S123 Field App returned blank screen on iOS resulting in data loss

Question

One of our field staff reported a crash on an iPad. I am still trying to collect details on the issue.

He said: "I had not closed the application but when I unlocked the iPad after 30 minutes of no use, Survey123 had to reopen (as if it had crashed or been closed). It then asks if I want to continue the in progress survey but takes me to the frozen page."

Has anyone else by chance seen this behaviour before? I've been able to leave S123 open on my iPhone for many hours in the past. I will try various things on iPad now and see if I can recreate.

abureaux · Answer

Unfortunately, I know nothing new beyond what I have above.

The path appears to be corrupt, but I'm not sure what is causing it. Unfortunately, Esri would need to isolate and patch the issue.

The only thing I can say is that the data CAN be recovered, so long as you have the autosave.json file.

ReneeHurst · Answer

I would be curious to know if you learned anything else about this? I have a user that this happened to as well. Running a 10th generation ipad, 16.6.1

abureaux · Answer

Okay, this happened again. This time, the user was able to provide an autosave.json file.

I compared and contrasted the old file with a new autosave.json file that I created, and didn't find any real issues. However, I did realize that if you change the "path" variable, you can recreate this issue.

What I ended up doing was copy-pasting the entire old autosave.json into the new autosave.json and was able to get it to work. I then updated the "path" variable with the user's specific environment details and gave it to them for testing. (EDIT: In case it wasn't clear, the copy-pasting was not really necessary. I was just going slow and testing blocks. Next time, I'd likely jump right to editing the "path" variable)

I am thinking that on the mobile device, the "path" is getting corrupted.

This is just another reason that I would love for there to be a dedicated "autosave" directory where these files could remain long-term. They are far to ephemeral.

I'll be contacting Esri Support regarding this latest development.