topic Re: Survey allowed to be submitted when required questions are not answered in ArcGIS Survey123 Questions

Survey allowed to be submitted when required questions are not answered

ForestSwaciak — Mon, 08 Apr 2019 15:14:14 GMT

I have been working on a survey and have been having a problem, when completed in the Survey123 app only, where it can be submitted without answering questions that have been marked to be required.

If the survey is complete with Survey123 Connect, the expected error messages pop up when attempting to submit so this issue is only apparent when completing a survey within the mobile and desktop app.

I tried looking at all of the questions having these issues and the most common relationship that these specific questions have with each other. They all have formulas written in the "Relevant" column that were made to hide questions when specific selections have been made.

I deleted one of these Relevant fields and it did work by giving an error message when attempting to submit without this specific question answered. However, these relevant fields are needed for the survey so I still need them to be present.

Is anyone aware of this issue and is it a known bug?

Any help would be greatly appreciated to find a workaround to this problem.

Thanks in Advanced.

EDIT: When using an older version of the Survey123 mobile app (3.0.149), the expected validation messages did appear requiring entry for the relevant required fields. Therefore, we think this is a bug with the latest release of the Survey123 mobile app.

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Re: Survey allowed to be submitted when required questions are not answered

JamesTedrick — Tue, 09 Apr 2019 17:19:22 GMT

Hi Forest,

Could you share the xls file of the Survey?

Re: Survey allowed to be submitted when required questions are not answered

ForestSwaciak — Wed, 10 Apr 2019 13:25:50 GMT

James,

Will do. This survey was created for a state agency so I would rather email it to you directly rather than posting it publicly as long as you are comfortable sharing your email address. Thank you for willing to help with this, hopefully we can determine a resolution.

Re: Survey allowed to be submitted when required questions are not answered

DougBrowning — Wed, 10 Apr 2019 17:18:12 GMT

Does the field have a relevant on it? Phil and I traced down this error already.

When a field has a relevant and a constraint or required it is not triggering the message sometimes.

For me fields will no relevant trigger a message when going to the next repeat. When a field has a relevant (and not showing on initial repeat load) it will not check the constraint and message until the form is submitted. Which with 50 repeats is a huge mess (they must now hit submit 50+ times!).

I have now also found some fields that never check the required and let it send even with the broken rule. These may be a relevant, constraint, required combo that messes it up. This sounds like what you have.

I went back and forth with Phil on this and he said it is now a know bug and set to be fixed in the next release. He said these relevant, constraints thing was completely overhauled in 3.3. And they did not get it right.

I really hope it gets fixed soon as this is delaying my field season with hundreds of people.

Hope that helps

Re: Survey allowed to be submitted when required questions are not answered

ForestSwaciak — Wed, 10 Apr 2019 19:41:42 GMT

Thanks for the confirmation! We were getting very confused as to why this was happening.

For now, our work-around is just going to be adding red colored notes that appear at the end of the survey stating that a specific question has not been answered. It is not ideal but our field season is starting soon as well and we will have to go with this if there is no definitive fix soon.

Thanks again!

Re: Survey allowed to be submitted when required questions are not answered

DougBrowning — Wed, 10 Apr 2019 19:51:06 GMT

Yea my field season starts May 6 and users/me are freaking out a bit. It is just so confusing to the users when errors get caught at random times. Note I also see it not always triggering when leaving a field which is supposed to work. They keep telling me to fix it and I keep having to say I cannot.

I hope 123 starts to get that most field work is season based. This may mean adjusting the release timing. Not just to get it out before the season starts but also to NOT release during. I know a number of people who had working forms break during the season due to app updates. I wish I could lock this down somehow.

Good idea on checking for empty at the end. ( Not much help for constraints though. ) Not sure how I could get that across 50-100 repeats though. I could maybe figure out there is one but not which one.

Hopefully this will add to its importance to get fixed. I have been surprised no one else has noticed the issue.

Re: Survey allowed to be submitted when required questions are not answered

ForestSwaciak — Fri, 12 Apr 2019 15:55:39 GMT

So I am not sure if this will help with your issue, but I found a work-around that as far as I can tell works.

For each field that had a relevant field causing this error, I put into its own group and moved the relevant expression to the same row as the "begin group" row.

It adds a lot of rows by creating groups for singular questions, but does not add anything to the survey itself. I would give this a shot and let me know if this fixes your issue as well.

Re: Survey allowed to be submitted when required questions are not answered

DougBrowning — Mon, 15 Apr 2019 15:00:53 GMT

Thanks that totally worked! In my case I have a few questions that naturally could be a group and so this helped me get around most of what I needed. Not all though.

This really helps with one of the big requireds we needed. Thanks again.

Re: Survey allowed to be submitted when required questions are not answered

wcozzens — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 18:12:01 GMT

I have just discovered this issue in one of my newer surveys. A field that is required, is within a repeat and contains a relevant expression is ignored - the user can submit the survey regardless whether or not the required field is filled out. App version (iOS) is 3.11.164, Survey123 Connect version is 3.11.123.

Is there any update on when this issue may be fixed? Coming up on two years since this initial post.

Re: Survey allowed to be submitted when required questions are not answered

LeZu — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 20:00:16 GMT

I have a similar issue. I have a field with a constraint and a constraint-message, created in Survery123 Connect. When submitting the form in Survey123 Connect while I'm not fulfilling the constraint, I get a new window with the constraint-message and the form is not possible to submit, just as expected.

When trying to do the same on the web, after publishin the form, I do not get the constraint message when submitting and it is possible to submit the form which is NOT as expected.

What may be the problem?

Re: Survey allowed to be submitted when required questions are not answered

IsmaelChivite — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 21:51:57 GMT

Could you please attach your XLSForm to this thread? @LeZu Alternatively, you can also email it to survey123@esri.com referencing this geonet thread with a link.

Re: Survey allowed to be submitted when required questions are not answered

LeZu — Wed, 10 Feb 2021 10:45:45 GMT

Thanks for qucik respons! Here is a small example where I've set up some constraintes. So when leaving the field "Number" emtpy in the Survey123 Connect GUI, I get a popup-window with the (constraint)-message "Error" as expected. When publishing the form and leaving the same field "Number" empty on the web/in a borwser, I do not get the popup with the Errror-message and the form is possible to submit which is not what I want to happen - it should not be possible to submit with the field "Number" empty.

In the main form I am working with I have two fields, EMAIL and PHONE where the user needs to fill in one of them but not both of them. Therefore when submitting, I want to check if both of these fields are empty, if yes, I want to tell the user through a message that he/she needs to fill in one of the fields and the form shall NOT be possible to submit if both fields are empty.

I tried to make this work by making the PHONE-field requried if the EMAIL-field is empty and vice verse but I did not manage to make it work - only one of the fields hade the possibiblity to check for the other field (using the "required"-field in the Excel-dokuemnt) - if making both check for each other I got an error message (but this is an other storie - I would rather make the above possible to work).

Re: Survey allowed to be submitted when required questions are not answered

LaurenceTait — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 03:49:46 GMT

This is still happening when questions are hidden. There is no way to ensure that all required questions are answered if they have any value in the body::esri:visible or relevant fields. As soon as a question becomes invisible, the form will submit even if the question is blank.

Re: Survey allowed to be submitted when required questions are not answered

KimBaillieul — Thu, 08 Sep 2022 14:49:57 GMT

Hi Ismael, is there any update to this? I have a field survey deployed this is still a problem - answering a relevant section pops up a repeat, but if the user doesn't hit the + then they can skip required questions within the repeat.

Re: Survey allowed to be submitted when required questions are not answered

AndrewPadilla — Fri, 30 Sep 2022 21:57:09 GMT

I am also experiencing a similar issue, with a web form while the field app works as expected. Any update on bug fixes? I see that encasing each question that has both restraint and required or relevant in a group may be a work around. But looking for updates on bug fixes. Thank you for your time.