IGIS is happy to announce that we now have a fantastic new tool for mobile data collection.  This new tool is called Survey 123, and is among the most impressive of the new technological developments presented at the ESRI Users Conference last week in San Diego.  What makes this application so fantastic is that it first allows users to very quickly build custom surveys on their desktop, which can include cascading conditional survey questions.  For example, if you answer “Yes” on one question, it will then reveal other relevant questions that would otherwise be hidden.  You can then direct the app to record your current GPS location or allow the user to manually adjust the survey's geo-position using a base map.  Lastly, you can even enable the app to take photographs attached to your survey questions. 

Once you have finished designing your survey, with the click of a button it can be published directly to your ArcGIS Online content and then is automatically linked to a native Survey 123 android or iPhone app, which you can download for free from either Google Play or iTunes.  The only hard part about the whole process is figuring out what survey questions you want to ask.  Survey 123 can be downloaded at http://survey123.esri.com/#/home, and for more information on how to use this application, simply scroll down to bottom of the web page and look under the “Quick Links”.