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  On February 10, 2022, Directions Magazine hosted a webinar covering No-Code workflow automation with ArcGIS Survey123.  In this post you will find the recording, resources and Q&A. Recording Click here to watch the recording Slides Available in pdf format here Q&A   Q. How much Microsoft Power Automate and Integromat cost? A. Think about how much they will save you! To your question, you can use Integromat and Power Automate for free, with certain limitations. For details, check the pricing pages for Integromat and Power Automate.  Ah! By the way, you can use this Integromat promo-code link if you want to get a free Basic subscription for one month. Q. This session demonstrated how to do workflow automation with Microsoft Power Automate and Integromat. Are there more no-code third-party options available? A. We focused our presentation on Microsoft Power Automate and Integromat because they have a ready-to-use Survey123 connector. However, technically you can automate tasks using other third-party tools such as Tray.io, Zapier and any other workflow automation environment with support for webhooks. A great example is FME from SAFE software. Check out the Automating Workflows from Survey123 to ArcGIS using FME Server tutorial for details. Q. Can I automate workflows, without coding, on top of Survey123 using ArcGIS tools? A. Yes.  In his Event-Driven Integrations with Data Interoperability blog post,  @BruceHarold illustrates how to automate tasks with the ArcGIS Pro Data Interoperability extension. ArcGIS Velocity and ArcGIS Workflow Manager can also be used to automate tasks when a Survey123 form is submitted.  Q. In the report violation demo you created the survey using the web designer. Can I automate tasks on top of surveys authored from Survey123 Connect? A. Yes. How you create the survey does not make any difference. Q. You demonstrated how to load Survey123 records in Excel. Is it possible to load data into other systems? A. Yes. Check the complete list of integrations available for Integromat and Microsoft Power Automate for details. Microsoft SQL Server, SnowFlake, Oracle, AirTable, MongoDB and Amazon RedShift are some examples of connectors available. Q. If I want to load Survey123 records in Excel, do workbook columns need to match the field names in ArcGIS? A. No, you just need to map the data from your form to the columns where you want the data to go. Check the Load Survey123 data into Excel instantly with Microsoft Power Automate step-by-step guide for details. Q. How can I trigger my workflow when Survey123 updates a record in ArcGIS? A. By default, Survey123 will only trigger your workflow when a new record is created. However, you can also trigger workflows after an update. If you are using Integromat, you can control the trigger events when you setup the hook. See below. If you are using Microsoft Power Automate, you can control the trigger from the Survey123 website Webhooks dialog as shown here:   You can make your flows do different things depending on if the trigger is for a record update or a new record. The Survey123 hook payload includes a property called Event type, which takes a value of add or edit. For example, if the Event type is edit, you would then use an action to update a row in your spreadsheet or some other table. Q. Is it possible to include a photo submitted from a Survey123 form as an e-mail attachment? A. Yes, check details in these two blog posts: - Survey123 tricks of the trade: Working with attachments in Microsoft Power Automate (Esri Community) -Working with Survey123 attachments in Integromat (ArcGIS Blog) Q. Is it possible to save submitted attachments to a specified folder through Power Automate? A. You can upload your attachment to a cloud folder. If you sync your cloud folder with a local folder in a computer, you will effectively have all attachments show up in your local folder. Check the two links in the previous question for more details. Q. The workflow examples I have seen send a notification when a survey has been created.  Can the workflow check for updates once a day, and then send a summary? A. Yes. It is possible through a scheduled trigger. This is supported with both Integromat and Microsoft Power Automate. When you schedule a module in that way, your flow will not have any Survey123 payload to work with. However, you can use the HTTP module to query a feature layer through the ArcGIS REST API and invoke actions in other modules as appropriate. This is an advanced workflow that requires good knowledge of the REST API, but it is doable. Q. Can you email a Survey123 URL with query parameters to prefill certain fields for a new survey response? A. Yes. You can also include a link that opens a record in edit mode! Check the URL parameters syntax here and here. Once you understand the syntax, simply insert an expression in the body of your email message to dynamically construct the <a href> HTML link. Q. Can you automate email notifications from a shared email address?  A. Yes. This is typically done through a shared mailbox. Check this Shared mailboxes in Outlook video for details. Once your account has access to a shared mailbox, you can configure the Send email module to send the email under that address. Q. Can you create a CMMS follow-up work order or preventive maintenance cycle when a Survey123 form is submitted? A. It depends on your CMMS software. Please check with your CMMS vendor if their software is compatible with Integromat or Microsoft Power Automate. If not, you could still trigger actions in your CMMS software if a documented REST API is available. Right from within Integromat and Microsoft Power Automate you can invoke REST operations through the HTTP modules. Q. We want to use S123 and Power Automate to send a notification when a public facing survey is submitted. However, Survey123 has no CAPTCHA to prevent malicious entries. Is there any way Power Automate can filter out malicious submissions? A. We plan to enable CAPTCHA for Survey123 web forms. Stay tuned as we will make CAPTCHA available to Beta testers in the next few weeks.  Additionally, you can use data enrichment workflows to associate metadata with all submissions as a first step to filter out non-relevant content. Both Google and Microsoft for example have natural language and image classification services that can help you enrich submissions to facilitate QA/QC workflows. Q. How can I send an SMS? A. Check the Integromat and Power Automate integrations registries for SMS connectors. There are multiple options available. Q. In Microsoft Power Automate, my Survey123 connection expires after two weeks. Is there a way to stop this? A. No. Your connection will need to be updated, or recreated. You can renew the connection from the Data-Connections dialog in Microsoft Power Automate. Q. In Microsoft Power Automate, what does the Premium label in a connector mean? A. Power Automate connectors are classified as Standard or Premium. Access to Premium connectors is provided through paid subscriptions. See details here. Q. I cannot create Survey123 reports from Microsoft Automate. Why? A. Automation of Survey123 reports is only available in Integromat at this moment. We are working with Microsoft to bring Survey123 report generation into Microsoft Power Automate. We do no have a release date for this yet. Q. Has Esri engaged Microsoft to add an official ArcGIS Enterprise connector for Power Automate? My organization won't support a custom connector in Power Automate if it is not registered with Microsoft. A. Yes. Following Microsoft's recommendations, we support connectivity with ArcGIS Enterprise through a custom connector. Steps are available here.  Should Microsoft recommend a different approach, Esri will follow it. Q. Will automated tasks consume ArcGIS Online credits? A. No, unless you add logic in your tasks that uses Premium ArcGIS Online services. For example, if you create a flow to automatically create a Survey123 report, the report creation will consume ArcGIS Online credits. Check the ArcGIS Online credits help topic for a detailed list of credits consumed by capability. Q. Can I create more than one automation on top of a survey? A. Yes. Q. What about all the folks that are collecting data sans wifi or even cellular? Most field collection takes place in the boonies where cell coverage is spotty at best. A. Workflow automation flows trigger when the data is submitted to ArcGIS. If the user was online or offline when the data was collected does not make a difference. You can collect data while offline and then send all the records to ArcGIS once connected. At that point your flow will be triggered.  Survey123 supports offline data collection through the Survey123 field app. It is available for iOS, Android and Windows devices. Where to learn more Survey123 workflow automation with Integromat Getting started with Survey123 and Integromat (Esri Community) Survey123 tricks of the trade: Integromat (Esri Community) Working with Survey123 attachments in Integromat (ArcGIS Blog) ArcGIS Survey123 Automate workflows with Integromat (YouTube 4 minute video) ArcGIS Survey123: Create reports with Integromat (YouTube 4 minute video) Survey123 workflow automation with Microsoft Power Automate Load Survey123 data into Excel instantly with Microsoft Power Automate (ArcGIS Blog) Getting started with Survey123 and Microsoft Power Automate (ArcGIS Blog) Survey123 tricks of the trade: Working with attachments in Microsoft Power Automate (Esri Community)       ... 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  Do you want to download survey data, including photo attachments? This blog describes, step by step, how you you can do it. Before we start   Before we start, let me point out that there are handy Export tools in the Survey123 website. They let you export your survey data as a CSV, Excel, KML, Shapefile or File Geodatabase. You can choose to export all your survey records, or just a subset. You can also export your survey data from the item details page of your survey's layer item. The only caveat with these export methods is that you can't download your photo attachments. Technically, you could get your images through the file geodatabase format, but what if you want to export your data and have all your photos in their original format in a folder?   That's what this blog post is about.   It is going to take a Python script and ArcGIS Pro   Downloading your photos and documents in their original format requires a Python script and ArcGIS Pro. I will describe how to do it step-by-step. Even if you do not have experience with Python, you will be able to do this. The Python script was developed by @ZacharySutherby  Zach loves Python and he is always looking for new ideas to automate common Survey123 tasks. The script is part of the Survey123 developer documentation. Download data and attachments   First, open a web browser and navigate to the Export survey data with attachments Python script Click on the Try it live link. This will open a new browser tab Click on the Download button and place the .ipynb file into a well-known location on your computer Next, open a New project in ArcGIS Pro In ArcGIS Pro, sign in to your ArcGIS Online or ArcGIS Enterprise organization, if not already Open the View ribbon and make sure the Catalog Pane is visible Open the Analysis ribbon, expand the Python menu and add a new Python Notebook. From the Catalog pane, right click on the Notebooks category and click on Add Notebook Use the Add Python Notebook dialog to browse for and select the .ipynb file you downloaded before Double-click on the export_survey_data_with_attachments.ipynb notebook At this point, the notebook will open. With a few minor changes it will be ready to run. Scroll down until you see the second code cell, as shown in the screenshot below Since you are already signed in, you can ignore the first three parameters (portalURL, username, password) The survey_item_id uniquely identifies the survey for which you want to download data. Here is how you get the survey_item_id value: In a web browser, sign in to survey123.arcgis.com From the survey gallery, click on your survey Get the survey ID as specified below Now, take your survey_item_id and replace it in the Python code Change the save_path parameter so it targets an existing directory in your own computer Earlier, I asked you to disregard the portalURL, username and password parameters. If you ignored me and set those up, then you can skip the next instruction.  If you left the portalURL, username and password parameters unchanged, then follow the next step In the gis = GIS (portalURL, username, password) line, replace the contents within the brackets with "pro". That is, leave it as: gis = GIS ("pro").  This will essentially reuse the current login information within ArcGIS Pro to run this script and access your survey's data  You are now ready to run the script! Open the Cell menu and click Run all The script takes about 20 seconds to initialize. Be patient. While the script runs, open the target folder and observe how data is downloaded. You will see a spreadsheet created. It contains the records from your survey. You will then see a second spreadsheet describing what attachments correspond to each record. Note that you could have multiple files (attachments) associated with one record. Finally, a folder will be created for your attachments.The script will download photos, signatures as well as audio files any other type of document attached in this folder.   The script has a few other parameters that you can tweak. It is all superbly documented so I do not anticipate you will run into any issues with them. More scripts   This is one of many scripts available through the Survey123 developer documentation.  I encourage you to explore and play with other scripts. You will find samples to programmatically create reports, move surveys across organizations and more. Many thanks to @ZacharySutherby and the Survey123 documentation team for their great work with this. If you have ideas for new scripts, post your comment below.             ... View more