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    The June 2023 release is loaded with exciting new features and enhancements: Better form builders, productivity tools in the mobile app, easier report automation, and more samples and templates to get you started. Read on to learn more!   What’s new in ArcGIS Survey123 (June 2023)   Build more powerful forms with the Survey123 web designer Location sharing in the Survey123 mobile app Streamline field data collection with smart assistants Integration with RFID scanners and laser rangefinders Scheduled report generation Other enhancements   Build more powerful forms with the Survey123 web designer   The Survey123 web designer is a web-based, visual form builder. It is effortless to use. So muchso that you do not need to know GIS to use it. If you know what questions you want in your form, just drag and drop them into the designer. Easy does not mean less powerful: You can build GREAT surveys with the web designer. It grows with every release:   Sliders!   Let respondents drag a slider to rate an answer or set a number within a well-defined range. Easy and quick: No need to type!   Slider questions are helpful when you want to collect responses on a continuum or scale. In social research, they are usedto measure satisfaction or agreement between 0 and 1. A 0 to 100 scale can help you collect the completion percentage of a task, intensity, and so on. Temperature or pH is also a good fit for sliders.   Populate a dropdown list using records from an ArcGIS layer or table   Lists help respondents complete a form more quickly and simplify data exploration and analysis.  This release letsyou  dynamically populate a dropdown list using records from an ArcGIS layer or table. Think about it: this means your lists will change at the pace of your data! Here are some examples where you can dynamically populate lists using spatial and attribute queries: Open service requests within 2 km from my location Endangered species in the State of California Cities with population larger than specified in the previous question Do you want to learn how to do this and see more examples? Check out the Survey123 Tips of the Trade: Dynamic lists in the web designer blog post for more details.   Redirect respondents to a website after completing a survey   What happens when a form is completed? Sometimes you want to reopen a blank form to allow the next entry. Displaying a thank you screen is a nice touch when collecting data from the public. Starting with this release, you can automatically redirect the respondent to a website. Use the new URL redirect capability to seamlessly take respondents to a different website after submitting a survey. This is useful to bring people back to your website or when you want to use tracking pixels.   Location sharing in the Survey123 mobile app   Location sharing is an organization-wide capability that allows you to record where mobile workers are and where they have been. Our field apps, such as ArcGIS QuickCapture and Field Maps, leverage this capability already, and now Survey123 can take advantage of it as well. Location sharing in Survey123 will help you more easily understand where work with the mobile app is conducted, when, and by whom. Additionally, you can incorporate  your Survey123 location sharing data into other ArcGIS apps like dashboards to monitor and respond better to field activities.  Location sharing enhances location awareness for field users too. Field users can see their tracks and, with the appropriate permissions, the tracks of their colleagues. Read the Deploy a Location Tracking solution with ArcGIS Survey123 guide for more details.   Streamline field data collection with Smart Assistants   The camera on your phone can do much more than take photos. With this release, Survey123 smart assistants let you run AI-based image classification, object detection, and redaction models to make your forms smarter. Object detection: Automatically detect objects in a photo and use that information in your form logic. For example, let your smart assistant estimate the number of insects in a trap and bring that count into your form immediately Image classification: Take a photo of a plant and let your smart assistant tell you the species. You can present questions in your form appropriate to the identified species. Image redaction and annotation: Detect objects in an image and highlight or obscure them. For example, help me blur human faces to protect the privacy of any person that may appear in a photo you took. Smart assistants can leverage pre-trained machine learning models to do the abovementioned tasks. Survey123 is capable of running your models on your device, even while offline, producing valuable information that field users can leverage while completing the form. Read the Smart assistants help topic to learn more about training and deploying your own pre-trained deep learning models. This release supports built-in pre-trained machine learning models to perform face redaction from photos. To get started, read the Survey123 Tips of the Trade: Face redaction with Smart Assistants blog post.   Integration with RFID and laser rangefinders   Berntsen’s InfraMarker RFID integration   Passive UHF RFID is the fastest growing asset identifying technology in the world and commonly deployed for asset tracking, equipment tracking and inventory management. The technology is increasingly used in infrastructure asset management thanks to its durability in the field, flexibility to serve as a unique ID on almost any asset, and ability to be read from distance or through mediums such as walls, ground, or concrete. Starting with this release, you can easily integrate RFID read/write power within your own Survey123 forms using Berntsen’s InfraMarker RFID solution. With InfraMarker, a field user can scan a RFID tag and instantly launch the related inspection form in Survey123 …  faster and without errors in asset misidentification. You can also use InfraMarker for Survey123 to write information to a new RFID tag and easily associate the unique identifier in your ArcGIS system of record.   In the photo above, a field technician is using a RFID reader to scan a RFID tag embedded in a catch basin marker to launch the corresponding inspection form with Survey123.  At this site, the same process is used to manage underground utility asset points, ROW posts, street signs, and manholes. Check with Esri Silver Partner Berntsen for more details. Available for Android and IOS devices   Laser Tech’s laser rangefinder integration   Connect your own Survey123 forms to Laser Tech’s TruPulse 200x and 360 rangefinders to remotely map assets and accuratelly collect heights, depths, distances, clearances, and slope grades. We have closely worked with Esri Silver Partner Laser Tech to ensureyou can connect Survey123 directly to their TruPulse laser rangefinders. No extra hardware of applications are needed!   In the photo above, Brett Stokes from the Survey123 team is using a TruPulse 360R to map the  streetlight’s location, plus heights of multiple assets, all from a distance and safely: No jaywalking, no ladders… just a point-and-shoot routine! Check out this video to see Brett, Survey123, and TruPulse in action. Contact Esri Silver Partner Laser Tech to inquire about their mobile solutions and hardware. Check the Prepare for rangefinder data collection help topic for details related to form authoring.   Schedule report generation   By now, I hope you are familiar with the Survey123 report services. If not, you are missing out! Long story short, you can create beautiful PDF reports on top of your own Survey123 data. Include tables, photos, maps, signatures, and more in your reports. You can automate report generation using the Survey123 connectors for Make.com and Microsoft Power Automate. In this release, we enhanced the connectors so you can schedule your reports. Want a report created every day? Every week? Check out the WHERE parameter in the connector. That is the key that lets you select the records to include in your report on schedule.  If you want to learn how to do this step-by-step, we invite you to join a live webinar on July 6. We will post the recording in Esri Community in case you miss it.   Other enhancements   Faster and more accurate barcode scanning: Learn about the new enhanced camera features capabilities in the Survey123 mobile app. Enable it, and barcode scanning will turn out faster and more accurate. Ever had trouble scanning PDF417 barcodes? Fixed! Sluggish barcode scanning in some old Android devices? History! XLSForm: Set the exact formats you want your barcode questions to scan. This will speed up scanning! Use the new mapTools parameter to hide or show map tools. Check out the inbox map in the mobile app: it now includes a search bar. Critical fixes across the board: Survey123 web and field apps, Connect, designer… Learn more   Check the What’s new help topic for more details on new features in this and prior releases. Do you have questions or want to see live demos? Join our 60-minute What’s new webinar on June 28!     ... View more

  This post describes how you can use the Survey123 web designer to dynamically populate a list using an ArcGIS layer or table.  If you want to do this with Survey123 Connect, check the Dynamic Lists using Search appearance blog post from @BrettStokes    About dynamic lists   Typically, lists are static. This is generally not a problem because many lists do not need to change: Yes/No, High/Medium/Low or a list with a well-defined collection of asset types are good examples. Dynamic lists are those that populate on the fly from an ArcGIS layer or table. Say, for example, you want to display a list with customer names. It would make a lot of sense to populate the list from a table, since the customer database changes all the time. Dynamic lists can load all, or some records from your table. You can apply attribute and spatial filters: Display all customers that have pending requests, all active incidents, all hospitals inside an area I will define, all available field crews within 50 kilometers from my location,  etc.  You can visually configure dynamic lists with the Survey123 web designer. A step-by-step guide is below. If you want to learn how to do this with XLSForm, check this help topic.   The basics (Step-by-step guide)   Let's build a dynamic list in the web designer: One that loads all records from an existing layer or table. I am going to use a World Countries layer from ArcGIS Online: Login into the Survey123 Web designer and create a new survey Add a Dropdown question into your survey and change the label to Select a country    Go to the Choices section and click Edit. This will bring a panel where you can select your target layer Click Add to select the layer. Change the target source to ArcGIS Online and type World Countries in the search box. Sort items by relevance to bring the Esri authoritative layers to the top. Select the World Countries layer and click OK to confirm. Select Country Name as the choice label field. Click OK at the bottom to confirm and Preview your form. The list will populate automatically with all countries found in the layer.   Attribute filters (Step-by-step guide)   The animation below shows what I want to do next: Add a Cities list that only shows cities within the selected country. Add a new Dropdown question type. Change the label to Select a city.  Configure it to load records from the ArcGIS Online World Cities layer. Tip: Sort ArcGIS Online items by Relevance Select the City Name label field and prepare to set the filter next. Check the Value filter. We want to only show cities where the CNTRY_NAME matches the value of the Select a country question. Configure the filter as shown below. Note: If you cannot find the CNTRY_NAME filed, then you selected the wrong World Cities layer.  Click OK and Preview! Spatial filters (Step-by-step guide)   You can also filter choices based on location. Below, you can see how I am filtering the country list so only countries within 500 kilometers from the selected location are shown.  I bet you can do this on your own! Add a Map question to your survey Edit your Select a country list to include a filter as shown below and click OK to confirm.   Preview your edits to make sure they work well.   A few considerations, and limitations   I think you will agree that dynamic lists can be extremely useful. They give you a lot of flexibility to keep your lists up to date, without having to touch the design of your survey or republishing it.  Dynamic lists can feed from ArcGIS Online layers, tables and views. They also work with ArcGIS Enterprise hosted layers as well as with layers from your multiuser geodatabase.  You can use your dynamic lists in web surveys, and in the Survey123 mobile app. Now, there are a few important things to keep in mind: Dynamic lists cannot be populated while you are disconnected. We will likely address this in the future, but for now... online workflows only! The total number of records loaded into the list is limited by the maxRecordCount property of the layer/table you are querying. In ArcGIS Online, the default maxRecordCount is 2,000. We are looking into how to make this better (Fix tentatively scheduled for Q4 2023), so you can work with layers and filters over the maxRecordCount limit. [Fixed August 23, 2023] In the Survey123 web designer, the options we explored today to configure choices from a Layer, are ONLY available for the Dropdown question type  The Dropdown list question only displays values when you activate the control or start typing in it.  Only choices that match what you type will be displayed The Survey123 web designer will only load unique values from your layer.  That is, you will not see duplicate labels. I hope this is useful. Thanks for reading all the way to the bottom!     ... View more

  This post explores the use of a Smart Assistant to help you redact human faces from a photo taken with the Survey123 mobile app. Familiarity with XLSForm and Survey123 Connect is assumed.    Some context before we start   You likely take photos when using Survey123: to report incidents, inspect assets or document your work. Now, are these photos allowed to contain personally identifiable information? Some regulations such as CPRA, CCPA, VCDPA and GDPR qualify human faces as personally identifiable information (PII). The presence of PII in your photos limits their use and how you secure and manage them. You can configure Survey123 image questions to help you redact faces from your photos. Face redaction will happen right on your device, even if offline and before any data is sent to your ArcGIS organization. Before I go into the details, let’s be clear about of couple of important things:  PII encompasses more than just faces. A license plate in a car, for example, can be considered PII. What I will describe next in this post will assist in the process of removing faces from a photo, but that is just one step in completely removing PII. Full PII redaction is the responsibility of the end user. As much as a smart assistant can do a good job, it will not be perfect. Nobody is perfect and less perfect are machines. Smart Assistants help, but do not replace your review and professional judgment. If removing PII from photos is important to you, Survey123 Smart Assistants may be of help. Read on, learn, and experiment. Then discuss with your colleagues how well, or not, this technology is useful to your workflows. Technically speaking, what I describe in this article uses face-detection routines included with iOS and Android devices.  These routines leverage, depending on your operating system, pre-trained machine learning models from Apple and Google. It is very likely that you are using these face-detection routines already: Did you ever wonder how the camera in your mobile phone is so good at auto-focusing on the faces of people? Turns out, your camera is using pre-trained face detection machine learning models to put everyone in focus. According to Apple and Google, these face detection routines do not send your photos to their respective clouds. That is, face-detection happens on your device. In case you want to learn more, here is the relevant privacy statement from Google. For Apple, check their Device Analytics & Privacy and Data & Privacy statements. Survey123 smart camera features   As described above, the face detection features used by Survey123 are powered by APIs from Apple and Google. By default, access to these API's is disabled, but you can enable it as follows: In the Survey123 mobile app, tap on your profile picture in the top-right corner Open the Settings page Tap on Privacy and Security  Enable enhanced camera features If you do not enable Smart camera features in your mobile app, face redaction as described in this article will not happen.   Configuring your Survey123 form to trigger face redaction   To trigger face redaction on an image question, add redaction=@faces to the bind::esri:parameters column of your image question. Even better, try adding this instead: redaction=@faces&cameraPreview=true  This will blur faces once the photo is taken and also while in the live camera preview. The Add Smart Redaction to your Survey help topic describes a few more parameters you can use: You can control the redaction effect (pixelate, blur, blockout or a custom symbol), hide and show labels in the live camera preview, and the scale and color of the redaction boxes. Understanding face redaction in the mobile app   Depending on how you configured your image question, automatic face redaction will occur after you take the photo, or also before you take it, while in the live camera preview. Either way, after you press the camera shutter button, your photo will be presented so you can review it. The review process is key. While reviewing your photo, you can adjust the redacted areas: Add new, remove, or edit existing ones. This is your chance to completely eliminate all PII from your photo: Tap on the image to add a new redaction box Tap on a redaction box to move it or resize it Drag a redaction box into the trash can symbol at the top to remove it   As you can see, the smart assistant helps you get started with the PII redaction process. Smart Assistant will blur all the faces it can find in your photo. You can then manually redact other information as appropriate to your workflow. Note: Once you exit the redaction dialog, your photo will not be editable from the Survey123 mobile app anymore. Redacted areas are not recoverable. That is, you cannot restore an area that has been redacted. Troubleshooting   The steps outlined in this article assume that you author your survey using Survey123 Connect version 3.18 or newer Your mobile app also needs version 3.18 or newer In addition to configuring your XLSForm as described above, you must enable Smart camera features in the Survey123 mobile app for face redaction to occur   ... View more