idea Upload templates to surveys with no data in ArcGIS Survey123 Ideas

Upload templates to surveys with no data

abureaux — Mon, 22 Apr 2024 15:04:25 GMT

Currently, you must submit a survey to any newly published Feature Layer to gain access the "Data" tab of the S123 Website. This means you cannot upload a Feature Report template until something exists in the Feature Layer.

This order of operations is not always ideal when adding automations.

EDIT: I totally forgot about this one, but this also affects existing surveys that already have Feature Report(s) attached. If you do something that clears the database (e.g., add a repeat), you actually lose access to your currently existing Feature Reports. This is particularly annoying where automations exist. Essentially, you published the update > submit a record so you can simply access Feature Reports > have to deal with your automation potentially failing > update the Feature Report > deal with cleanup (failed automation runs, delete the pointless new submission, etc.)

Re: Upload templates to surveys with no data

RobertAnderson3 — Mon, 22 Apr 2024 11:32:25 GMT

Working with webhooks this frustrates me, I would be interested to hear the logic behind this requirement, and have it removed as a restriction.

Re: Upload templates to surveys with no data

abureaux — Mon, 22 Apr 2024 14:57:12 GMT

Exactly. I feel like I am working backwards while setting up automations. I've set up enough at this point that you'd think I'd have gotten used to it, but nope lol.

Re: Upload templates to surveys with no data

leo_SwissGIS — Mon, 19 May 2025 15:00:12 GMT

ESRI has buit many great features in Survey123 for making teamswork easier and smarter: webhooks, sharing capabilities, inbox, using templates in Connect, report template and so on.

This is the only point missing to have a flawless setup, and it doesn't seem a huge technical step to me...

Not only for webhooks, here is a typical workflow for our templates :

Generate a Survey from Survey123 Connect from a template
Adjust the setting and publish it
Set sharing capabilities on the website
Go in the app, download and open the survey
Submit a dumb record
Go back to website and import the report template
Delete the dumb record

The steps 4, 5 and 7 in red above should be easily avoided, it would be twice faster to set up a proper solution wihtout having to switch between 3 interfaces connect>app>website.

Another way would be to ask users to import the report template after the first submission or when they want to export their answer:

But first it doesn't feel right to finish a setup when you are already into production.
And second, in our company, people that are preparing the forms are different from the one using it, and as only the owner can add a report template (please vote for this idea), users would have to contact the person who publish the form to add the report...

Hope the idea will be implemanted soon...