Question about 'hidden' geopoint behaviour

Question

I have created a survey in Connect that I want users to access through the web form view.  The survey has a repeat in it with a geopoint question in that captures the spatial information in that I'm interested in.  The parent record doesn't need any spatial data captured so I've effectively hidden the mandatory geopoint question from there by making it only appear when the relevant value equals something users will never be able to enter.  This all works fine, but I'm a little unsure around the behaviour of what's recorded in this 'hidden' geopoint and wanted to check how it worked.

Basically, I want to ensure that nothing real is captured in the hidden geopoint question - especially the location from where the user has submitted the record from (this is really important as I need the survey to be fully anonymous).

In Connect I've set the default lat/long for the hidden geopoint to equal a location in the sea, but when when I've tested it records from the web form view it get logged as off Africa at lat/long 0,0.  This is fine, but I need to be 100% that it will always do this and not try to get the location another way (e.g. by getting it through the browser location in the background or whatever).

Does anyone know what the exact behaviour is for a geopoint question like this?  Will it always record 0,0 via the webform or is there a way a user could inadvertently give their/a different location?

ColinCampbell · Answer

Hi Kanin Sangcharoenvanakul,

Many thanks for your reply.  I think the issue might be that by having the geopoint as relevant to a condition that will never occur it will always come back at 0,0 (which is fine, I just needed to be sure that this was always the case).  That’s what I gather from this post from Philip Wilson where he says:

‘Adding the geopoint to the form and making the geopoint not relevant will cause it to have no location (null value) which will then default to 0,0 when submitted to feature service.’

Having a default lat/long written in was just my way of adding in a backup to override any other location that might sneak in the backdoor (which was something I wasn’t sure was possible or not), but I’m assuming that will only ever kick in if the geopoint is relevant (which it never can be in my example).

Cheers

Col

KANIN SANGCHAROENVANAKUL · Answer

Hello Colin Campbell‌,

Could you please try setting your geopoint question to read only will allow the location be 'calculated' by the default value you have configured.

Regards,

Kanin

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S123_GEOPOINT_READONLY.xlsx