Survey123 Function Behaviour Differences - Mobile App Vs Browser

Question

Hello All,

I am having difficulty getting the Field App to know when my multiple choice question has had all of its questions answered. I have identified the issue as being caused by how the Field App stores its values and will not function as expected unless the choices names are unique. This would then require that I code all the possible combination for the multiple choice question as it can be completed in any order. I am not sure why this is happening or another away around this. I would greatly appreciate your assistance

I have created a survey which shows what is going on.

Survey123 Function Behaviour Differences - Mobile App Vs Browser.xlsx

JamesTedrick · Answer

Hi Kevin,

Yes, I did try the XLSX file in the field app and web browser; I am actually surprised that it works the way you intended in the web browser; I would expect the behavior of the field app to be the appropriate behavior as there is no way to distinguish the choices from a  data perspective.

One way to accomplish what you are trying to do is to set the bind::esri:esriFieldType column to null for the select_multiple question.  This will cause that question to not be recorded in the database, instead relying on the CountContainer question to record that the appropriate number of checkboxes have been recorded.

KevinThompson · Answer

Good Afternoon James,

Thanks for taking the time to get back to me! Have you had a chance to open my example in Survey123 Connect and test it in the field app versus the browser?

I am more concerned about the application capturing that all the questions have been check off; rather than, which questions have been checked off. My current use case is where questions are used to confirm that something has met our standards. The name field values can all be the same and the counting will work within the web browser, but it breaks in the field app? I am curious as to if this was designed like this or is a limitation of the field app?

I would also like my values in the database to only have Y for an answer of yes and not have to resort to Y1 Y2 Y3 Y4 to make all the questions have unique values to work in the field app.

Kind Regards,

Kevin

JamesTedrick · Answer

Hi Kevin,

Choices should not have the same name value - if they do, there is no way to tell which choice was actually selected.