topic Re: Survey123 - Is it possible to populate a select_one list from answers to a text question? in ArcGIS Survey123 Questions

Survey123 - Is it possible to populate a select_one list from answers to a text question?

Anonymous User — Wed, 18 Sep 2019 13:29:47 GMT

Is it possible to populate a list of select_one values from answers to a question? I am creating a survey where new sites are added in a text field answer. What I need is these new sites to be added to a list once the survey is uploaded for subsequent surveyors to have access to and save on effort and duplication. I can't see how i would do this at the moment. #survey123 #select_one #autopopulate

Re: Survey123 - Is it possible to populate a select_one list from answers to a text question?

Anonymous User — Wed, 18 Sep 2019 13:34:54 GMT

Hi Gemma,

No, this is not currently possible. The select one list can only be a choice list that is prepopulated in choices or external choices sheet. It can not be dynamically updated with answers from other questions.

Regards,

Phil.

Re: Survey123 - Is it possible to populate a select_one list from answers to a text question?

Anonymous User — Wed, 18 Sep 2019 14:06:42 GMT

Thank you for your super quick response. Is there any kind of work around at all? This is a fundamental element to the survey. Could surveyors answer the question and then a central person updates a list daily? I can't see any other way

Re: Survey123 - Is it possible to populate a select_one list from answers to a text question?

DougBrowning — Wed, 18 Sep 2019 14:18:03 GMT

What we do is have all our locations in Collector then launch 123 passing in the location id. We also have the forms on the Collector map so that you can view everything.

Re: Survey123 - Is it possible to populate a select_one list from answers to a text question?

Anonymous User — Wed, 18 Sep 2019 14:40:51 GMT

Hello Doug,

Thank you for your quick response. The structure is the surveyor chooses from a select_one list whether the site is existing (if chosen prompts a select_one list of existing sites not changing), existing (provided by supervisor) (if chosen provides a select_one list of outputs from the new site choice) or a new site. The new site option will prompt a text question to enter the new site name. Once the rest of the survey is completed and uploaded the new site text entry is then used to populate the existing (provided by supervisors) list.

I am not sure this is possible?

Re: Survey123 - Is it possible to populate a select_one list from answers to a text question?

DougBrowning — Wed, 18 Sep 2019 15:58:23 GMT

Yea I get what you are saying. I am saying that they used to do that here - trying to keep a list of job names current in the form. It was a nightmare to keep up to date.

We now use Collector as the assets locations with each visit as its own form. Then relationship class the two together and it all works nicely. It also shows us things like someone going to the wrong site. Users often picked the wrong job name on the drop down and everything gets messed up. With a form per visit I can easily see if a name is wrong (which is rare now since I pass the key over) or they went to the wrong spot. Plus editor tracking is all there, etc.

Just my opinion on a different way.

Re: Survey123 - Is it possible to populate a select_one list from answers to a text question?

Anonymous User — Wed, 18 Sep 2019 22:14:52 GMT

Hi Gemma,

Yes, you could manually update the choice list in the survey in Connect every day, based on new data collected in surveys, and then republish the survey with these new choices included. However it would require every user with the survey in the app to update (re-download) the survey on their device to see the updates.

Phil.

Re: Survey123 - Is it possible to populate a select_one list from answers to a text question?

Anonymous User — Thu, 19 Sep 2019 08:06:25 GMT

Thank you for your help. I will look at collector and combining it with survey 123. Fingers crossed!

Thanks again

Gemma

Re: Survey123 - Is it possible to populate a select_one list from answers to a text question?

Anonymous User — Thu, 19 Sep 2019 08:11:38 GMT

Hi Phil

Yes I have considered this as a solution. My concern is the daily updates being missed. I do have this as a fall back.

Thanks for your help

Gemma

Re: Survey123 - Is it possible to populate a select_one list from answers to a text question?

WhitneyWeber — Wed, 19 Aug 2020 20:14:47 GMT

I agree, it would be uber handy to be able to populate a select_one or select_multiple from the responses of a previous question. If this is feasible in the future or if someone knows of a non-manual work-around, please update this question!

Re: Survey123 - Is it possible to populate a select_one list from answers to a text question?

MichaelBruening — Fri, 08 Jan 2021 22:11:06 GMT

@Anonymous Userhave you looked into the BETA testing or Early Adopters group for Survey123? If not, then you should sign up for it and take a look at the "Linked Content" documentation. This is a process where you can post a CSV file into your ArcGIS Online Organization and then in turn link it back to a survey. Within the survey you can then reference this CSV file as a question type of "select_one_from_file filename.csv" or "select_multiple_from_file filename.csv"(please note the space between file and filename.csv) and this question will use the uploaded file as a list of choices.

I was able to figure out a way to in turn use answers from a different survey as choices in other surveys by exporting the data from the survey to FGDB table, convert this into the correctly formatted and sorted csv file, and then upload the updated CSV file back into my ArcGIS Online account to "Update" it all through a model builder within ArcGIS Pro. I have in turn scheduled the model builder to run at certain intervals throughout the day to rerun my model which in turn updates the CSV file regularly with newer submissions to the first survey all to be used within the second survey as choices to a question.

The great thing is the field app will check the version of the csv file on the device against the version on your ArcGIS Online account via the timestamp. If they are different, then the field app will download the new one from ArcGIS Online and use within your survey.

There is a catch though and I think they are working on a solution for this. I noticed that upon submitting the data that was using the "select_from_file filename.csv" was not populating answers within my Custom Reports. My work around was to use the "select_from_file filename.csv" as a temporary question in conjunction with a second question that uses a calculation that equals the temporary "select_one_from_file filename.csv" question. This in turn will store the answer permanently and be used within my custom reports.

If you do not want to attempt setting up an automated process, then you can always export the survey that contains the answers you want to use into a csv file, then you would trim down this file to have two columns named "name" and "label" (exactly like this case-sensitive). Then you would go onto your CSV details page within your ArcGIS Online account and use the "Update" function on the right-had side of that page to upload the CSV file you just created.

Good Luck!