The Survey123 Assistant for Gas Utilities
AI and ArcGIS
AI has long been a part of the ArcGIS System, making it AI-enabled even before the surge in interest. As conversations around AI continue to grow, this blog will spotlight the innovative ways AI is being integrated within ArcGIS, specifically in Survey123. This is going to be the first part of a three-part blog series that takes these capabilities and talks to them in the context of gas utilities.
Over the past decade, Esri has been progressively integrating AI capabilities into its system, responding to the growing curiosity and demand for AI-driven solutions and capabilities. How can we incorporate AI into workflows? How can AI make my life a little easier? How can AI make me more productive? These are questions we have heard, asked, and continue to answer for our customers.
Making Me More Productive
When considering the question, “How can AI make me more productive?” Or “How can this make my life a little easier?” I automatically think about the AI capabilities in Survey123, specifically the Survey123 assistant. Designing surveys from scratch can eat up a lot of time, but that’s exactly where the Survey123 assistant comes in. Instead of getting caught up in all the tiny details, you can let the assistant handle the heavy lifting. It streamlines the whole survey-building process using conversational language so you can spend more time on the tasks that need your attention.
AI and Gas Utilities
When we take these AI capabilities in Survey123 and bring them to the context of gas utilities, we can see how these real-world applications make daily life a little easier for users and increase productivity, alleviating the monotony of everyday tasks. As someone who has spent many hours at their desk creating surveys, I only dreamt of the days for something to make it go by faster and make it a little easier. The Survey123 assistant allows you to quickly generate surveys through conversational language and make formatting and configuration changes on the fly. What I only dreamt of is now a reality.
Paper to Digital Transformation
Let’s step into the shoes of a GIS Analyst at a gas utility who has been tasked to take their organization’s atmospheric corrosion inspection form and make a digital version since the organization is making a push towards digital. This is not a one-to-one task; during this process the analyst needs to make improvements to the survey. This task might seem daunting, but the Survey123 assistant can play a key role in this transformation.
The first step is to open the assistant and simply ask a question using conversational language. The quality of your input prompt directly affects the quality of your output survey draft, it really is that simple. But what does a good prompt look like? What about a bad or vague prompt?
Let’s build on the atmospheric corrosion inspection form example. When you ask the assistant, “Please create a 10-question form for an atmospheric corrosion inspection”, it immediately generates a tailored draft for that specific use case. You can then iterate easily, refining questions, adjusting wording, or shifting the survey structure by going back and forth with the assistant until the form meets your needs.
Now, consider what happens with a vague (bad) prompt. If you simply ask, “Create a 10-question survey,” without any context, the assistant cannot generate a meaningful survey draft. Instead, it will ask for more information. It turns out the assistant is not a mind reader. Including specific information such as topics, intended audience, and relevant questions enables the assistant to generate results that are more directly related to your request.
As I mentioned earlier, providing more detail and context in your input prompt, leads to a much stronger output survey draft. Once the draft is generated you can continue to collaborate, refining both content and design, until the survey is just right. Even after generating your final version, you can jump back into the assistant to make further adjustments, ensuring your survey evolves as your needs change.
Technical Capabilities
While this capability won’t eliminate your workload or pull a rabbit out of a survey (maybe one day), it will help streamline survey design and configuration. Let’s dive into what the assistant can and can’t do, so you can spend less time poking around the internet and more time being amazed by the magic it actually delivers.
The Survey123 assistant can…
Design entire surveys using conversational language.
You can ask questions, and the assistant will provide suggestions for creating a survey.
Allow you to add to your survey design.
Allow you to make corrections to the survey design.
Generate sample survey questions based on the context and prompt you provide.
The limitations are… (right now as of August 2025)
It’s possible it might produce inconsistent results since it’s built on rapidly evolving technology.
Some settings like visibility rules and themes for the appearance of the form are not supported.
You are unable upload a picture of a PDF and generate a survey off that PDF.
Moving Forward
This is an exciting time for ArcGIS and the growing role of AI, especially for Gas Utilities looking to streamline operations and enhance productivity. Capabilities like the Survey123 assistant are designed to boost productivity by assisting with those repetitive, day-to-day tasks we often do out of habit simply because "that’s how it’s been done." By leveraging this assistant, you can free up time, reduce manual effort, and focus on more strategic work. I encourage you to try out the Survey123 assistant today and see how it can help you work smarter (not harder), faster, and more efficiently. In case you didn’t know, the AI assistants within ArcGIS are disabled by default. If you’d like to make them available in your organization, you can follow the steps in the documentation linked below.
How to enable AI assistants: Refer to the ArcGIS configuration documentation for detailed steps.
If you have security concerns or want to better understand how these assistants work, ArcGIS provides transparency resources:
Learn about AI security and transparency: Review the ArcGIS AI Transparency Cards for information on how AI features are developed and governed.
Head over to the ArcGIS Trust Center: Review the ArcGIS Trust Center to learn more how Esri prioritizes trust in AI development and deployment.
While the Survey123 assistant isn’t ready to headline a magic show, it’s already making the everyday business of survey creation feel a lot less daunting. So go ahead, let the assistant pick up some of that workload. Who knows? With each improvement, that rabbit in the survey might not be as far off as you think.
PLEASE NOTE: The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent Esri’s position, strategies, or opinions.