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Appending data with attachments downloaded from Feature Service to existing geodatabase

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02-13-2016 08:12 AM
Status: Open
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ErnestoCarreras3
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Occasional Contributor

I have been using lately the tools and scripts provided here: https://geonet.esri.com/docs/DOC-6496​.
https://geonet.esri.com/servlet/JiveServlet/download/6496-6-153147/Download%20Service.zip
This is a great to download the data with attachments from a hosted service for ArcGIS Online or ArcGIS for Server. I did find a gap with this tool and therefore did not fulfill all my needs. I believe there are also people out there that will also encounter this same issue. I am using this tool to download data along with its attachments from a feature service used by a team collecting data in the field. They are in the field every other day collecting the data with a form I created using Survey123. Our in-house workflow is set to download this data every other night with the purpose of processing the data and then appending it to an existing main database with the same structure (fields, layers, domains, among others).  The data from this main database is then re-published to overwrite an existing service that displays this data. I believe this tool has a lot of potential but I have found some flaws:
1.    Its output is not consistent. It generates a GlobalID_str field which sometimes get populated. Sometimes it is returned as Null values.
2.    Sometimes the tool will only download only one picture even though there are many associated to the particular point.
3.    This third point I believe is critical for me and others, and is one of the reasons I stated it did not fit all my needs. When the data was appended to the main geodatabase, the GlobalIDs form both, the Feature Class and the Attach tables were changed during the process. The relationship between them got lost in the process affecting the attachment relationships.  There must be a way to overcome this issue since field collecting processes may cover days if not months, and this process will happen a lot during that period.
Please, keep on extending this amazing and useful toll and add it to the enhancement list for a future release. I know there will be a lot happy GIS users around the world with this implementation.
Kind regards.
Ernesto