Field Maps and Forestry - best practices

[BN-LRR]

Hi everyone! 

I thought it might be nice to share some of our best practices related to Forestry Data collection and Field Maps. 

My organization is currently updating our field data collection systems to use Field Maps.

Do you use Field Maps, and if so, any recommendations or tales of caution to share? 

Thanks,

Brian

[tikola]

I have no real forestry input but with water utilities in similar rural regions and here locally I see one important common point. Offline maps are must as cellular connection and GPS visibility is sometimes very shady in forested areas. In recent Field Maps versions I have very good experiences of offline usage as long as amount of data involved in process is somewhat limited.

[MartinaTekelova]

We use Field Maps to navigate to survey plot locations, each plot point has a link to Survey 123, and ability to mark it as done. Offline areas are necessity. Each crew marks their survey plots during the day, then back in wifi zone they sync their Field Maps to see what was done that day and plan the next day. Make sure someone tests all the functionality before heading out of the office.

[LukeGilner1]

Agree that offline areas are a must.  It's helpful to set up predefined Map Areas ahead of time, to make the download process much easier for new users.

Be aware that once you have a map set up and people are using it, you can't make major changes to the map, or the layers themselves, otherwise syncing will fail.  If a change is needed in the map, it's generally easiest to create a new map (copy) and tell everyone to download the new map, sync any edits in the old map and then delete the old one.