How to add the what3words Locator to ArcGIS Online and Survey123
This tutorial will take you through the steps required to add the what3words ArcGIS locator to ArcGIS Online followed by the steps to create a survey and open in Survey123.
Further information on the features of the locator can be found here.
Setting up the locator in ArcGIS Online takes a few minutes. Once set up it will be available across the ArcGIS Online suite.
You will need a what3words API key to complete this tutorial.
Adding as Content
First, login to your ArcGIS Online portal using your normal ArcGIS Online login.
Go to the “Content” tab and click on “Add Item”. Select from the dropdown option to add item “From the web”.
Next select “ArcGIS Server web service”.
- URL: Enter the URL for the what3words Locator. There is a different URL for each language or one containing all languages. The English URL is
https://arcgis.what3words.com/v2/arcgis/rest/services/what3words_EN_English/GeocodeServer. - Username: Your email address
- Password: Your what3words API key
Select store credentials with service item and do not prompt for authentication.
Add a Title and Tags for the geocoding service and finally click “Add Item”.
URLs for different languages:
https://arcgis.what3words.com/v2/arcgis/rest/services/what3words_AF_Afrikaans/GeocodeServer https://arcgis.what3words.com/v2/arcgis/rest/services/what3words_AR_Arabic/GeocodeServer https://arcgis.what3words.com/v2/arcgis/rest/services/what3words_BG_Bulgarian/GeocodeServer https://arcgis.what3words.com/v2/arcgis/rest/services/what3words_BN_Bengali/GeocodeServer https://arcgis.what3words.com/v2/arcgis/rest/services/what3words_COMBINED_Combined/GeocodeServer https://arcgis.what3words.com/v2/arcgis/rest/services/what3words_CS_Czech/GeocodeServer https://arcgis.what3words.com/v2/arcgis/rest/services/what3words_CY_Cymraeg/GeocodeServer https://arcgis.what3words.com/v2/arcgis/rest/services/what3words_DA_Dansk/GeocodeServer https://arcgis.what3words.com/v2/arcgis/rest/services/what3words_DE_Deutsch/GeocodeServer https://arcgis.what3words.com/v2/arcgis/rest/services/what3words_EL_Greek/GeocodeServer https://arcgis.what3words.com/v2/arcgis/rest/services/what3words_EN_English/GeocodeServer https://arcgis.what3words.com/v2/arcgis/rest/services/what3words_ES_Espanol/GeocodeServer https://arcgis.what3words.com/v2/arcgis/rest/services/what3words_FI_Suomi/GeocodeServer https://arcgis.what3words.com/v2/arcgis/rest/services/what3words_FR_Francais/GeocodeServer https://arcgis.what3words.com/v2/arcgis/rest/services/what3words_GU_Gujarati/GeocodeServer https://arcgis.what3words.com/v2/arcgis/rest/services/what3words_HE_Hebrew/GeocodeServer https://arcgis.what3words.com/v2/arcgis/rest/services/what3words_HI_Hindi/GeocodeServer https://arcgis.what3words.com/v2/arcgis/rest/services/what3words_HU_Magyar/GeocodeServer https://arcgis.what3words.com/v2/arcgis/rest/services/what3words_ID_Bahasa/GeocodeServer https://arcgis.what3words.com/v2/arcgis/rest/services/what3words_IT_Italiano/GeocodeServer https://arcgis.what3words.com/v2/arcgis/rest/services/what3words_JA_Japanese/GeocodeServer https://arcgis.what3words.com/v2/arcgis/rest/services/what3words_KN_Kannada/GeocodeServer https://arcgis.what3words.com/v2/arcgis/rest/services/what3words_KO_Korean/GeocodeServer https://arcgis.what3words.com/v2/arcgis/rest/services/what3words_ML_Malayalam/GeocodeServer https://arcgis.what3words.com/v2/arcgis/rest/services/what3words_MN_Mongolian/GeocodeServer https://arcgis.what3words.com/v2/arcgis/rest/services/what3words_MR_Marathi/GeocodeServer https://arcgis.what3words.com/v2/arcgis/rest/services/what3words_MS_Bahasa_Malayia/GeocodeServer https://arcgis.what3words.com/v2/arcgis/rest/services/what3words_NE_Nepali/GeocodeServer https://arcgis.what3words.com/v2/arcgis/rest/services/what3words_NL_Netherlands/GeocodeServer https://arcgis.what3words.com/v2/arcgis/rest/services/what3words_NO_Norsk/GeocodeServer https://arcgis.what3words.com/v2/arcgis/rest/services/what3words_PA_Panjabi/GeocodeServer https://arcgis.what3words.com/v2/arcgis/rest/services/what3words_PL_Polski/GeocodeServer https://arcgis.what3words.com/v2/arcgis/rest/services/what3words_PT_Portugues/GeocodeServer https://arcgis.what3words.com/v2/arcgis/rest/services/what3words_RO_Romanian/GeocodeServer https://arcgis.what3words.com/v2/arcgis/rest/services/what3words_RU_Russian/GeocodeServer https://arcgis.what3words.com/v2/arcgis/rest/services/what3words_SV_Svenska/GeocodeServer https://arcgis.what3words.com/v2/arcgis/rest/services/what3words_SW_Kiswahili/GeocodeServer https://arcgis.what3words.com/v2/arcgis/rest/services/what3words_TA_Tamil/GeocodeServer https://arcgis.what3words.com/v2/arcgis/rest/services/what3words_TE_Telugu/GeocodeServer https://arcgis.what3words.com/v2/arcgis/rest/services/what3words_TH_Thai/GeocodeServer https://arcgis.what3words.com/v2/arcgis/rest/services/what3words_TR_Turkish/GeocodeServer https://arcgis.what3words.com/v2/arcgis/rest/services/what3words_UR_Urdu/GeocodeServer https://arcgis.what3words.com/v2/arcgis/rest/services/what3words_VI_Vietnamese/GeocodeServer https://arcgis.what3words.com/v2/arcgis/rest/services/what3words_XH_IsiXhosa/GeocodeServer https://arcgis.what3words.com/v2/arcgis/rest/services/what3words_ZH_Chinese/GeocodeServer https://arcgis.what3words.com/v2/arcgis/rest/services/what3words_ZU_IsiZulu/GeocodeServer
Making Available to your team
Go to the “Organization” tab and then “Settings”. Select “Utility Services” from the lefthand menu. Under the “Geocoding” section select “Add Locator”
Select “Add Locator” and select “From Existing Locator”. For “Locator Item” select the new Locator from the dropdown. You can change the Locator name and placeholder text if required.
The new Locator will now appear in the list of locators.
To verify the Locator is now working select the “Map” tab and from the search dropdown what3words should appear in the list.
Creating a survey with a Map
In order to use what3words in Survey123 go to https://survey123.arcgis.com and create a new survey
Add a new Map field type
Provide a label for the question.
Publish the survey
Open the Survey123 app, log in using your ArcGIS Online login and open the survey.
Select the new Map question and it will then be possible to search for a 3 word address in the search field.
Press and hold the map to get the 3 word address for a point on the map.
Adding a calculated field to save the 3 word address
Survey123 by default will save the survey location as a point and therefore does not save the 3 word address.
In order to save the 3 word address it is possible to create a calculated question which will save the 3 word address by reverse geocoding the point to obtain the address.
This can be done using Survey123 connector for ArcGIS.
Add a Singleline Text input field
Add a Singleline Text input field to save the 3 word address within using https://survey123.arcgis.com/.
Install Survey123 connector for ArcGIS
If you don’t have Survey123 connector for ArcGIS installed then download and install.
Login to your ArcGIS Online account in connector to view all of your surveys.
Open the survey using the XLSForm
Survey123 connector allows you to open your survey as an XLS (in your preferred spreadsheet tool such as Excel).
From within the XLS you can configure things like field selectors and add custom logic such as calculated fields.
Click XLSForm and the survey will open in your spreadsheet tool.
From within the XLSForm you will see the Map field and the Singleline text input field that you added.
In order to add a calculation to the Singleline text input field, scroll over to the “calculation” column of the spreadsheet.
Against the Singleline text input field add the following:
If the what3words Locator is your default geocoder then you can simply add pulldata("@geopoint",${location},"reversegeocode.address.Match_addr")
If the what3words Locator is not your default geocoder then add pulldata("@geopoint",${location},"reversegeocode.address.Match_addr","[proxy URL of Locator]") where the ${location} is the field name of the Map question and [proxy URL of Locator] is the proxy URL of the what3words Locator that you added and stored credentials against in your ArcGIS Online Content. There’s more information about this step and obtaining the proxy URL here.
Saving and publishing
Save the XLSform and now go back to Survey123 connector and you should see that the updated file is being imported and validated.
Once the import is complete, the survey will have been updated and you will need to publish the changes to see them in the app.
Using in the Survey123 app
Open the Survey123 app and make sure you are still logged on to your ArcGIS Online account.
You will now see the new calculated field in the survey. Once you have specified the location in the Map question you will see that the field has been populated with the 3 word address.
