Future of Workforce for ArcGIS?

[JamieKelly1]

In future versions of workforce for ArcGIS, with regard to Survey123 integration, are there any plans:

1.)  To have the ability to pass the value of workOrderId to survey123 for ArcGIS?

2.)  Add custom fields to the assignment layer and have the ability to pass the values of those fields to survey123?

3.)  Allow administrator to set which survey123 form is opened based on assignment type?

These are all features we would love to have here in our organization.  We are working on a system that integrates Workforce and Survey123 into an existing piece of software we use for building inspections.

Here is the process in a nutshell:

 -  When a user creates an inspection and assigns it to an employee in our existing software, we have automated the creation of an assignment in workforce.  We set the workforce assignment workOrderId field equal to our inspection_id.

-  The mobile user receives the assignment as per usual, and then to begin their inspection we take advantage of the integration with survey123 (allowing the user to open survey123 from the assignment information screen in workforce).

-  It would be great here, if we could open the electrical inspection form for an electrical inspection assignment type, or open the concrete inspection form for a concrete inspection assignment type.

-  If we could automatically fill out the inspection_id when the survey123 form opened, then we would have a relationship back to the inspection request from the completed inspection.

[IsmaelChivite · Accepted solution]

Hi jkelly_5‌.  Good news. Yes for 1 and 3. In the first half of 2017, Workforce for ArcGIS will allow you to:

• Define the exact survey that will be launched with a particular assignment type
• Pass the WorkorderID (and Location) into your survey, to pre-populate questions in your form

As far as the ability to add custom fields to your assignments feature layer and passing them into survey123, I would want to understand in more depth your use case. Please send me an email to ichivite@esri.com so we can discuss.

[JamieKelly1]

Thanks Ismael Chivite,

This is great news!  Can't wait for the new version.

[CraigGillgrass]

Hi Jamie,

I wanted to follow-up and ask if you could provide more information on the 2nd request:

Add custom fields to the assignment layer and have the ability to pass the values of those fields to survey123?

Can you provide some information on what those fields are and what information you would like to add to assignments?

thanks,

Craig

[JamieKelly1]

Hi cgillgrass-esristaff,‌

I didn't really have a use case for the 2nd request, this was basically a backup to being able to pass workOrderId to survey123. If workOrderId could not be passed, then maybe we could add our own additional custom ID field to the assignment and then pass IT instead.

However, I can think of a way that would be useful for us if we could pass values from custom fields.

For example building inspections, if we could add address fields to our assignment. We would populate the address at the time of assignment creation. Then when our mobile user opened survey123 to complete the survey (Since we would want the address in our submitted inspection), the address would already be populated for the user based on passing the values from workforce to survey123. In this way, the mobile user would not have to spend time filling in the address for the inspection.

I can see many ways this could be useful - being able to add additional information to the survey without requiring the mobile user to type it in. This way it would show in the pdf as well.

Cheers,

　

Jamie Kelly

City of St. John's

Land Information Services - Corporate Services

Tel: 570-202

jkelly@stjohns.ca

[CraigGillgrass]

Hi Jamie, 

Thanks for replying with this extra information.

I agree that being able to pass the Address from the Workforce Assignment to Survey123 will be very helpful.  This is something we will handle when we add support for passing the Work Order ID.

In Ismael's response, he mentioned being able to pass the Location; he was referring to the Location text field that can be used to store the Address information about the assignment location.  When we add support for passing the Work Order ID field; we will also add support for passing the Location text field.

One question for you; is a single Location/Address field sufficient?  Or, do you need more than 1?

Craig

[JamieKelly1]

Address was an example.  If we were to use that, I think the single address field would be sufficient.

Another example would be to add contractor information to an inspection assignment.  For instance add custom fields to Assignment for the contractor's name and telephone number so our mobile users can see who they are inspecting and how to contact them.  We are currently using the notes field for this information.  Again having the ability to pass the values of the custom fields to survey123 would be valuable so that contractor information is stored in the submitted survey, and also included on the pdf.  In order to do this, I'm picturing that a user would have to configure workforce to let it know for which survey123 questions to populate with which field values from workforce.

[CraigGillgrass]

Jamie, this is great feedback and a nice use case for us to add this ability.

I've added it to our backlog.  Thanks for providing this.

Craig

[CraigValentine1]

Hi,

I think it would be useful to be able to pass any field that exists in Workforce through to either Survey123 or Collector App. If the information has been created with an assignment the chances are that information should be recorded as part of the piece of work, be that in Survey123 or Collector App.

If you were able to pass through the username of the person logged into Workforce this could be used with a domain to show who is doing an inspection.

The Location is very useful to be stored with an inspection record and if the Note or Description fields were passed through it could be used for almost anything.

If you were able to go that bit further and allow us to create custom fields in the Assignment and then pass those through to the other Apps it would add an incredible amount of flexibility. When an Assignment is raised in a third party application it would be useful if lots of things could be contained in the Assignment and not just a workOrderId, although the Note and Description fields do already provide a reasonable amount of flexibility.

Regards,

Craig

[CraigGillgrass]

Hello Craig,

Thanks for the feedback on this issue.  Can you go into any more detail on other examples of "When an Assignment is raised in a third party application it would be useful if lots of things could be contained in the Assignment and not just a workOrderId"?  Do you have specific examples of what information you'd like to include in custom fields?

Thanks,