Survey failing to publish fully - feature service "does not exist" after publishing

Question

Hi all,

I've been struggling to publish a new annual form that I have been maintaining since 2022. Each year I download the survey and republish it from Survey123 Connect with the new year in the title. This time, when I republished it, I could see it in my content, was able to share it with my colleagues, and did not realize there was any issue until someone tried to submit a record and was unable to because "the feature service does not exist." I checked my content, and three items were published: the regular WFL, the form, and a third "feature layer (hosted, view)" with a string of text instead of the form name that I assume is the broken service layer.

I published a different annual form the same day and had no problems. I have deleted and republished the form (no avail), copied the data and media files to a new form and republished (no avail), and attempted to find any way to link the apparent feature service to the existing form (no avail). When I checked the Source for the feature service from the other survey I published the same day, it showed the layers that should be included:

The form I am having issues with shows the layers field as being empty, which indicates that for some reason in the publishing process, this item is not being linked to the form, although it is still being published to my content:

I am an administrator with my organization, so I have full editing/publishing/management privileges. I know for certain that I am signed in as myself in Survey123 Connect and in AGOL. I manage a number of our other Survey123 forms and have never experienced this kind of problem. Nothing in the pre-publishing analysis indicates to me a critical issue that would cause something like this. Has anyone else experienced this? I couldn't find anything similar in the community forums other than for publishing forms that hadn't been shared to the public.

Thanks!

TylerGraham2 · Answer

The _form view is a view layer automatically created by Connect that serves as the path for a form to send data to the feature service rather than directly to the feature service like it used to. The _form view is clearly missing the hosted feature service layers, try going into the settings for it and update the view to see if you can add them.

If that doesn't work, use the existing feature service workflow that David mentions above and set the submission_url field in Connect to have the form send data directly to the 2026 Pesticide Application Record feature service instead of through the _form view layer.

abureaux · Answer

Seems like an odd issue. Any chance you can provide the XLSX files so we can try publishing in a different environment?

Things I'd try if I were you (especially since you said another form published properly):

* Start a new survey, load in the old XLSX. Then run the built-in "Analyze survey" tool

* Start a new survey, and publish it (like, just the "default" survey). Then load in the old survey piece by piece and publish to see at what point it breaks.

That said, if all you're doing is changing the year, I'd stick with a single survey. Just have a single column for "year" and separate the data that way.

DavidSolari · Answer

If the schema hasn't changed between annual versions, you can create a new hosted feature service with the same layers and schema as the previous year, then follow the existing feature service workflow to glue the new form to the service manually. This also removes the automatic service management features that Connect provides, which adds some overhead every time you add a new field or need a new hosted view, but it prevents Connect from clobbering your data accidentally.