idea Appearance option to view Repeats stacked in Survey123 app in ArcGIS Survey123 Ideas

Appearance option to view Repeats stacked in Survey123 app

CamilleBeasley — Thu, 01 Jun 2017 16:06:49 GMT

Repeat groups offer a good way to collect soil profile data, as profiles often have differing numbers of horizons and each horizon requires roughly the same details to be recorded about it. However, the Survey123 app only shows one repeat record (e.g., one horizon) at a time, requiring users to toggle left and right between them. When evaluating a soil profile to determine if it is hydric, it's important to be able to view all the horizons at once, so the app is not conducive to this. The Web Form displays each record stacked on one another, which would make the evaluation easier, but people collecting soil data in the field often do not have internet/4G access. Therefore, it would be nice if an Appearance option could be added for Repeats in the Survey123 app to appear with each record stacked on one another so the user can view multiple records at once and simply scroll up and down between them. I realize some people may like toggling between single records to reduce screen clutter, so the default Appearance could remain that way, but adding a "stacked" option for Appearance would allow for more layout flexibility, which is one of the main things Survey123 currently lacks in my opinion. I think the grid-theme that's in development would mesh well with this option to reduce screen clutter.

Re: Appearance option to view Repeats stacked in Survey123 app

CraigValentine1 — Tue, 28 Nov 2017 12:24:52 GMT

This would be a useful feature. As would any way of seeing what options have been selected in previous repeats. This would mean you know if you have selected that option before. It would also be useful to have an option where previous selections in a repeat are removed as an option.

Re: Appearance option to view Repeats stacked in Survey123 app

LeighDurland — Fri, 06 Sep 2019 21:01:54 GMT

why isn't this a feature yet? I have users that refuse to view their repeats this way as it takes to long and requires to much memory instead of seeing them all in a table view. especially now that theme-grid is available.

Re: Appearance option to view Repeats stacked in Survey123 app

GregHacker1 — Thu, 12 Sep 2019 16:02:09 GMT

This would be a great addition to the Survey123 field app as well. We use the inbox to update repeated records entered by field biologists. The folks doing the updating currently have to click through and update dozens of records at a time. It would be much more efficient if repeats in the inbox or otherwise had the option to view and update in a tabular format. One additional idea is to allow records to be edited by dragging down a particular field, much like copying data in multiple rows in Excel. This would greatly enhance efficiency as many of the updated records have the same data (e.g., negative test results).

Re: Appearance option to view Repeats stacked in Survey123 app

ChrisShuck — Fri, 03 Jan 2020 00:49:57 GMT

I posted an alternative solution here. If you click on the page numbers at the bottom of the survey it brings up a menu with all of the various pages that you navigate to in one click. Repeats could be set up so as to have one field which will be the name of that record, which would be the shortcut name that would be clicked on to navigate to that repeat record. This would save space and would make it easier to find what you are looking for than having to scroll through a huge amount of data vertically as suggested, although that would be a nice option to have too.

Navigating through a lot of repeat records with the current setup is tedious and unbearable, especially given that the navigation arrows are at the bottom of a repeat rather than the top, causing the survey to jump around when navigating between records of various lengths.

Re: Appearance option to view Repeats stacked in Survey123 app

Jeff_VanEtten — Tue, 22 Jun 2021 09:01:33 GMT

I think there are a lot of different ways this could be implemented. I suggested another way similar to an attribute table in this idea. These probably need pulling together into one thread.

https://community.esri.com/ideas/17356

Re: Appearance option to view Repeats stacked in Survey123 app

FieldGIS — Fri, 18 Sep 2020 16:50:47 GMT

Agreed, this would be a great update to add to Survey123! We have field biologists out collecting wildlife and plant observation data using the repeats, and these staff may have 50+ observations per site. Swiping through all of those reports to check to see if a particular species is recorded, or to confirm the associated information is all entered, such as flight direction or abundance, is tedious for field staff and a major barrier to implementing field data collection.

I know that other field data collection apps, like Fulcrum, take you to a main repeat page when you click the repeat field; this page lists all the repeats (or child records) that the user has entered, based on a user defined title (ie species name, or a combination like species name,total number), and you can scroll through the list to see what's been entered. This main repeat page also has the "+" sign to enter in new repeats. If you hit the "+", Fulcrum takes you to a third screen where you can enter in all of the data that goes with that repeat (total number, flight direction etc). And then it's easy to navigate back to either the main repeat page or back to the main survey page. This set up also means that the main survey page isn't too cluttered. I don't how why Survey123 doesn't have some way to display repeats differently yet!

Re: Appearance option to view Repeats stacked in Survey123 app

AmySteiger — Mon, 18 Jan 2021 21:30:21 GMT

Great idea! This would be so handy

Re: Appearance option to view Repeats stacked in Survey123 app

Jennifere — Mon, 18 Jan 2021 21:47:21 GMT

Yes! We need a way to view repeats which have been entered as a list - a 'stacked' appearance option would be perfect. I am building a survey to capture ecology data where they need to capture multiple lists of species and be able to see at a glance what has been entered already. The clicking back and forth function is not workable. At the moment I have to do a work around where instead of using the Repeat option I create multiple entries (sometimes up to 100), which is very cumbersome in both the excel workbook and the front end survey. Is this a feature which is in line for development?

Re: Appearance option to view Repeats stacked in Survey123 app

WillWoodroof — Wed, 20 Jan 2021 19:18:42 GMT

I agree, this would be a huge addition to Survey 123. Viewing repeats records in table view or in alternate ways while in the field app would be very helpful when collecting numerous repeats.

Re: Appearance option to view Repeats stacked in Survey123 app

Nick_Apostolakis — Mon, 26 Apr 2021 20:08:56 GMT

I would like to see this as well.

I have a pole inspection app with a repeat for other users connection on our poles, as the crew are inspecting the pole it would be nice for them to see the all of the connections on the pole at the beginning of the repeat before they add new connections to make sure they are not duplicating a connection.

Re: Appearance option to view Repeats stacked in Survey123 app

JohnRagosta — Thu, 23 Sep 2021 18:25:49 GMT

Yes, this is needed. I am designing data collection tools for ecologists collecting LPI and production data. They would like to be able to easily see previous selections without having to navigate forward and backward each time. My thought was to use the type = note field along with a calculation to choose previous responses so that's it's displayed. But none of the regular expressions seem equipped to do this. Anyone have luck with this?

Re: Appearance option to view Repeats stacked in Survey123 app

Chris_976 — Fri, 08 Oct 2021 09:08:35 GMT

I can only join my voice here. This feature would be of great help as some workflows imply a lot of short repeats wich are tedious to fill in by navigating through them !!

Re: Appearance option to view Repeats stacked in Survey123 app

DavidRichey — Mon, 11 Oct 2021 23:49:16 GMT

Another up-vote. Combining this with a grid theme (which I've not yet successfully implemented) could make for some nice construction of lists--like plants lists--or equipment needed. Currently users have to enter each record and scroll back and forth, keeping a mental list in their mind. One synoptic view would be great.

Re: Appearance option to view Repeats stacked in Survey123 app

DuncanKinnear — Thu, 20 Jan 2022 01:51:59 GMT

+1 for this idea - seems like a crucial piece of functionality.

Our field teams spend a lot of time collecting flora species at sample sites, but need the ability to quickly update final cover % and average plant heights at the end. Rather than having to scroll through each repeat, a summary table would make this so much faster, and also make it easy to check what species have already been entered!

I'm building a clunky workaround to this to try and avoid having to go back to paper-based field entry or Excel etc.

Re: Appearance option to view Repeats stacked in Survey123 app

gls — Wed, 09 Feb 2022 15:48:18 GMT

Another vote here! We are also collecting plant data (multiple species at sample sites) using repeats. Having to scroll through each one is painful. Stacking the repeats / having them display as a table would be very helpful. Otherwise, as @DuncanKinnear says above, we are having to revert back to paper forms or spreadsheets.

Re: Appearance option to view Repeats stacked in Survey123 app

PortalAdmin1 — Fri, 18 Feb 2022 03:11:41 GMT

Massive +1 for this idea.

Transitioning from a "dumber" pdf/form entry app for borings, concrete strength testing, compaction testing, etc. All of which require roughly 8 col by 8 row "sample" table data entry and presentation (nested within a parent 3-5 count "set" repeat) that is far more useful in a seperate related table.

Have recreated repeat data in note type tables side by side to speed up inbox review by a second user but it's such a inefficient limitation. And the amount of arrow clicks to input is crazy.

Re: Appearance option to view Repeats stacked in Survey123 app

Strahanjen — Thu, 14 Apr 2022 22:29:48 GMT

This feature is essential for our biologists as well. We have the same use case as mentioned by @DuncanKinnear

I tried using index-repeat to display a table of species observations outside of the repeat (see attached), with a cover class question for each row. Inside the repeat, I set the cover class calculation to use pulldata to get the value from the corresponding question outside of the repeat, but the cover class inside the repeat only updates if the user views each repeat record. Thus, the workaround does not work. There is no way to force the user to click through each of the records to make sure that the cover class observations are written to each repeat record.

We're getting desperate for a solution. The biologists may simply prefer to use paper...

Re: Appearance option to view Repeats stacked in Survey123 app

rsiebenmann_ARO — Mon, 08 Aug 2022 17:30:49 GMT

Still need this for the environmental sciences where teams want to be able to add new data inside a repeat while still being able to see a list of the previous entries.

Re: Appearance option to view Repeats stacked in Survey123 app

mrosekulick — Tue, 13 Sep 2022 20:28:58 GMT

Yes please!