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Survey publishing hangs on "Updating survey form package"

FOMELC01

I have two surveys which hang regularly when I republish them. They seem to be OK when I update them on my phone, but I have to be concerned that there may be some unseen problem that will affect data collection. I don't want to give the survey out to my volunteers if there will be a problem with the data. I have not renamed the survey files or made any major changes. One survey is just a new version of an older survey with a couple new modules added, but I'm not trying to add those modules to the old survey. I'm creating an all new survey with those new modules.

Both surveys seem to consistently hang on republishing.

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ChristopherCounsell

Was the survey xlsform names corrected and now it's working ok, even if you
republish?

I'd put it down to that, or some unidentified changed to the content.

FOMELC01

It appears that republishing simply won't work for me. I changed the map in both surveys and attempted to republish. Nochanges to the XLSForm, just a different map. Both republishing attempts hung. Deleted the surveys and went back to square one, creating the surveys new from the XLSForms. Successfully published both.

FOMELC01

Nice! This and the reserved keyword list in the new XLSForm are really helpful. I went through both surveys I'd been having problems publishing, dealt with a few reserved keywords I'd used, and made a few tweaks. Both published without problems.

Thanks to all who helped me out!

ChristopherCounsell

Excel will also show a green triangle in the cell, as a flag for a potential data validation error.

It'll also prompt you with an error if you enter these values into the cell.

FOMELC01

Thanks!

dougbrowning

Yes it is built into the excel sheet in Connect.

FOMELC01

Thanks! I appreciate your help.

I assume d7e408eb2fb842d993490220d0bcc620 is a number assigned to the survey by AGO, but I don't know. It could be the number assigned to the feature layer, but I deleted the survey and tried publishing it again, so I can't look to see if that's the case.

I'll change the 'Area' repeat to 'Polygon' and the 'Comment' field to 'Notes'.

I've used a "Comment' field in my surveys for miscellaneous text notes since 2017 without problems or warnings, but I can make that change. Is there a reference for these reserved keywords you can refer me to, so I can avoid these conflicts?

ChristopherCounsell

Looking at the logs there's a 504 gateway timeout in response to the addItem. Is d7e408eb2fb842d993490220d0bcc620 the survey form or the .tpk? That's when it fails

Looking at your XLSForm:

The name of one of your repeats is 'Area'
The name of one of your fields is 'Comment'

Both of these are reserved keywords and should NOT be used. It'll give you a warning trying to build a survey using it. Some keywords will break Survey123 and it may not let you publish. Others will publish from Survey123 OK but give you a 500 error from the server. Other times it'll work fine until you reach a database that doesn't support it. They include a lot of general reserved words.

There's a good chance that this is the cause of your server error on publish. You need to fix this. It'll require your Hosted Feature Layer and survey to be republished. I'd recommend starting a new survey then migrating the existing data after (append in ArcGIS Pro with 'maintain globalids' and 'maintain attachments' should work fine).

We could suspect the .tpk but they can go up to 3gb apparently without issues. And I see they also publish OK.

FOMELC01

I appreciate you taking a look.

FOMELC01

Interesting idea. I'll give it a shot. Thanks.

abureaux

I would love to publish this to test, but you have capitals in your name field and Enterprise doesn't like that 😞

I will have to leave this up to someone in AGO.

dougbrowning

That is a pretty big file. I have had some luck doing this. Take out everything from the media folder and publish. Then add the media back in and publish again.

Hope that does it

FOMELC01

The larger, more complex of the two surveys just published successfully (157 row XLSForm, 114mb of files), which rather surprised me. The smaller survey failed yesterday when I tried to publish.

Regarding the failed survey:

None of the content or folder has been renamed, deleted, moved or changed in ownership, except the .iteminfo file whose name was changed as suggested by others who've had issues with republishing.

I have attached the XLSForm and log file. I had to change .log to .txt to get it to send. My Survey123 Connect version is 3.19.104.

The TPK is 116mb and is the same one that was in the survey that just published successfully.

As I said earlier, the survey appears to have published successfully, despite having hung. I left it hanging overnight in case it would eventually resolve itself, but it didn't.

Because it appears to have successfully published despite hanging, I may just go with it and hope there are no problems with the data collected. On the other hand, I may try your suggestion to create a new survey from the XLSForm.

Thanks for your response.

FOMELC Geometric Data Collector v1.xlsx

20240208-153248.zip

ChristopherCounsell

The main historical cause for this is as others are described - there is a disconnect between the local and published content. This typically occurs when:

Content is renamed, deleted, moved or changed ownership of
This includes the items (form, layers) and the folder (if moving, you need to put the same
The local content has been modified outside of Connect (e.g. the survey file folder and contents like the .iteminfo...)

If you have the original XLSForm it's an easy fix:

Create a new survey
- From file > target existing .xlsx; OR
- Targeting the existing service, then replacing the .xlsx form in the new survey folder.
Ensure the submission URL and survey is OK
Unshare old survey, share new survey

You'll lose the connection between the survey and the feature layer it created, making it harder to add fields on republish, but otherwise Survey123 doesn't care. It'll submit the request against the target URL.

However there are other reasons that your survey may be having issues:

XLSForm design flaws - can you please share it?
Survey123 versions - can you please share the XLSForm and the version of Survey123 Connect you are using?
Reference content design issues - TPK too big, media/content issues
- You can try uploading the TPK separately and linking it, instead of publishing with the survey

Providing the Survey123 Connect logs from the time of publishing may also help.

Without this info we'll be stuck guessing. Survey123 is 'developer' territory for what can go wrong, it's hard to debug with limited info.

FOMELC01

One 116mg tpk file. It doesn't seem larger than others I've had.

FOMELC01

I haven't done any moving or renaming of files (other than renaming the .iteminfo file) either on my local machine or in AGO. My last publishing attempt (described earlier) was as clean as I could make it without starting a new survey from the XLSX form.

dougbrowning

Big media folder at all?

FOMELC01

This is in AGO. The survey with repeats has only two repeats. I did run Analyze Survey and there were no issues of importance. After posting the earlier post, I deleted both surveys through the Survey123 website, made sure the surveys were gone in AGO, and removed (renamed) the .iteminfo file. I didn't move anything from the folders they were in. I then even rebooted my machine and tried to publish one of the surveys again, probably about an hour ago. Connect is again hung, now at "Creating form item".

The survey shows up on the Survey123 website again. I deleted it from my phone, then reinstalled it from the QR code on the website and it appears to be as it should be. Connect is still running on the same survey, hung at "Creating form item".

abureaux

I decided to try this out. Renaming the files/folder created by Connect doesn't seem to affect the publishing or data collection (at least for a very small test survey - I still wouldn't recommend trying this). But moving the files created by Connect to a different folder does cause a republishing hang from which Connect wont recover.

Again, not sure if this is the scenario described here since it sounds like Connect does eventually publish. If that is in fact the case, I am inclined to think that the survey itself may be too large/complex.

abureaux

Would that cause it to hang, or just fail outright? It sounds like they are eventually publishing, but just taking longer than normal to do so.

(Agreed though. Never rename or move any of the files that S123 creates for you)

dougbrowning

Did you maybe move anything in AGOL from the folders they were in? You cannot rename or move anything.

abureaux

Is this AGO or Enterprise?

How many repeats does the survey have (If we are talking <15, probably not a big deal)?

And have you used the built-in "Analyze Survey" feature in Connect (this wouldn't help with things like database integrity, but can at least tell you if you are doing something really wrong in the XLSX - which may in turn be causing a performance issue)?

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