Lose all data after minor edits in survey and re-publishing

Question

I re-created a survey in the Survey123 Connect XLXForm that Ismael Chivite helped me with at GeoConX 2018 Conference and everything worked great with all the calculations, but when I went back in and made a very minor edit to the survey (which I anticipate I will need to do in the future). When I went to republish I was given the warning that I may lose my data and I proceeded. I did lose all my data, so with that being a reality what does Esri recommend as a Best Practice when you make minor edits (add a new question) to an existing survey and how can you ensure that you DO NOT lose your data?  Should you create a new survey and the merge the data. We are also looking to bring in the survey data into an Operations Dashboard reporting field errors in a more timely and proactive way.

Any advice, tips and best practices from Esri would be very helpful.

Thanks in advance for your help and I look forward to hearing back from Esri.

BR Colleen

deleted-user-sNUdtFrn2yEY · Answer

James -

Thanks so much for your input, very helpful!!

Best regards,

Colleen Madigan Schelde

JamesTedrick · Answer

Hi Colleen,

Thanks for the description. Unfortunately, changing the field length via Survey123 will require the republishing of the service (as the field needs to be re-created).  An alternative would be to, in ArcGIS Online:

1) Add a field to temporarily store the existing values

2) Calculate the values from the existing field to the temporary field

3) Delete the existing field

4) Create a new field with the same name as the original field and with the new length

5) Calculate the values from the temporary field to new field

deleted-user-sNUdtFrn2yEY · Answer

James -

What I changed in the XLSForm was the text Type field length from 399 to 499 characters and changed it's Appearance from the default to multiline. When I went to republish it warned me I would lose my data.

Best regards,

Colleen