Collector Pros and Cons

[JoelShegrud]

Howdy,

I have been using Collector now for about a month with great success. My company is considering launching the app on a much wider scale which seems to be a good idea, however from previous experiences I have found that new problems come out after employment that weren't caught in testing. I would like your input on pros and any cons (errors) you have encountered while using Collector. I will start the list below, thank you for your input.

Pros
Easy field collection and update of Feature Services
Tracking phones in the field
Ability to attach photos to features
Ability to navigate to features
The ease of updating the app through ArcGIS online
The simple interface
The ability to use the app on both Android and iOS
Integration with Dashboard

Cons
Can't stream vertices (no polygon and line features)
No disconnected editing
Limited documentation
Difficult sending maps to the phone (no option to import the map from ArcGIS online)
No ability to login as a user until the map link is shared

[RussRoberts]

Hey Ben,
Thanks for the great feedback. We are currently working on improving the opening maps on phone experience in our upcoming update.This will solve Difficult sending maps to the phone & login experience. We are also working on improving our documentation. Is there anything specific you would like to see added to the current documentation?

The app will still be focused on point data collection in this coming update but we do have plans to include line and polygon collection in a future update. We are also working towards supporting offline workflows which will also be in a future release of the app.

Cheers
Russ

[richroberts]

great feedback. I like it, especially the part Difficult sending maps to the phone. actually this is really annoying for me cuz i had been lost for a few time because of this. the 3G is not so good, either

[JoelShegrud]

Great job fixing how the maps are accessed by the app. Also login works great. Scratch those from the cons list.

Another con I have found is that there is no year picker. So if you want to update a date you have to go to December and chose the end dates to switch to the new year, a major problem if the feature is several yeas old.

Great work, I can tell this is going to be a winning app.

[Thomas_JKukitz]

I really like Collector also.
I am using the iSXBlue II GPS submeter device and it works great.
One problem I have is editing existing lines and rediting newly created lines in Collector.
In Collector I get a "Cannot Update Error". When I use the other ESRI map app I get an m value error and the feature could not be updated.
We are running 10.2 Desktop, but on the server side we are using 10.0. Could this be the problem?
Otherwise I am loving it!

[RussRoberts]

The Collector app currently does not support m/z values. What are you using the Collector for?

Thanks
Russ

[FrankBowne1]

Hi Russel

Any plans for supporting Z?

[andrewrehkemper]

Hi Russell

So you are saying that Collector does not collect Z data?  Will future version do so?

-Andy

[TimothyMichael]

Just wanted to bump this post a bit.  With the increased popularity of low(er) cost GPS devices that can be connected to phones and tablets via Bluetooth, I think recording the elevation and other GPS metadata will be increasingly important.  Curious if any Esri employees can share if any of these features will be in an upcoming release.

--Tim

[andrewrehkemper]

I work for the GIS department of an engineering consultant that does in-house work and our own contracting.  We upgraded to a sub-cm(they say) external GPS receiver that connects to an iPad with the hopes that a- we could bypass the middle steps of setting up, collecting, post-processing, exporting to SHP b- improve the sub-meter capablities of our Trimble GPS units.

Finding out that Collector didn't collect X,Y was somewhat baffling, though easily corrected with the Add X/Y command.

Z value's from GPS receivers isn't as accurate as their hortizontal X/Y partners, but would be nice to have, especially with how fast technology is moving.