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How to add the what3words Locator to ArcGIS Online and Survey123

intermediate

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.

1
2

Adding as Content

First login to your ArcGIS Online portal using your normal ArcGIS Online login.

Go to the “Content” tab and click on “New Item”.

Select from the list the “URL” option.

Enter as URL the following 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.

Next, Select “ArcGIS Server web service” as Type.

Select store credentials with service item and do not prompt for authentication.

Here is the list of all the what3words locator URLs for all 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
Copied

Username: your email address

Password: your what3words API Key

Then click Next.

3

Making Available to your team

You will need to ensure that the content item is shared with all the users who need to access the Locator.

For example, you may need to click “Share” and select the whole “Organization“.

You will need to be an ArcGIS Administrator to add to your whole organization.

1. Go to the “Organization” tab;

2. Click the “Settings” tab;

3. Select “Utility Services” from the left-hand menu;

4. Under the “Geocoding” section, select “Add Locator”.

After clicking “Add Locator”, 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.

Alternatively, select “From URL” and specify the URL of the Locator Content item added in the previous step (to get this URL click on the Locator in Content and on the Overview tab copy the URL in the bottom right).

The new Locator will now appear in the list of Locators.

To verify the Locator is now working, go to the ArcGIS Online Map Viewer Classic by selecting the “Map” tab and from the search dropdown what3words should appear in the list.

In case users open the “Map” in the new ArcGIS Online Map Viewer, to display the what3words locator, click on the search icon on the right-hand sidebar, the search bar will appear at the top and from the search dropdown what3words should appear in the list.

4

Creating a survey with Address and Map fields

In order to use what3words in Survey123 go to https://survey123.arcgis.com and create a new survey

Add a new Address field question type. It helps users complete an address as they type.

You can now configure your address question with the what3words locator.  Give the question a label, e.g. what3words Address. To choose your organisation locator, click on Edit as it is shown on the image.
Note:
the what3words locator needs to be shared within the organisation to be seen here.

You can choose your what3words locator or a combination of different locators shared within your organisation. After you have checked your what3words locator, click OK to go back to the form.

You can configure your address question type by choosing:

  • a hint e.g. filled.count.soap,
  • a default value filled.count.soap,
  • what data to submit, address text and point geometry, or only address text.
  • a locator or multiple ones;
  • the number of results per locator (note: we recommend having only 3 results)
  • a type of validation
  • to cache the answer

Note: Only one map or address question can submit geometry to the survey. If there are multiple questions or maps that want to store the geometry, an alert message will pop up to allow you to choose only one question.

When you are happy with your configuration of the address question, click on Save.

You can add a new Map field type and give a label to it. Now the Map field allows you to choose the locators that have been shared within the organisation. Choose what3words locator or a combination of the locators available to you.

With the Map field, you can also use an expression to calculate the answer. On the calculation section, you can click on Edit. Select as a source Question, select the type of question in our case what3words Address and decide to extract data on Match location.

When you are happy with the rest of your configuration for this Map field, click on the Save button.

When you are happy with your fields, you can click the Publish button and make this survey available to all your collaborators to use it on the field.

Open the Survey123 mobile app, log in using your ArcGIS Online login and open your survey.

Select the Address question, and it will then be possible to search for a 3 word address in the input field.

Once a 3 word address has been selected, a map marker will be added to the Map field and the geometry point will be captured since we have added the expression: Extract match location from what3words address, the what3words address is our address question.

Once you are happy with your results, you can click on the Tick button on the bottom right of your survey and publish the results to the live survey.
You can see that you will be adding to the survey the what3words address and the coordinates of the point.

You can also select the Map question, and it will then be possible to search for a 3 word address in the search field.

You can also press and hold the map to get the 3 word address when you have selected only one locator.

To view the data that you have collected, go back to your live survey on Survey123 desktop app, go to the Data tab and click on your records, and you will see the what3words address and its geometry point with the map.

5

Adding a calculated field to save the 3 word address

Survey123 provides another way 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

When creating your Survey you will need simply to add

  • a Map field to extract the geopoint
  • a Singleline Text input field to save the 3 word address calculated from the geopoint

Install Survey123 connector for ArcGIS

If you don’t have ArcGIS Survey123 Connectalready installed on your computer then download it HERE and install it.

Once you have installed it, login to ArcGIS Survey123 Connect using your ArcGIS Online account.

To view all of your surveys you need to click on the Sync button (as shown in the screenshot).

Then click on the Survey that you have just created.

Open the survey using the XLSForm

Once the Survey is open on the Survey123 connector, you will be able to open your Survey as an XLS file (in your preferred spreadsheet tool such as Excel) by clicking on the XLSForm button.

From within the XLS, you can configure things like field selectors and add custom logic such as calculated fields.

Click XLSForm now in order to open your survey on your preferred spreadsheet tool.

From within the XLSForm you will see the Map field and the Singleline text input field that you have just 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, which in our case it is the what3words address input field, add the following:

  • If the what3words Locator IS your default geocoder then you can simply add pulldata("@geopoint",${_map},"reversegeocode.address.Match_addr") where _map is the name of your Map question described on the XLS form as a geopoint.
  • If the what3words Locator IS NOT your default geocoder then add pulldata("@geopoint",${_map},"reversegeocode.address.Match_addr","replace with proxy URL of Locator") where the ${_map} is the field name of the Map question and "replace with 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.

Then save your XLSForm.

Update the survey from XLSForm

Once the XLSForm had been saved in your preferred Spreadsheet tool go back to Survey123 Connector and click the Update button (as shown in the screenshot).

Now 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.

GISUse 3 word addresses with a mapUse 3 word addresses within a GISUse 3 word addresses within an address searchArcGIS

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