topic Does Survey123 Save or Retain Data when a mobile device overheats? in ArcGIS Survey123 Questions

Does Survey123 Save or Retain Data when a mobile device overheats?

GIS_Fox — Wed, 02 Jun 2021 22:23:34 GMT

Hi All,

Summer is coming up fast and my organization is in an arid desert climate with temps often exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit. For our field workers, should their devices in the field experience a shutdown or malfunction due to heat, does the data in a survey123 form gets saved or retained somehow if it force shutdowns itself due to overheat safety features on mobile devices?

Eg. an autosave, inbox save, or warning text due to device condition?

If not, I would like to copy this over into the idea page for survey123 if it doesn't already exist.

image source: https://www.cnet.com/how-to/why-your-phone-gets-so-**bleep**-hot-and-how-to-keep-it-from-overheating/

Best regards & God bless

Jansen Lyons

City of Rio Rancho, NM, USA

Records & GIS Section - Public Works

Re: Does Survey123 Save or Retain Data when a mobile device overheats?

LongDinh — Thu, 03 Jun 2021 05:07:35 GMT

Hi Jansen,

S123 will save a draft of the form on the device to be later submitted to your REST service when a connection is available. I also recall it logs whether the draft was submitted successfully.

Should you need to recover data following a crash from a local device running S123 offline, you can search through the device's files to find the form instance. Here's a very similar thread which discusses some scenarios: https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-survey123-questions/survey123-close-and-save-changes-to-drafts-failing/td-p/764386

Are your concerns with S123 failing to save drafts of lengthy forms or general loss of data events? I believe S123 handles them very well 🙂

Re: Does Survey123 Save or Retain Data when a mobile device overheats?

Anonymous User — Thu, 03 Jun 2021 09:59:42 GMT

Hi @GIS_Fox,

Yes, the Survey123 field app has an autosave feature that is enabled by default, this was added to the 2.4 release a few years ago. After each question is completed in a survey, an autosave event occurs, saving the data to a temporary file. If the app quits unexpectantly, crashes, or the device shutdowns, the next time the app is open the temporary file will be loaded and the user will be prompted that a survey has been recovered, and do they want to continue or discard the recovered survey.

Please refer to the documentation here: https://doc.arcgis.com/en/survey123/desktop/get-answers/troubleshootgetanswers.htm#ESRI_SECTION1_5C18C4AA1EDA4CC19FA86484187DF90F

And also this blog post: https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-survey123-blog/talk-like-a-pirate-release-2-4/ba-p/896019

Regards,

Phil.

Re: Does Survey123 Save or Retain Data when a mobile device overheats?

GIS_Fox — Thu, 03 Jun 2021 14:01:12 GMT

Good morning @Anonymous User & @LongDinh ,

Thank you both for your quick and detailed responses! This is great to hear and am glad S123 has this feature. Yes, we have a lengthy form I have concern about should a device suffer a heat or field related crash, this will be great to know should it happens and I will pass this information on to our field workers. I will be noting the links each of you offered and will be referencing them especially 🙂

My sincere thanks, have a great day!

Jansen Lyons

City of Rio Rancho, NM

Records & GIS Section - Public Works