Pass a Parent ID from one survey to others completed during the same trip

Question

Hi Survey123 community

In my organization we have trips that go out into the field to collect a range of different data (I currently have 9 surveys that field workers may need to complete). I need to be able to link all of the surveys back to an overall 'Trip ID'/'Parent ID' so data can be attributed to the trip it was collected on.

So far, I think there are three ways of setting this up in Survey123 Connect.

1. Create a 'Trip Form' with key information that field workers complete at the start of a trip. Have all the other surveys that field workers may need complete displayed as custom URL scheme links in the 'Trip Form' that will pass the 'Trip ID' and other key information into the relevant survey. I have read about this being done (here and here) and have been able to successfully set it up. This is my preferred method at the moment, but I think it will potentially be confusing for users in the field.

2. Set up a single survey where the 9 surveys are all repeats of the Trip form, which will automatically pull the 'ParentGlobalID' into the child surveys. However, I'm hesitant to do this as it will be a lot of data in a single survey and will likely become confusing for user in the field as well as when managing the data in the backend.

3. Use the 'pulldata' function to have each survey linked to a feature layer containing survey information from the Trip Form including a 'Trip ID', however as far as I know this won't work offline, and field workers are often out of range for long periods.

If anyone has experience implementing something similar and can provide any info on how you set it up it would be greatly appreciated.

abureaux · Answer

In most cases, users will be using the Power Apps app within Teams, or a URL to launch into the sub-form. Both of these options automatically add the ID and are available on both PC and mobile (though I expect most to be done on PC). While I do allow for manually typing it in, because sometimes our project work can be weird, this option is at the bottom of the "recommended procedures" list for exactly the reason you mentioned. My goal is to eliminate that option entirely in the future.

dougbrowning · Answer

Only issue I see here is users manually typing in IDs.  This is the whole reason we went to read only IDs and passing them in as the crews got them wrong all the time.  In fact the last 3 jobs the biggest QA issue was users typing in IDs.  With GPS in every form you can figure them out and fix them but its work.  You could add a distance from where you say calc but then you have to keep a csv of lat/longs up to date.

abureaux · Answer

@DougBrowningsuggestion is a good option for sure.

I will add a slightly adjacent option here since it may work in your case:

* All projects start with our Project Hazard Assessment (PHA) form which staff fill out in-office. It contains numerous options and may result in up to ~15 extra forms needing to be filled in.
* Just this year, I have begun to strip out all the project detail fields from these "related" forms and replace them with a single "Safety Form ID" field which will relate back to a single PHA.
* Related forms can still be completed in the field (where needed). The field staff just need to know their Safety Form ID. When back in internet range, the forms will send off and be automatically linked to that specific PHA via the ID.
* I created a Power Apps app to manage PHAs and dynamically show links to related forms so office staff can jump directly into a specific related form (and auto-fill in that Safety Form ID). I also send an email with quick links. These two options are basically replacing Field Maps in my case. PHAs don't always have spatial data, and the related forms are a mix of in-office and in-field forms, so this set up is considerably more convenient.