How would I change a symbol color after inspection (hydrant).

[TravisAnderson]

I'm a novice when it comes to ArcMap and Collector so hopefully one of you folks can help me out with this.  We are water utility in Ohio and are developing (rather slowly) a hydrant and valve inspection and maintenance program. We currently use Collector, iPad and an EOS Arrow 100 external receiver to gather field data and so far things have worked fairly well. I would now like to use Collector to facilitate in the hydrant and valve inspection. What I would like to do is create a way for the field staff to be able to change the color of a hydrant or valve once it has been inspected. If I would tap on the hydrant and see the attribute window display, is there a way to create a drop down arrow or something similar to change the color to indicate that it has been inspected? Visually, the field staff and office staff could quickly access what has or hasn't been inspected. Thanks for you help.

Travis

[JaimeGiesen1]

Hi Travis,

We are working on an application that does the same thing.  The only way I could get the color to change was to symbolize on a field: Inspection = Pass (green) or Fail (red).  This field was on the feature class.  The problem is that the inspectors would need to edit this field.  Then save the record.  Then they needed to start a second edit session on the same point in order to edit the related table and finish the inspection.  I could not get get the color to change on a field in the related table and I couldn't keep the pass/fail history without the related table.  Having to start the edit session twice was very cumbersome and confusing to our end users.   I'm still working on this to see if I can find a better solution.   I'd love to hear of any other workflows you come across on this topic.

[TravisAnderson]

Thanks for the reply Jaime. Here's where I'm at at the moment. I'm still trying to plug along. I created a new field in my Hydrant layer called Inspected and set the data type to text. I then created a new domain and added the two codes Yes and No. Then under the field properties of the layer Hydrant I added that new domain. Now in ArcMap I have drop down menu where I can select yes or no if it's been inspected. Once you publish the file to use in Collector, I think you should be able to use the field value of "Yes" or "No" to change the color. There's an option in the symbol settings in AGOL to change the color based on that value (yes or no). It's would be similar to the "draw categories based on unique value" in symbololgy tab under a layers properties. The part where I'm stuck now is if I export that layer from ArcMap as a shapefile and upload and publish that to AGOL, I loose all my domains. I'm not sure if I could upload a different file format to retain them or not. It appears that the solution, or more correct way of doing this is to upload the file to AGOL by using "File, Share As, Service within ArcMap. I'm not exactly sure what all that publishes. I don't know if you can select individual layers, or if it publishes all the layers contained in the Contents of your map. I haven't got that far because I have some errors in my mapping and I have to resolve those before it will let me publish the service. And I'm not sure how to resolve all the errors that I have so I'm now off on another tangent screwing with that.

I did see this article which sounds like what you are trying to do with tables and such. I pasted the link below. Hopefully it helps you out.

Related Tables – Exploring New Ways to use Collector for ArcGIS | ArcGIS Blog

Thanks for your input,

Travis

[TravisAnderson]

Jaimie,

I should have also said by publishing it through the File, Share As, Service within ArcMap, I believe it retains the domain contained in each field. Thus you would have the drop down of "Pass" or "Fail" in that field. I think anyway.

Travis

[TravisAnderson · Accepted solution]

I figured this out on my own. There's probably a better way to do this, but this is what I do (using Desktop Basic). I wanted a layer on AGOL that contained a domain where I could change the color of the symbol to indicate an inspection. I had 5 colors, a Null (not visited), Good, Marginal, Needs Repaired, and Needs Replace 

1. After adding the domain to my hydrant layer, and using the "catagories with unique values" to show the colors, I created a layer package within Arc Desktop by right clicking on the layer name, and selecting "create layer package".

2. I drag and drop this layer package into a new blank map. This gets me around having to fix some errors in my original .mxd map. I should fix them, but time is always an issue for me.

3. Create a service definition by going to "File", "Share as", and select "service". Then choose "save as service definition file." Follow the on-screen prompts. You have be logged in to your AGOL account to complete this. Save to a specific spot.

4. From AGOL upload the service definition and it should also convert it to a featured service layer. The Domain should remain after upload. Add the layer into you map and your users should be able to change the colors when editing each symbol.