Citizen Service Request Web Map Questions

[JaredBaloun]

I will be trying to implement the citizens service request 10.1 for our county drainage system.  While looking at the sample web application for napperville, I wondering what happened after the submit button was pushed. Wondering if when you push submit on the citizen service request "form" does it just add additional feature to your sde feature class or does it submit a notification email to an assigned individual.  If so what portion of the code would i modify to change it to specify an email (I looked through all portions of the code and could not find it).  If not how would i modify the submit button to send the info filled in the popup window?  This is exactly the app that i have been looking at building/implementing to handle county drain tile repairs work orders. 

Also please keep in mind that i am not a application programmer. I did take one esri java class but am more of a visual learner and had a hard time picking up on the language. 

Any help would be very very appreciated.  I am lost

[AndrewFarrar]

I too have been wondering this same thing.  I have a test application published on our servers using Naperville's data from ESRI. When a new request is submitted or a comment is added, an edit is made to the ServiceRequest feature class and to the ServiceRequestComment table.  So they show up in the database and obviously on the application.  

I think that this is a great application, as are all of these Local Gov apps, and I'm very grateful that ESRI is providing these.  There has to be someway to enable a "notification" of some sort (an email sent to a particular person) whenever a new request comes in.  Otherwise your only other alternative is to visually inspect either the database or the application daily to find any new requests (a tedious and time consuming task). My end goal is to be able to make this usable to somebody who doesn't necessarily have (or want) access to our databases

Any input on this would be much appreciated

[AndrewFarrar]

Reading through the first page of the Introduction http://resources.arcgis.com/en/help/localgovernment/10.1/index.html#/What_is_Citizen_Service_Request...  would suggest that unless an automatic ticket system is in place, manual ticket creation (i.e. someone sitting at a computer, checking for new database entries, and then sending an email to the correct person) is the only other option. 

I'm pretty sure that I can use SQL to monitor the database and send an email on a trigger, but I would just like to know if ESRI has any suggestions to make this part of the Service Request application function smoother.

[JaredBaloun]

I did end up calling ESRI support just to affirm my suspisions.  The application does not have anything built into it to send an automatic request to individuals.  I may be taking a different approach and just creating a model in model builder that will satisfy the task I am trying to accomplish.  Thanks for the input alfarrar, will try to post back on here when I get a model done or if I found out any other way to get an automatic notification sent to an individual.

[AndrewFarrar]

Thanks for the response lead4.  I think my workaround now is going to be just generating a database report weekly or monthly.  At this point in time, it will just be one user (non-GIS user) looking at these requests, so this path makes sense for us now.  We want to expand this application across multiple departments in the future though, so that is where having a notification system for multiple non-GIS end-users would come in handy.

[Anonymous User]

I know this is a bit of an old post, however, just wondering if since the time of this post if anyone has been able to successfully implement a 'notification' solution to the CSR - email notification to individuals within a department is a pretty much a necessity in order to get this implemented here.

[AndrewFarrar]

It is interesting that you just brought this up, because I was just recently asked to look at this application again (2 years later) and to get it up and functioning.  While I have not been able to get any kind of notification system that works into our ticketing system, I have devised three workarounds: 

• I have a report file (.rlf) that I have designated someone to run through arcmap weekly, monthly, etc. This will report on all data currently in the ServiceRequest feature class.  This also pulls in the comments table.  Only downside here is that you lose the mapping component. 
• For my users that are a little more arcmap-familiar, I have added the ServiceRequest data layers in an mxd for them to view.  Then they can view the raw data at their convenience.  I can also then give editing access to the users who will be responsible for updating status and responding to requests through the application.
• My third workaround is in progress, but I am envisioning having a scheduled python script look through the data and send off an email when something new comes in.  Basically the workflow would be something like:
  • Run a search cursor through the ServiceRequest feature class to check the date stamp on all records, and match to the day's date. 
  • Return those results through an array
  • Populate an email body with those results, and use Python's SMTPLIB to blast out an email to the involved parties.  You could even have it send to different recipients based on the request category of the record.  
  • I would schedule this script to run once or twice per day, to catch any incoming requests. 

Not perfect solutions, but I think I can make them work.  That said, I would really prefer to have a more concrete solution from ESRI.  I'm curious what others have done to make this work for them. 

Once I get this script finished, I will gladly share it. 

[Anonymous User]

Hey Andrew glad to hear you are making progress; I was just looking at a python solution workaround myself and feel this may be the best option - I'd most definitely be interested in seeing your script when finished. Thanks!

[TamiMaddio]

I am also interested in this.  I'm looking to print out a request using an ArcMap rpt.  We are currently doing this in ArcMap but our users hate using ArcMap because it is so cumbersome for non GIS staff.