Unique surveys when offline

Question

In preparation for the new Lead Service Line Inventory requirements, I am trying the create a fairly simple survey that employees can use to document the water service line material at the water meter (so inside a house, most likely in the basement where internet connectivity might  be unreliable) . I'm trying to figure out if there is an easy way to make sure we don't end up with duplicate surveys for the same location.

I have a .csv with customer IDs, addresses, and lat-long values that I have uploaded to ArcGIS Online and I am linking to the survey so I can pull data into the survey (so the employee selects an existing address and the survey will pre-populate with a geopoint and customerID).  When there is an internet connection, the employee can visually see on the map if someone else has already submitted a survey for that location, like in the example shown in the screenshot, however, if they are offline this won't work. I have looked into packaging a map for offline use and possibly recreating that map every day, but I cannot bring the existing surveys into it. I can only get the basemap to package. So my next thought was to add a column to my  linked .csv file to keep track of locations with surveys (see other screenshot).  I am not sure the best way to go about updating this file. I was thinking I would have to manually download the .csv file from AGOL,  download the survey responses, use vlookup to figure out which addresses have surveys, then update the .csv and upload it back to AGOL. But that sounds like a lot of manual work!  Is there another way to go about this?

Thanks for any input!

Alina

CSVexample.JPG

SurveyForm.JPG

JonahW · Answer

Thank you for the followup. I played with the inbox option a bit and although it is a neat idea I don't think it will work for me. First off, half the time I try to use the map to refresh the existing surveys the app crashes. This is after I tried to load all 5,000.  It's probably too much to handle. Because this survey will be used in conjunction with other work (like replacing a meter or doing some other work that might potentially expose the service line) I am unable to load only a specific set of surveys out of the 6,000+ potential ones. Secondly, when offline, if you are trying to  fill out a survey that is not in your inbox because you didn't load all your surveys when online,  you'll end up with two surveys... so that still doesn't fix the issue. I think I'm going to stick to using the .csv file which works both online and offline and it follows the same easy workflow for the user. But I can definitely see other projects that might benefit from using the inbox.

Thank you again for your input!

MichelleWilliamsERM · Answer

I only want to collect exactly one survey for each location

* For your situation, you will only need the main survey.

I am still not sure I understand how having all of the surveys in the inbox ahead of time will help users know whether a survey has been completed or not.

* You'll need a dedicated status field with domains like "Completed" and "Required"
* Then you can setup the Inbox query to only bring the address that are set to "Required"
* The inbox will work offline, as long as you refresh the inbox each morning before you go out to the field. BUT since you are offline you, the other inspectors won't see what's been completed until all the surveys get uploaded to the cloud and refreshed the next time. So, you might want to have your teams go to different areas of the city.

I did look up the max number of records that can be in the inbox, and this article says it is 5,000

* This must be new, and thank you for checking, while this is a great feature, that's a lot of data to be pushing and pulling from the cloud. This becomes an issue when photos are refreshed into the inbox.

How to populate Survey123 from the backend.

* Go to portal and download the hosted service
* Append the feature layer to the hosted service
* If you have a spreadsheet, you'll want to geocode those first.
* Now go into Survey123 and refresh your inbox.

Here's a training that will help you through the process, this is using polygons, but points work the same way. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/michellereneewilliams_gis-esri-survey123-activity-6982890717530517504-nAoh?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

PS - if you need more help, I have office hours from 6-7 PST Wednesday nights.

JonahW · Answer

Thank you for your response!  I do have a few questions as I don't have a lot of experience using the Inbox.

When you say to create the main survey and populate through ArcPro, is that the same as creating a survey from an existing feature layer? If I only want to collect exactly one survey for each location, do I still need to set up a relate? (I assume that's what you mean when you say to create a repeat for data collection) .

I am still not sure I understand how having all of the surveys in the inbox ahead of time will help users know whether a survey has been completed or not. Would they have to open up the existing record and check whether the information has been populated? Or is there a way to make filled out surveys "disappear" from the inbox using some sort of query? Also, does the inbox work when offline?

I did look up the max number of records that can be in the inbox, and this article says it is 5,000. We have around 6,000 customers, so I would probably still have to play around with setting up a query.

Thank you again!