Add Dynamic URL to 3rd party widget on Android (through Intent)
Completed
We've introduced Dynamic URL to 3rd party widget for iOS and many customers have been using it to pass dynamic data to apps like Google map, Esri collector, etc. The challenge here is that we lack a way for customers to pass dynamic data to a 3rd part app on Android because of the way we implemented Android URI Scheme. Right now we can only pass key/value pairs to 3rd party app, when most of the apps only support Intent. I think it will be very befinifical to add the feature so our Dynamic URL feature is not limited to iOS only.
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Currently we are using or trying to use the 3rd party application to launch:
- Google maps
- Safari
- Chrome
- Power bi
Our android users are expanding and we would like to provide them with the same level of capability as the iOS users. Having this available on Android would definitely be helpful for us.
- Dave
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Hi Penny,
Yes, please implement this!
We would like to be able to launch ESRI Collector for ArcGIS using the 3rd party widget (both iOS and Android), but we need to do more than simply launch the app - we need to pass parameters to load a specific map by "itemID", set the map to "collection mode" of a specific layer (using the "featureSourceURL" parameter), and then pass data from certain elements of the iForm record to the Collector feature (using the "featureAttributes" parameter). Collector for ArcGIS also has a helpful "center" parameter for zooming the map to a certain location.
While it seems most people do this workflow the other way around and launch an iForm record from the popup of a Collector feature, we prefer to have the iForm be the starting point so folks can enter general information like their name, date, survey conditions, etc. once on the parent-level iForm record and we can then propagate this information (or a foreign key relating the information) to each Collector feature via Dynamic 3rd party widgets on subforms... conversely, if Collector is the starting point, since iForm cannot be launched at the subform level (only at the parent form level), it requires folks to fill out redundant information over and over, and can lead to data entry mistakes and/or slowdowns in the field. This is our main reason for wanting to be able to launch ESRI Collector for ArcGIS with parameters on both iOS and Android platforms.
It seems this functionality will be working for us on iOS in our next white label build, but we will be unable to offer this functionality to our Android users until Intents are supported in the Android version of iForm. As a workaround in the meantime, this will require us to purchase extra iOS devices and furnish loaners to our field teams until this functionality is available for Android - this forces us to choose between (a) substantial additional cost/overhead to make use of the Dynamic URL 3rd party widget and (b) dealing with the status quo of requiring our Android users to redundantly enter data and/or manually copy/paste attributes between iForm and Collector (which is rife with pitfalls).
Thanks for considering this feature - fingers crossed it makes the cut!
Kyle
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Hey everyone,
The team has been working hard and this will be implemented here in the next release of Android. Check out this video for sneak peek and preview of how this will be setup.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3gLc8l6720&feature=youtu.be
Thanks,
Ben
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