Best way to use Survey123 for sampling same individuals repeatedly

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03-02-2023 05:56 PM
LMedeirosUI
Occasional Contributor

I am wondering if someone could advise me on the best way to organize my form(s) so that I can easily organize the data associated with a certain individual.

I have 100 fish that are implanted with a PIT tag that acts as a unique identifier for that fish. The fish are sampled monthly and over the course of at least a year (sometimes 2 years) we collect various morphological data and images. 

My current form enters each monthly sampling in as a record with each fish as an entry within a repeat of the record. The fish are sampled randomly, which means I have to be able to sort them out by PIT tag later. The problem I'm coming up against is finding a way to group the current dataset based on the PIT tag in a way that I can extract the data AND images efficiently. I can use summary reports to export the measured data, but not the images. And I can't figure out a way to use individual reports to group by PIT tag and report the various parameters and images for each individual.

Did I set this up incorrectly? I know I'm not using the software as intended, but could I still be doing something better for my end goal? Should I be using different software? I was expecting the reports to be like Access reports and they just aren't (unless I'm missing something?).

My form is attached along with the format for the summary report that is almost perfect except for not being able to add images due to it being a repeat, but gives the idea of what I'm going for. And I've also attached my attempt to get the individual report to work, but haven't figured it out.

Please help!

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jcarlson
MVP Esteemed Contributor

I think you have it set up fine for collecting the data, but your reporting needs go beyond what the built-in Survey123 options can accomplish for you.

Personally, for something like this, I would take a look at using the ArcGIS Python API to get your data. You can query everything into pandas DataFrames, pipe it into MatPlotLib for statistical chanrts, include attachments, and export really nice PDFs, provided you're willing to put the time and effort into developing such a thing.

- Josh Carlson
Kendall County GIS

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2 Replies
jcarlson
MVP Esteemed Contributor

I think you have it set up fine for collecting the data, but your reporting needs go beyond what the built-in Survey123 options can accomplish for you.

Personally, for something like this, I would take a look at using the ArcGIS Python API to get your data. You can query everything into pandas DataFrames, pipe it into MatPlotLib for statistical chanrts, include attachments, and export really nice PDFs, provided you're willing to put the time and effort into developing such a thing.

- Josh Carlson
Kendall County GIS
LMedeirosUI
Occasional Contributor

Well, at least I'm not missing something easy. I haven't used S123 much and this is my first crack at the reporting. I do think Esri should improve their reporting abilities (even if it's just to make it easier... figuring out the summary report was harder than Access and that's not a good thing). And I don't understand why you used to be able to include images in the summary reports and now you can't. Makes me think it's somehow related to "credits" (aka money) and that's a shame.

But I digress... I did find a post that linked to someone's script using the ArcGIS Python API to export data with images, but it requires software I don't think I have access to. If that's the best option, though, I may look into it as I don't relish the idea of cobbling together 1200 images manually.

Links to info in case anyone happens upon this post looking for similar information: https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-survey123-blog/survey123-tricks-of-the-trade-download-survey-da...

https://support.esri.com/en/technical-article/000028397

https://developers.arcgis.com/survey123/guide/export-survey-data-with-attachments/

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