ArcGIS QuickCapture 1.5 released!
QuickCapture 1.5 is now available! You can download the latest update into your mobile device and enjoy many new enhancements in the QuickCapture website too! Lets have a quick look at the highlights of this release:
Workflow automation with Integromat
Capturing data quickly is not enough; being able to get that data to people who need it, where they need it, is what makes the real difference. For this reason, we are introducing support for Integromat in QuickCapture. Integromat is a powerful workflow automation solution, allowing you to connect many apps and services together.
With Integromat, you can easily automate tasks when data from QuickCapture is sent. Automatically send SMS or email notifications, copy your data into third party databases, spreadsheets, etc. The screenshot below, shows an Integromat scenario configured to automatically send an email notification every time a vehicle accident event is reported from the QuickCapture mobile app.
While email and SMS notifications are common tasks you will want to automate, you can do much more:
- When a new incident is reported, immediately send an SMS to the division manager.
- Create an ArcGIS Workforce assignment when a new service request is submitted.
- Use AI algorithms to classify and label photos submitted.
- Automatically assign the appropriate asset ID to condition assessments sent.
To learn more about ArcGIS QuickCapture and Integromat, check this 4 minute video tutorial:
Support for Integromat is possible because QuickCapture now can work with webhooks. If you want to create webhooks to target your own custom web services, Google Cloud functions or some other workflow automation providers, you can now do it from the QuickCapture designer. Simply go to the Project Settings panel and scroll down until you find the Webhooks section.
Enhanced App Links
It is not news that you can use a link to launch the QuickCapture mobile app. It is not news either that your link can open any project you want, have QuickCapture target automatically your enterprise portal and even pass a value to a Project User Input. What is new, is that now you can use app link syntax (sometimes also referred to as universal links), rather than through a deep link (custom url scheme).
Why is this important? Well, it is important because app links are more iOS and Android friendly, allowing you to launch your link from virtually any application in your device. Through the new app link syntax, for example, you can now launch QuickCapture from other ArcGIS apps, such as as ArcGIS Indoors, Survey123, Collector, Workforce, Explorer, etc. You can also more safely launch QuickCapture from e-mail clients and even from your own custom mobile apps. The deep link syntax will continue to work as usual. In fact, in Windows deep links are the only supported syntax.
This is what an app link to open a QuickCapture project looks like:
https://quickcapture.arcgis.app/?itemId=dcdb68465fbc4c38a6aba7f5165cdfd4
This is the equivalent deep link:
arcgis-quickcapture://?itemId=dcdb68465fbc4c38a6aba7f5165cdfd4
Deep links and app links are described in detail in the Integrate with other apps—QuickCapture | Documentation help topic.
QuickCapture designer enhancements
There are great new features in the QuickCapture website that will make managing and designing your QuickCapture projects much easier. Lets have a quick tour of the most important:
A new panel on the left side of the QuickCapture designer will now assist you during the design process. Sharing errors, inconsistencies, missing properties, etc. This new panel will help you follow best practices and fix problems in your project in a heartbeat.
Starting with this update you can also now control the size of the photos to be submitted from your QuickCapture project. Choose to leave photos at full resolution, or reduce their size to facilitate working in low-bandwidth environments:
In our last release we added a ‘Save as’ option to duplicate existing projects easily. Some of you suggested we should add a choice to duplicate the project layers as well, so now you have it!
This update introduces a new template gallery; use it for inspiration or to quick-start your own projects. The gallery features a small collection of templates for now, but we will be adding more in the future. Very soon you will be able to create your own template gallery, so you can help people in your organization get started with templates that are relevant to their own work.
Other work worth highlighting
There are a handful other new features and enhancements that I want to highlight:
- The QuickCapture mobile app now supports PKI authentication.
- Users of the mobile app can now change the distance units (US standard vs metric)
- The source code of the QuickCapture mobile app for this release has been made available as an AppStudio enterprise template.
We are now deep into 1.6 development, which we plan to make available in July 2020. Our development agenda is loaded with user-driven requests. Thanks to all of you who share with us your work and ideas. You are a constant source of inspiration. Your ideas and feedback are shaping this product.