topic Re: Survey123 Connect Not Loading Published Form After 3.13.249 Update in ArcGIS Survey123 Questions

Survey123 Connect Not Loading Published Form After 3.13.249 Update

Galen_S_MnDOT — Thu, 18 Nov 2021 22:26:31 GMT

I have an inspection-focused form that has already been published to ArcGIS Online (and has been updated several times), but when I've tried opening it in Survey123 Connect today to continue making changes, the program either hard locks at the 'Optimizing Survey' phase, or runs in it indefinitely.

The only change I can think of between yesterday and today is the update of Survey123 Connect to version 3.13.249.

This form is still working fine in the Survey123 standalone app.

I've tried completely uninstalling Survey123 Connect, including deleting all the relevant sub-folders in my 'user/ArcGIS' directory, before reinstalling the app from the Microsoft Store and downloading the published form from AGOL.

Is anyone else experiencing issues with published forms since the update? Is there any way to solve this aside from creating an entirely new form based on the existing feature service(s) and publishing that in its place?

Thank you!

Galen S.
Minnesota Department of Transportation

Re: Survey123 Connect Not Loading Published Form After 3.13.249 Update

Anonymous User — Thu, 18 Nov 2021 22:30:26 GMT

Hi @Galen_S_MnDOT,

Can you please share the XLSForm and media folder, so we can take a closer look?

Have you checked the diagnostic logs (enable via Settings), do you see any errors in the logs?

Regards,

Phil.

Re: Survey123 Connect Not Loading Published Form After 3.13.249 Update

Galen_S_MnDOT — Thu, 18 Nov 2021 22:32:55 GMT

Sure thing - thank you @Anonymous User!

The Excel form is attached, as is the zipped media folder (although it only contains a single jpeg and a single png file).

Re: Survey123 Connect Not Loading Published Form After 3.13.249 Update

Anonymous User — Fri, 19 Nov 2021 00:02:43 GMT

Hi @Galen_S_MnDOT ,

Thanks for the XLSForm. I just tested on Windows, Android and iOS, and I am able to open the form and publish from Connect, and then can download and open the survey in the field app in Windows, iOS and Android. There are no errors in the logs on my side, works as expected. It could be that the database and survey are out of sync.

The survey does take a while to load, as it has a lot of questions, calculations and relevant statements. But I would assume in previous versions it also took a long time to open the survey.

Are you only seeing this on Windows, or on mobile devices? Did you try delete the survey and download again so that it was removed from My Surveys folder and deleted from the MySQL database locally? You may also want to try re-initialize the database, from the Storage settings menu, but be aware this will affect all stored survey records on the device for all surveys.

Regards,

Phil.

Re: Survey123 Connect Not Loading Published Form After 3.13.249 Update

Galen_S_MnDOT — Fri, 19 Nov 2021 16:08:15 GMT

Thank you for the ongoing support and testing Phil!

You're correct that the survey has always taken a long time to load, but what I'm encountering in Survey123 Connect is definitely hanging/crashing behavior. It's also definitely limited to this specific form; I just confirmed that none of my other already-published forms have any trouble downloading and displaying in Connect.

And I'm still fairly certain this is a Connect-only issue; none of the standalone apps (on Windows, iOS, or Android) have any trouble connecting to the already-published version of this form, pulling records for the inbox, saving records, etc.

Is there a way to just delete the current Connect version of this form without deleting the active AGOL feature service(s) and data that it connects to? I can save a copy of the Excel form easily enough; I mostly want to avoid having to re-do all of the setup on the AGOL side of things.

Thanks again!

Re: Survey123 Connect Not Loading Published Form After 3.13.249 Update

Galen_S_MnDOT — Fri, 19 Nov 2021 16:19:58 GMT

Quick update - this specific form does seem to be locking up the Windows version of Survey123 (not Connect) now too. But only the Windows version (3.13.244.0).

Both Android and iOS versions of the standalone app are able to open the form, even after I've removed the survey from each device, reinitialized the on-device database, and then re-downloaded the form and opened an individual record for editing.

Unfortunately I'm not sure if/how I can give you access to the already-published version of the form, since it's locked behind my agency's AGOL organizational sharing restrictions.

Re: Survey123 Connect Not Loading Published Form After 3.13.249 Update

Galen_S_MnDOT — Fri, 19 Nov 2021 19:15:58 GMT

Hello again @Phil -

I haven't yet been able to reproduce your success with the downloaded copy of the Excel form. I completely uninstalled Survey123 Connect on home PC, reinstalled it (via direct .exe download from the website, not the Microsoft Store), and tried to create a new survey based JUST on the existing Excel form (not the existing feature class on AGOL).

Even with that approach, Survey123 Connect has still been stuck in the "Optimizing Survey" stage of opening the new form for more than 30 minutes.

Can you recommend any additional steps to try and diagnose what about this specific Excel form is causing the new version of Connect to hang? I don't have any idea what to try cutting out of the spreadsheet first to figure out what is causing the problem.

Thanks again!

Re: Survey123 Connect Not Loading Published Form After 3.13.249 Update

Anonymous User — Mon, 22 Nov 2021 02:41:10 GMT

Hi @Galen_S_MnDOT,

That is odd, and somewhat strange that only this survey causes Connect to hang, and it only does for you and not for me.

What make/model is the computer you are using (do you know the CPU, RAM etc)? Also what exact version of Windows (from the About screen in Windows Settings). It is a Home, Pro or Enterprise version of Windows?

Are all Windows updates and drivers up to date?

Are you able to test on any other Windows computers to see if you get same result?

Regards,

Phil.

Re: Survey123 Connect Not Loading Published Form After 3.13.249 Update

Galen_S_MnDOT — Mon, 22 Nov 2021 15:42:36 GMT

Thank you @Anonymous User -

There's nothing that jumps out at me re: my system or OS specs as a possible culprit. My work PC is as follows:

Intel Xeon E3-1225 v6 @at 3.30 GHz
16 GB RAM
Windows 10 Enterprise, version 1909 build 1863.1854
Microsoft Excel (via Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise) version 2102 Build 13801.21050

... and my home PC (which I've also frequently used for this and other Survey123 projects once I've published them):
Intel Core i7-8700K
16 GB RAM
Windows 10 Home, version 21H2 build 19044.1348.
Microsoft Excel (via Microsoft 365 family account plan) version 2110 build 14527.20276

I don't think I've yet mentioned it in this thread, but I have also tried starting a completely fresh form using the existing hosted feature service as the starting template. That works fine - the form renders in Connect without any problems - but the feature service alone doesn't quite match form configuration I need for this project.

As soon as I clear all the rows (on both the 'survey' and 'choices' pages) and then copy my original form's rows and paste them into the new form - making sure to paste-as-values - as soon as I save the excel form to refresh Connect, that's when the freezing/locking behavior starts.

I've noticed that sometimes Connect does seem to render part of the form before freezing:

Based on this snippet (I can't scroll down in the frozen app) it seems like maybe the field types, defaults, and calculate functions are rendering properly, and something is hanging when it gets to loading the field labels since they're still blank in the image above? It's hard for me to say, since I don't really know how Connect's form rendering processes work.

Absent any other specific tips, it looks like I don't have any choice but to try a true line-by-line rebuild of the form, no copy+pasting from the original.

Re: Survey123 Connect Not Loading Published Form After 3.13.249 Update

Anonymous User — Tue, 23 Nov 2021 10:38:20 GMT

Hi @Galen_S_MnDOT,

Yes i am a bit stumped as to why this occurs, there are no errors in the logs and I can load this XLSForm (that you provided above) perfectly fine on my few computers. It is a little slow to load, but does not hang or crash the app, and works fine on iOS and Android devices too.

As you suggest, it would be good idea to create the survey from scratch, line by line, ensuring every column and value is correct, and see if you run into the error at a certain line or value. This may help narrow down the cause.

Regards,

Phil.

Re: Survey123 Connect Not Loading Published Form After 3.13.249 Update

Galen_S_MnDOT — Tue, 23 Nov 2021 16:25:29 GMT

I have indeed been rebuilding it throughout most of the day yesterday and am continuing today. So far I've had one instance where a change to the Excel form caused Connect to freeze while trying to reload, and based on the changes I had just made I've noted three potential causes:

“IF” calculation with an empty parameter for the third argument (i.e. “If ______, else do nothing”).
User’s edits to the Excel template sheet extend past pre-formatted rows (i.e. the conditional dropdowns in the first column and the ‘appearance’ column, among others, no longer are present)
Custom row formatting (e.g. custom fill colors or font colors) somehow interfere with Connect’s parser/converter.

I have been publishing the form incrementally and was able to download the most recent version and continue on. I'm trying to be as methodical as possible but for now getting this form back up and ready for our users is the higher priority. I'll add any additional details to this thread if I encounter freezing again.

Thank you again for your assistance,

Galen S.

Re: Survey123 Connect Not Loading Published Form After 3.13.249 Update

JennieCatalano1 — Wed, 23 Feb 2022 20:17:14 GMT

My department is running into a similar issue. Once ESRI updated Survey 123 to version 3.13 , our Surveys published from Survey 123 Connect version 3.11 were no longer loading or re-publishing. The fix was to have users upgrade their Survey 123 Connect software to 3.13 and to create a new xls form - the form format changed with the update. Publishing the old form in updated version of Connect didn't work. Our users had to do this row by row because copy/paste from old form to new didn't work. We're publishing to Portal 10.9.1, Using AGOL Survey 123 website, and on Window 10 Enterprise vs20H2.

Re: Survey123 Connect Not Loading Published Form After 3.13.249 Update

Galen_S_MnDOT — Wed, 23 Feb 2022 20:48:56 GMT

Unfortunately that's ultimately what we had to resort to as well. Very time consuming.

Since then, I've taken to backing up a copy of the XLS form file in a separate folder pretty much every time Survey123 Connect successfully loads after a change, so if this problem reoccurs I can at least recreate the survey123 design using the last working version of the XLS document.

Re: Survey123 Connect Not Loading Published Form After 3.13.249 Update

KaciParis — Wed, 15 Feb 2023 19:30:14 GMT

@Anonymous User

Was there ever a better solution to this problem instead of having everyone retype out days worth of surveys and code? The surveys will load and publish on everyone's computer but mine. There has to be a solution.

Re: Survey123 Connect Not Loading Published Form After 3.13.249 Update

KaciParis — Wed, 15 Feb 2023 19:37:10 GMT

@DougBrowning Do you know of a difference solutions for this?

Re: Survey123 Connect Not Loading Published Form After 3.13.249 Update

DougBrowning — Wed, 15 Feb 2023 19:47:47 GMT

Umm for what exactly? Sorry hard to follow all these posts. Note Phil left the team so he probably won't respond.