Latest Contributions by IsmaelChivite

Who is capturing data? Survey123 will always store the username used to capture data. This is achieved through Editor Tracking, which is enabled by default in every Survey you publish.  We use this information to generate the Participation charts in the survey123 web site, but you can also look at who created an individual entry by simply looking at the attribute table (Data Tab in the survey123 web site) If someone in your organization were to edit the data submitted after the fact, the Editor field will reflect the name of that person as well. You will know who captured the data in the field and who, if anyone, edited the data once submitted.  The Edit date field also comes automatically and refers to the time when the data was edited. If you are interesting in capturing the email of the person that submitted the data handy, you can also add in your form a question of type email as described in the metadata section of the XLSForm help. When is data captured?  This one is a bit tricky. When you enable Editor Tracking, ArcGIS will keep track of when the data is received. Although we hide the field in the Survey123 web site, you will be able to see that field if you load the survey data (the feature service) into ArcGIS Pro, or the ArcGIS Map Viewer in your browser. But do not get fooled: the Creator_Date field will not tell you when the data was captured… it simply tells you when it made it into ArcGIS… when it was written into the feature service. If you really want to know when the data was captured, you will need to add a new type of question into your survey spreadsheet. This question will actually not be visible to the end user. The XLSForm spec describes it as part of the Metadata section of your survey and is called ‘start’. It is actually quite simple: just add a start question as in the next screenshot: You can add this question at the beginning, the end or pretty much anywhere in between. Again, the question will actually not show up in your form… but the survey123 app will capture the time when the user started the survey and that bit of information will be persisted when submitted. If you use the question type ‘end’, we will always capture when the user finished the survey.  Having both can be useful if you want to measure how much time it took to fill out the form. When using the start and end type of questions, your feature service will immediately become time-aware. Simply take your survey data into the ArcGIS.com Map Viewer and a slider bar will show at the bottom so you can animate data over time. Where is data captured? By now you know that you can add geopoint questions to your survey. By default the Survey123 app tries to capture the location of your device. If your device in fact provides a location, it will be used as the default location. Typically, a user can overwrite that location by tapping on the map.   Sometimes you may not want the end user to be able to change the location and go with what the device provides.  If that is the case simply flag the question in your spreadsheet as readonly.  The map control will still show up, but the user will not be able to move the location.   Alternatively you may want to decide to hide the map control all together. That is possible too… simply create a survey with no geopoint questions at all.    Survey123 will still capture the location for you… if provided by the device. ... View more

  The content of this blog has now been refreshed and republished here. ... View more

This 15 minute video is a brief Survey123 for ArcGIS tutorial. We will show you how you can create your first survey and have people collect data with it.  An ArcGIS Online organizational account, Microsoft Excel and and a smartphone is all you need to follow along this tutorial. ... View more

[Last updated April 4, 2020] Some of you are interested in using Survey123 for ArcGIS against ArcGIS Enterprise, so today we will describe succinctly how you can make that happen. Survey123 can work with versions 10.4 and newer of ArcGIS Enterprise.  You can also make  it work against 10.3.1, although as we will see there are  some caveats. Survey123 for ArcGIS requires Portal for ArcGIS. Portal for ArcGIS is included with ArcGIS Enterprise at no additional cost with the Standard and Advanced editions. Typically, the Portal for ArcGIS license comes bundled with a number of ArcGIS named accounts, which you will need to publish new surveys and also to submit data to private surveys. Your Portal for ArcGIS  must be configured with the ArcGIS Data Store. Creating a Hosted Server involves a handful of steps. First you need to install ArcGIS for Server. It is strongly recommended that you put an ArcGIS Web Adaptor in front. You will also need to install the ArcGIS Data Store and register it with your ArcGIS Server instance. Once your ArcGIS for Server instance and the Data Store are coupled, you will federate your ArcGIS Server instance with your Portal for ArcGIS, and designate it as your Hosted Server. For details on this, check the Configure a Hosting Server with your Portal help topic. Important note to 10.3.1 users: While technically possible, it is not recommended that you run Survey123 against 10.3.1. If running Portal for ArcGIS 10.3.1, you need to follow instructions as described in this KB Article.  Also, READ CAREFULLY this KB Article too if you plan to upgrade to 10.4.   If running 10.4 or newer versions, you can skip the steps in the KB article. Configuring ArcGIS for Server, the ArcGIS Data Store and Portal for ArcGIS is probably where you will spend most of your time. Once you have that in place, things are as follows: The Survey123 website and Portal for ArcGIS You can easily configure the Survey123 website to work against you own ArcGIS portal. Simply pass the URL of your portal to survey123.arcgis.com as shown below: https://survey123.arcgis.com?portalUrl=https://portal.domain.com/arcgis If you are working with a version of ArcGIS Enterprise older than 10.6, follow instructions in this KB article. While you can obviously bookmark the URL above to reuse it, it is much better to modify your ArcGIS Enterprise app launcher to include a shortcut to the Survey123 website. That way, anyone in your organization can easily access the Survey123 website without having to remember the syntax of the URL. You will find step by step instructions to create your own Survey123 website shortcut in the app launcher of ArcGIS Enterprise in this Technical Support Article. With your Survey123 website up and running against your own portal, you can publish new surveys using Survey123 designer, access the Data and Analyze tabs, etc. If your portal cannot be reached by our ArcGIS Online services because it sits behind your firewall, then the Feature Report functionality will not work. Survey123 Connect for ArcGIS By default Surey123 Connect is configured to work against ArcGIS Online, but you can click on the settings button as highlighted in the next screenshot to add a connection to your own portal. Clicking on the settings will allow you add the URL of your own Portal for ArcGIS. Just a couple of tips: Make sure you always use the https protocol. Do not forget to include the instance name of your portal. For example, below the instance name of my portal is ‘portal’, but by default the instance name is ‘arcgis’. You can really choose the instance name of your portal to be whatever you want… this is done during the installation of the ArcGIS web adaptor. Once logged in to your portal, you should be able to publish your own surveys into your own ArcGIS Enterprise. If you publish a new survey from a sample, template or existing XLSForm, Survey123 Connect will automatically create a new feature service for your survey. This feature service will live in the ArcGIS Data Store as a Hosted Feature Service. Alternatively, you can choose to create surveys on top of existing Hosted or Federated feature services. The Survey123 for ArcGIS mobile app Similarly to what we did in Connect, you can easily make your app point to your own Portal for ArcGIS. In the Sign In dialog access the Settings (button in the top-right corner of the signin dialog) and type the URL of your own Portal for ArcGIS, then Sign In with your Portal for ArcGIS credentials. Both Connect and the Survey123 for ArcGIS mobile app will remember the last portal you chose, so you will not need to go into the settings every time you want to login. You can of course, switch back into ArcGIS Online or any other portal at any time… Known Limitations If your Portal for ArcGIS is behind the firewall, you will not be able to use the Survey123 report services. Report services do not work with attachments from ArcGIS Enteprise (this is expected to be resolved in version 10.8.1 for surveys hosted in the ArcGIS Data Store). If using Survey123 Connect to publish surveys, make sure you set your question names to be all lowercase. This is because the ArcGIS Data Store in ArcGIS Entrprise only supports field names in lower-case The Microsoft Power Automate Survey123 module or connector is not supported against ArcGIS Enterprise (expected to be supported around July-August 2020). Hosted Feature Services in Portal for ArcGIS cannot have more than 500 fields per table.  For this reason, if you have a Survey with more than 500 questions you will need to logically split it using repeats, or create several surveys. Public surveys are not supported in Portal for ArcGIS. You cannot publish to Portal for ArcGIS Surveys including a question of type 'end'.  'end repeats' and 'end groups' are fine, but the question 'end' will cause a publishing error. We are working on this and will try to fix. You cannot publish Surveys with Cascading Selects. Also in our radar. We are hoping to get this one fixed in the International Women's Day release (March 2016). [Fixed in Survey123 Connect for ArcGIS 1.2.56] If using Portal 10.3.1 you will not be able to publish surveys that: [Fixed in Survey123 Connect for ArcGIS 1.5] have questions with a NAME longer than 30 characters (OK to have long Labels) have a Title longer than 19 characters include a repeat. You should not publish to Portal for ArcGIS Surveys that include uppercase characters in the NAME column. While the Survey will publish fine, the Survey123 app will not be able to properly update attributes. We are hoping to get this one fixed in the International Women's Day release (March 2016). [Fixed in Survey123 Connect for ArcGIS 1.2.56] [This post was updated on February 12, 2016] [This post was updated on February 15, 2016] [This post was updated on March 10, 2016] [This post was updated on May 20, 2016] [This post was updated on July 29, 2016] [This post was updated on October 20, 2016] [This post was updated on January 31, 2017] [This post was updated on March 25, 2017] [This post was updated on July 22, 2017] [This post was updated on August,22, 2017] [This post was updated on October 11, 2019] [This post was updated on April 4, 2020] ... View more

Field folks tired of typing the same thing again and again? Here are a few tips and tricks for pre-populating answers in the Survey123 app: Defaults: Default answers for survey questions can be set in the default field of your spreadsheet when you are designing your form. This will pre-populate your survey question with the same answer every time you begin a new survey. This is especially useful when the majority of the time, the answer to your survey question will be the same. You can still edit the default answer if required, but setting the default answer could save you a lot of time and energy when filling out your surveys. Default answers can hold constants, like a string, but can also support some expressions. For example, the today() expression takes the current date. Calculations: Calculations are similar to Defaults, but not quite the same. Unlike the Default column, which gets evaluated only when the survey is opened, calculations are evaluated every time answers in your survey change. Calculations can take advantage of existing answers in your form. For example, the expression 100 - (${Q1}+${Q2})  added in the calculation column of a question will sum the values of questions Q1 and Q2, substract that value from 100 and set that value in your question.   The user will be able to overwrite that value, but at least you got a good guess as provided by your expression.  Do not confuse Calculations (the column) with Calculates (the type): they are related, but are not the same thing! Favorites: After you have entered answers into the Survey123 app, you are able to save these answers to be used in subsequent surveys by setting your favorite answers. Using the favorites menu in the top-left corner, you can use the current state of your survey to set as favorite answers. This could include every answer to the survey, or only one or two key pieces of information (e.g., street name). Once you have set your favorite answers, you can insert them into new surveys by opening the the favorites menu and selecting Paste answers from favorite. This will enter your favorite answers into your new survey. If at any time you need to change your favorite answers, simply enter them into your current survey and select Set as favorite answers. Any time in the field, when you find yourself entering repetitive information, you can easily use your current answers to pre-populate subsequent surveys. The survey that has been used to set your favorite answers will be marked with a star. Copy a survey from the Sent Folder: By tapping on a survey from the Sent folder, you can choose to create a copy of the survey to submit a new entry or open the survey to make changes in it. We hope this will make it faster and easier for folks in the field to get their job done! ... View more