Identifying Survey Submittors

Question

Is there a way to tell who (i.e. IP address) submitted a survey?

For context, my org created a survey and there is some skepticism that multiple survey submissions were made by one person.

Also, I know there's a setting to only allow one survey submission per person, but for reasons it was not used this time.

Thanks!

CaseyFarrell · Answer

@IsmaelChivite has anything changed with this in the past 4 years? Public input maps are becoming more and more popular with some of my municipal clients. But they cannot ask all their citizens to have an ArcGIS Account, so we keep the surveys public and open to anyone. However, when misuse occurs, it would be nice to be able to obtain an IP address from the submitter, in order to correct the misuse.

IsmaelChivite · Answer

Hi @KatieGodding  It is not possible to collect the IP of the person submitting your online form. If you make your survey publicly available so people can submit data anonymously, there is really no way to tell who is submitting data.  The only safe way to know who submits data is to secure your survey and ask people to login before completing the form.

LeonardBarnhill · Answer

There may be other ways to do what you ask but what I have used is only available in the Reporting features.  I have no questions or field in the Survey itself to report this information.  I created a report template in MS Word with the following references to the project form:

Submitted By: ${Creator}

Submitted Time: ${CreationDate | format:"MM/DD/YYYY h:mm A"}

These are hidden fields and cannot be modified by the user.  The "Creator" is actually the user logged into Survey123 so this can be circumvented but none of my users know this nor know that I can track who created the survey.

CREATOR and CREATIONDATE are both Reserved Words in Survey123

I also created CREATOR and CREATIONDATE fields in the database to record the information when the Survey123 form is initially opened

I hope this helps.  I have left out details about creating MS Word document assuming you know something about MS Word and I have left out details about the Survey123 Reporting website assuming you know about reporting and templates.  I can provide guidance or ESRI Survey123 blog posts if needed.