External_choices are not working well

ahmad_sidani

Hello dears,

Since I have a long list of choices, I decided to use the "external_choices". I am not getting any error when publishing but unfortunately, the labels are empty (as show in the attached screenshot)

SCRI.zip

Capture.PNG

missing-15-minutes.gif

arcade.gif

IsmaelChivite

Hi @ahmad_sidani   Thanks for sharing the XLSFile and the screenshot.

Everything looks good in your XLSFile, but as you describe the list is not showing labels for villages appropriately. At first sight, it looks like external_choices are not handling multiple language columns correctly.

I suggest you replace your select_one_external with a select_one_from_file. I validated that this works as expected.

1. Copy the attached village.csv file into the media folder of your survey
2. Change from select_one_external village to select_one_from_file village
3. Save and test

I observed issues in your XLS file:

• A number of groups and repeats do not have labels.  You can add some HTML tags in the label to avoid the warnings and still leave the label empty in the form. For example, you can add <b> to the label.
• Once you use select_from_file you no longer need to have your list in the choices worksheet. If you delete the village list from choices it will help loading your survey more quickly.
• Once you use select_from_file for the village list, you can also remove the external_choices worksheet from your XLS file
• For the language colums, you should add the ISO code. for example: label::English (es) and label::Arabic (ar)
• In the settings worksheet, the default language should use the ISO code. For example: en
• The field-list appearance on groups has no effect unless you have select_ones. I suggest you eliminate
• The jr:count column has no meaning to Survey123. Suggest you move values to to repeat_count and delete jr:count

 

Other tips:

• If you see the Optimizing dialog popping up in Connect and you are bored of waiting, tap and hold the Refresh button until the button turns red. On the next refresh, it will be faster. When red, Connect does not update choice list indexes.  We should resolve this in the next update of Connect. Sorry for the inconvenience.
• You may want to break down the form in pages. It will be easier for users.  More info here.
• When working with select_multiple, you may want to store selections in their own fields, as described here.
• The yes/no questions in Pillar 4 are a great candidate for table-list. Same for Pillar 5
• For the Members integer questions, you may want to try the spinner appearance.

 

village.csv