Collector: Anyone else find moving the map to add features awkward?

[EthanDuke]

With every GIS app that I've used to add features (points or polygons), you click on the map location where you'd like to add a point or start drawing. With the new version of Collector, one must move the map to crosshairs. Does anyone else find this awkward?

There is a rather cumbersome workaround that allows you to first drop a pin and then select "Collect Here." At that point, your screen space is taken up by other location information before navigating to add data. This is particularly frustrating when you are collecting hundreds of features in a day.

Thankfully, the Collector Classic is still a useable option, albeit with the sacrifice of labeling.

[NickBlack]

Hi Kathy,

Thanks for providing more feedback. As far as offsets go, it may be worth looking at our Eos integration:

Laser Offset Guide for Collector: How to Configure Esri & Eos Tools Pro 

I ask about the Apple pencil because it's possible to detect whether a pencil is connected to the device, so potentially we could provide a more tailored experience in that case (this is one option we are considering).

-Nick

[kmsmikrud]

Hi Nick Black‌,

Thanks for the quick response and info on the Eos integration. I have seen that integration but it wouldn't be useful for our workflow. We want to use Collector for ArcGIS to map features such as drawing in a portion of the coastline showing certain features from an airplane. So a person would be in the airplane and basically sketching in lines to match the features they are seeing if that makes sense. 

Thanks for the info on the Apple pencil.

Kathy

[BiosisGIS]

Hi Nick,

Similar to Etienne we are an ecological consultancy where a significant part of our workflows involve digitising detailed vegetation polygons based on a combination of field observation and high resolution aerial imagery. Our botanists usually digitise the polygons in the field using Collector, but all of them have reported this is slower and more cumbersome using the point on target method in Field Maps. Fieldwork usually needs to be completed within tight timeframes, any loss of productivity in the field has significant knock on effects.

As mentioned by others above, we also do rapid field collection of individual flora and fauna observations. It is much more important for our field staff to be able to make a quick estimation of the location by touching on a map than to get a precise location as often hundreds of observations are made in a day.

While the Collector Classic methods of capturing polygons is preferable to the Field Maps method, it is not ideal as features that should have coincident boundaries need to have overlaps and gaps tidied up and rough edges smoothed out post fieldwork. This is a time consuming process for our GIS staff.

Having the ability to freehand draw polygons like the markup in Field Maps using a stylus but with the auto-complete function available in the webapp builder edit widget to capture geometry into polygon layers would be ideal for us. It'd also be useful to have the ability to switch between the different methods of capture. We exclusively use Android tablets for data capture.

We are in the process of updating the majority of our devices to the Samsung Galaxy SM-P610 model.

It would be really helpful if you could provide me some information on esri's current thinking on this, if similar changes have been considered for future Field Maps updated and a rough estimate of timeframes if they are.

Kind regards,

James.