Manually Sync Edits

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11-10-2016 07:38 AM
danbecker
Occasional Contributor III

Occasionally we have a field crew member that cannot get their device to Sync. Devices are usually iOS, so they dump the .geodatabase file using iTunes and send it to home base; not a huge deal.

**off-topic: Where is the ESRI supported USB method of dumping data from Collector, thought that was in the works?

Anyway, I then run the "copy runtime geodatabase to file geodatabase" tool, which converts the .geodatabase to .gdb format. Depending on the number of edits the field crew member had, (especially having to re-link feature attachments), the "Manual" sync process done by me can take some careful planning, consideration and time.

I'm sure many others have found themselves in "Manual" sync land, how do you do it?

I'm not looking for "I add a field to save the GLOBALID so that I can later batch-update the REL_GLOBALID in the attachment table"....kinds of explanations.

1) have you scripted manual sync's?

2) do you somehow use the "Synchronize Changes" tool?

thanks.

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MichaelDavis3
Occasional Contributor III

Are you using AGOL or an ArcGIS Server?  

If you have the option I would always use ArcGIS Server and here's why...

When you encounter sync issues with ArcGIS server it is frequently because of a data type mismatch or other issue that causes the entire sync to roll back.  Finding all the differences in the entire offline geodatabase can be time consuming at best but if you can access your ArcGIS Server directories you can recover the diff database.

What is the diff database?  Well it turns out that Collector (and Runtime Apps) don't upload the entire database when you sync.  They only upload the adds and edits for each feature class or table.  If you can grab this small diff database you will know exactly what was added and what was edited in the sync.

You can find these uploaded databases here:

\\servername\ArcGISServer\directories\arcgissystem\arcgisuploads\services\

Convert those .geodatabase files to FGDB and you are off and running.

PS. This is also super helpful when you are supporting users halfway around the world and you don't have access to the device being used for data collection.

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