Row ID Blank in Parent Table

Question

I am creating a survey with Survey123 for Portal, I turned off the setting for "Use global id parent keys in repeat relationships" which I was informed was a limitation within Portal. This resolved the issue I was having will submitting my survey.

Now I would like to export my data to .csv for further analysis outside of Portal, however when I download the data I get the following fields:

Parent table:

objectid

globalid

rowid_ (This value is blank)

username

created_date

created_user

last_edited_date

last_edited_user

x

y

Child (repeat table):

objectid

globalid

repeatquestion1

repeatquestion2, etc.

parentrowid

created_date

created_user

last_edited_date

last_edited_user

It seems to me that the rowid_ field and the parentrowid field should be the key field, however the rowid_ field in the parent table is blank. The parentrowid field in the child table is populated, but I am not sure how to relate that back to the Parent table.

I have been submitting test surveys to the Portal using the Survey123 for ArcGis Windows app.

My proposed work around is to use a combination of the created user and date to create a unique key to match across tables, but it seems to me that the program would need to have some field for this already in order to be able to know that there are related records to display.

Am I doing something wrong, did anyone else have this problem, or does anyone have any advice? All help is greatly appreciated.

JTedrick-esristaff‌

JamesTedrick · Answer

This sounds like a possible bug with Portal's export functionality (the two procedures you mentioned above actually are the same operation in Portal).  You can export to a delimited text file from ArcGIS Desktop as well- see Convert Table To CSV File—Location Referencing for Roads and Highways | ArcGIS Desktop .

RachaelHurd · Answer

James,

Exporting the FGDB worked and the rowid_ is now populated correctly. Does this have to do with desired functionality, something I am doing wrong or is this a bug that might eventually be fixed?

Is there guidance on the most efficient workflow to convert the feature class and related tables to .csv. The data users for this project do not have access to GIS software and want to do their analysis in programs such as excel.

I know we can use the table to excel function but we have run into some of the limitations of this tool since it exports to .xls as opposed to .xlsx and in certain cases I do believe we would run into the limitation of the .xlsx file format and in addition .xls and .xlsx files do not always work well with programs other than excel. I know that once it was in .xls I could convert it to .csv but if there is a more efficient workflow, I would love to know about it.

JTedrick-esristaff‌

RachaelHurd · Answer

James, thanks for the quick reply. I tried Portal's built in export, by exporting both tables together via the portal "Export Data" button on the feature layer page (which outputs a zip file with two csv files, one for each table) and exporting each table individually by using the "Export To" option on the Layer and Table. Both of these options result in the blank rowid_ field.

I will test the "Export Data" > Export to FGDB and let you know the result.