises, but wanted to respond with the state of where we're at.  Traditionally, there have been issues, especially on iOS, about the siloing of applications, but there have been some changes since the applications were originally developed.

[DanielMcIlroy]

I assumed this wasn't a "Yeah, cool, we will be pushing that out at version X.XX" and that it would be something that would require quite a bit of engineering work to make happen!

Good to know that it is something that people are thinking about. It would be very useful for us as Australia is massive and sparsely populated; meaning that most of the field work my agency does has no data coverage at all.

[PeterTimmers]

I'm still hoping Survey123 will get DIY tile caching like Collector.  Our users have been self-sufficient in Collector for years.  

ps. share your pain on tpks in Qld - we used to have a ~95GB tpk of aerial imagery for Collector.

[Anonymous User]

Second DIY tile caching. Would like to add smart caching around a set of assets. 

Use case would be provide tiles at zoom level 17-20 for 500 foot radius around point assets. 

[BenWalker]

Hi James Tedrick‌,

Do you have an update on this topic? I am currently helping a large utility in the UK with a mobile solution that uses both Collector and Survey123 and it would be great to have one vector tile cache for the Basemap, rather than two. The caches are not too big , 2 - 3GB by todays standards but still its a pain to have to load the data on twice.

Thanks

Ben.

[JamesTedrick]

Hi Ben,

Yes, currently in beta is support for vector tile basemaps.  You can read more in the Survey123 EAC, and read more about enabling the beta setting in Survey123 documentation.

[BenWalker]

thanks for the quick reply I will take a look.

[BenWalker]

Hi James Tedrick‌

This new feature look promising. Does it answer the original question posed by @ Daniel_McIlroy i.e. can collector and survey123 now share the same side load vector tile cache, or do they need one each.

thanks for the help and quick responses.

[JamesTedrick]

Hi Ben,

On Android, the Collector storage location can be added to the list of locations in the Map library settings.  The issue noted in iOS concerning per-app silos still applies.