Notification to submit forms in the Outbox

Question

Hi there. I understand there is no auto-submit function for various reasons, but is there a way to get a notification that you have unsubmitted forms at a certain time of day?

Background: Like many we use Survey123 to gather field metadata while also collecting physical water samples that get sent to the lab. The lab needs to receive the forms data before the physical samples arrive with the courier. The issue is when the technician collects data while out of coverage and then forgets to submit the forms at the end of the day.

It would be great if the device could recognize there are unsent forms in the outbox and send a notification reminding them to send at a specific time (say 5pm or whatever works for the organization).

CraigBeaven · Answer

Thanks for your suggestions. Haven't found the exact solution yet. Powers Automate works great for notification of submitted forms, but we've had no success on finding a solution for surveys in the outbox. We did note that there is a flag in the .gpkg database file on the iPhone in the Status tab that appears to be set to "1" when the file has not been sent (and "2" otherwise), but the file format can't be read on an iPhone directly. There are Apps that can read the file, but there are limitations on what can be done with them as far as generating a notification (certainly in the free App space anyway).

Our solution is to have other software pre-register the information that's important to the lab before the samples are collected and the field data can arrive at a later data if necessary. Not great for spontaneous samples, but works 95% of the time

abureaux · Answer

Ya, Apple Shortcuts isn't manageable by an MDM, so it's reliant upon the end user for now 😞 And in my experience, relying that 10s to 100s to 1000s of staff will follow a list of instructions is like herding cats.

Hence something like Power Automate, because it's a single-source server-side process. You could send email reminders (probably not the best option), Power Apps push notifications, or text messages (separate purchase, but quite cheap per text). Power Apps is of course a separate app, but it is at least manageable by an MDM, and allows for push notifications.

CraigBeaven · Answer

We've been playing around with Apples "Shortcuts" to do this, but to get it set up correctly on 40+ different staff person's devices is problematic. It also only allows for notification when a new form has been created before a specified time, not whether something has yet to be submitted (as it just looks at the date in the Survey123 files folder). Never touched Power Automate, but might have to look closer at that. Thanks