Edit dropdown fields later ?

Question

Hello.

Since March of this year, the city of Cuxhaven has been using a defect detector that we developed with Survery123. https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/d62ffdaf1d154d31be56f5e1edeee1fb/

This was very well received by the citizens and has been used regularly since then. Our defect detector has a longer workflow in-house. That's why the development took over half a year. The internal defects + Reports are automatically exported to a SharePoint list via Microsoft Power Automate (Flow). The data is then distributed to the appropriate employees in our Enaio document management system using an ArcGIS Online WebApp OK. Only then will this be released for the citizen information dashboard.

Now I received a request from the company asking whether it would be possible to change something in the category. A category should be deleted and a new one added. Note: This is a drop-down field where the different types of defects can be selected by citizens:

Unfortunately, I don't know whether it's possible to do this without breaking anything. The defect reporter is simply too important, too complex and already has almost 500 entries. Therefore, I would like to protect myself properly and rather ask here what is possible.

- Can a selection field from the dropdown be easily deleted? What happens to the existing data received via this field?

- Can another selection field be added?

abureaux · Answer

I have several mission-critical forms where the choice lists change often as new hazards are identified. These also have tens of thousands of submissions (though TBF, we use PowerBI for stats reporting).

As @JenniferAcunto mentioned, adding/removing a choice won't break anything.

Just don't re-use a "name". <-- Worth reading a second time.

JA7 · Answer

Removing a choice from a choice list and adding a new one will not break your survey or data. Though if your survey has any calculations based on this field, those will likely need to be updated as well.

I can't speak for the rest of your workflow. If you are using values in that field to determine what happens in your workflow, then that will need to be modified to handle the new possible value. If you are symbolizing your map based on this field value, you will need to modify that as well to ensure that they are displayed correctly.

I would recommend looking at the entire workflow, from survey to finish and identify where and how that field value is being used before deciding if you want to make this change.

As for your existing data, nothing will happen to it. Any records that were submitted with the old value will continue to have that old value. If you want them updated to this new value, then you will need to do that yourself.

Update a Survey

HannesVogel · Answer

Hi @StadtCuxhaven , how did you create the Survey? Just in the Webeditor of Survey123? The change of the categories depends on your workflow, what is done with this field. If you add another, it should do any harm but maybe you need to add this category also somewhere else in your workflow.

I think the best way is to set up a test environment of your complete workflow if possible to see what happens if you change things afterwards.

Greetings from Dresden!