Topcon Waiting For Corrections
Walda Caesar
Every once in a while, we are getting point data in with null values for metadata. It's really infrequent, but I cannot figure out why it is happening. The geometry gets collected, and the associated attributes are recorded, but the accuracy information is not present. Like I said, it's less than 1 in 10 points that do this, but it's definitely something we need to figure out.
Thank you for that information. What I suspect might be happening here is that when the field user clicks the 'Submit' button in the upper right corner, they're inadvertently tapping on the map itself, thereby creating a map point and no longer a GPS point which will clear the GNSS metadata fields of their contents. For Collector on iOS, when working with tablets there is a small gap between the top of the collect panel and the bottom of header. Sometimes when going to tap on 'Submit' if you tap too close to that gap, it will actually drop a new point there. This is a current design limitation that's being looked into for a future release.
The reason why I suspect that's what's happening is for a few different reasons; 1) this behavior happens intermittently and is not easily reproducible, and 2) when this issue happens all of the metadata fields are blank as oppose to just a few of them. Several months back, my colleague and I saw an issue where random metadata fields would be blank after having captured several points. Not all of them would be blank, only a few. But those few that were blank would fluctuate between different fields. This issue has since been addressed already and we haven't been able to reproduce it since then. Therefore I don't suspect that's what's happening here.
I have a question for you. For the points that have the blank GNSS metadata fields, when looking at the map is the geometry in the correct locations or is it off? If you are running into the issue where the field user is tapping on the map when hitting 'Submit', the offset of that point should be noticeable.
To answer your question, no, the metadata values that are already written into the fields when the GPS point is dropped on the map doesn't expire. The time it takes the user to actually submit the feature after the point has been added to the map, shouldn't have any bearing on this behavior.
Thank you for sharing that information. I recently tried to reproduce this issue using an iPad Pro (iOS 10.2) and a Trimble R2 with and w/out RTK corrections and I was unable to reproduce the issue. For my feature service, I had enabled all of the GNSS metadata fields per the online documentation. My testing lasted for over 1 hour and approximately 80-100 points were captured and all the metadata was populated. My colleague also tested with a Trimble R1 and an iPhone 7 and couldn't reproduce the issue either.
I've included all metadata fields in the manner first described back in June. At the time, I even posted a tbx for everyone before the python scripts were published: Add necessary GNSS fields for Collector App metadata logging
I'm fairly certain no one is manually creating geometry. And, we have an accuracy tolerance set, so the user shouldn't even be able to update if "GPS metadata information is not available for the GPS position".
Is it possible that the metadata expires? I know the location information is cached at the moment you select the feature type to be collected, and the cache is applied to the DB when you hit update. I guess it is possible they could be waiting too long to hit update...?
Thank you for that information. In general, with regards to having a setting that only allows features to be captured via the GPS and not tapping on the map, this is something we're aware of and are planning to implement in the future. Unfortunately I don't have any specific details at this time as to when/how that functionality will be included.
With regards to the proposed workaround for making the GNSS metadata fields required in order to force the field user to capture data via the GPS, in theory this should work just fine because of the fact that by-design the GNSS metadata fields are hidden when editing and capturing new features. Therefore if the user has a stable fix and capturing a point, the field(s) should be populated on the back-end automatically thereby making the 'Submit' button active in order to submit the feature. However, this could also lead to confusion among the field users because if they do happen to capture a point by tapping on the map, the 'Submit' button will remain grayed out even if they've populated all the attribute fields. The reason being is because the hidden metadata fields will not be populated and will prevent the feature from being submitted. The user will not be notified as to the reason why. It is therefore not recommended to use this workflow since GNSS metadata fields weren't designed to be made required, because they get populated automatically and require no user input.
As for your questions about our users: No one is supposed to be manually placing points in the map. We have R2, Sub-Foot, Multi-Constellation, with access to a local RTK network. We can get 6" accuracy while sprinting under a row of Live Oaks For some of the guys it was clearly a mistake of them accidentally doing it. For the one guy drawing hydrant assemblies, maybe he convinced himself that since they are so standard, and they are partially above ground, getting good accurate data for them was not as important as saving his own energy... I'm pretty sure he won't be doing that anymore.
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