topic Re: Opening mobile surveys from pop-ups causing unpacking loop in ArcGIS Survey123 Questions

Opening mobile surveys from pop-ups causing unpacking loop

leahmaps — Mon, 25 Mar 2024 15:14:31 GMT

Hi Everyone,

I have been having this issue for a few weeks now while I have been testing a new survey, and I am not sure what to do to fix it.

In my pop-up, I have two links. One opens the survey in the browser, the other on mobile (as this survey is so big, opening it in an iPad browser doesn't work well). Whenever I try to click the link that would open the survey in the (iPad) Survey123 app, it causes a loop between downloading and unpacking the survey.

Does anyone have a solution to this? I found a similar posting here, but this survey is private to the organization, and this post is from a few years ago. Nothing seems to solve the problem..

I attached a video, caution watching if you are sensitive to flashing.

(view in My Videos)

Re: Opening mobile surveys from pop-ups causing unpacking loop

abureaux — Mon, 25 Mar 2024 20:35:08 GMT

I've had this happen before. What does your URL look like? I am thinking the URL is somehow malformed.

I actually made this intentionally happen before because I was (and still am) super frustrated that launching via URL doesn't automatically check for updates. My hope was that by adding a parameter to the URL I could get that check to occur. Technically it did work since it downloaded the form each time the link was clicked. The issue was I ended up in an endless loop exactly as you have shown there.

Re: Opening mobile surveys from pop-ups causing unpacking loop

ChristopherCounsell — Tue, 26 Mar 2024 09:50:31 GMT

Do you have an ENH/Idea for the URL scheme not enforcing survey updates?

I had one for CSVs not refreshing but we need this to enforce survey updates as well.

Re: Opening mobile surveys from pop-ups causing unpacking loop

leahmaps — Tue, 26 Mar 2024 12:39:45 GMT

So, I have two surveys (the initial and an update survey) that don't open in the app, but the URL is the same for both, other than the survey ID (x'ing out a few parts of the URL):

https://survey123.arcgis.app/?itemID=exxxccxxxe344548897736ff73029495?mode=edit&globalId=de63aef4-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-d05fb44b4446

I got the URL to open the app from the Survey123 website. What do you think could be weird with this URL?

Re: Opening mobile surveys from pop-ups causing unpacking loop

abureaux — Tue, 26 Mar 2024 15:57:49 GMT

Try "&" instead of "?":

Also, looks like you have an extra "/" right after "app". Should be "app?":

Re: Opening mobile surveys from pop-ups causing unpacking loop

abureaux — Tue, 26 Mar 2024 16:03:11 GMT

I do: https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-survey123-ideas/survey-checks-for-updates-when-loaded-from-web/idi-p/1078268

(I also mention CSVs in the post. That is another pain point... I get at least two requests per week that a user's CSV is out of date and they don't know what to do...)

Re: Opening mobile surveys from pop-ups causing unpacking loop

leahmaps — Tue, 26 Mar 2024 16:25:04 GMT

Yes! the &mode=edit worked to open the survey without any loading, but now is not grabbing the referenced global ID. Now, it opens a new survey instead of relating to the record the popup is from.

The interesting thing is, I don't know where the additional "/" is coming from. I have this running in arcade to calculate the URL, and there is not an extra /

Re: Opening mobile surveys from pop-ups causing unpacking loop

RobertAnderson3 — Tue, 26 Mar 2024 17:48:46 GMT

My links have that / in them as well and it doesn't seem to cause any issues.

The way I use the globalID though is &filter=globalid:{globalid} and it seems to work for me, try adding the filter=?

Re: Opening mobile surveys from pop-ups causing unpacking loop

RobertAnderson3 — Tue, 26 Mar 2024 17:50:19 GMT

The fact you have 2 ideas (by accident) on this same topic and they've only got sub 5 votes is absolutely wild to me, this should be taken with so much more urgency I think.

I get that request weekly as well from staff it's brutal.

Re: Opening mobile surveys from pop-ups causing unpacking loop

ChristopherCounsell — Wed, 27 Mar 2024 09:38:22 GMT

The feedback loops between field staff, GIS and Esri can be a bit disconnected. I'm a big advocate of users reaching out to support to add a case and their account to Enhancements and Bugs, as well as creating well articulated ideas. They might genuinely not appreciate how much of an issue it is until we push it.

Re: Opening mobile surveys from pop-ups causing unpacking loop

ChristopherCounsell — Wed, 27 Mar 2024 09:46:45 GMT

You can't specify the globalid for editing, it's not how the inbox works. Field parameters aren't supported in the inbox. Globalid isn't supported as a field to pass through at all.

You need to apply a query parameter like:

q:globalId=1d392670-33e2-456d-8435-7fad3abd8bb9

e.g.
https://survey123.arcgis.app/?itemID=exxxccxxxe344548897736ff73029495&mode=edit&q:globalId=de63aef4-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-d05fb44b4446

You should also URL encode the request.

Try using this instead, then adding the expression as a link value in the text editor.

// Set app to open var urlsource = 'arcgis-survey123://?'; // Set parameters var params = { // item id of survey form itemID: '<item_id>', // parameters to pass (note no field values work in edit/inbox mode) // edit = inbox action: 'edit', // inbox query, will only return one record if it exists 'q:globalId': $feature.GlobalID, // inbox folder folder: 'inbox', // refresh inbox update: 'true', // optional call back to ArcGIS Field Maps callback:'https://fieldmaps.arcgis.app' }; // Combine the app + parameters return urlsource + UrlEncode(params);

Re: Opening mobile surveys from pop-ups causing unpacking loop

leahmaps — Wed, 27 Mar 2024 16:01:04 GMT

Hi Christopher,

The URL parameter the other way did work. When you clicked the link in field maps, the inbox had a search for {globalID} = 'whatever the global id was'. Yours did work better as it just did open the survey directly.

However, in my rendition of the expression, the itemID would switch based on the status of the feature class. If it is active, it opened one survey, if it is closeout, it opened another. Is that something that can still be done using this expression?

Re: Opening mobile surveys from pop-ups causing unpacking loop

ChristopherCounsell — Wed, 27 Mar 2024 16:59:43 GMT

Yes, add your var if statememt before the survey parameters then put the
itemid variable in instead of a hard coded itemid string

Re: Opening mobile surveys from pop-ups causing unpacking loop

LindsaySpencer-Henderson — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 22:36:18 GMT

@JamesTedrick @Ismael can you help with this? I am experiencing the exact same thing as @Lea. Using Connect version 3.23.48, and calculating the URL scheme to include fields from a featureset. Arcade is below. I can open the survey just fine when opening in any browser (Chrome/Safari), however when updating the URL to open in the S123 app, I get this DL and unpacking loop that I cannot figure out. Have tried both with "update to the latest survey" on and off. Have also played around with Inbox (which shouldn't make a difference but I wanted to test anything I could think of!).

Please assist! Its suuuuper bizarre behavior, and I have been using these URLs for years and this is the 1st time I have encountered this kind of behavior (both IOS and Android).

Arcade here:

var loc = $feature.MXLOCATION;

// Access the "WORK ORDERS" table in the map

var fields = ['LOCATION','WONUM','DESCRIPTION','STATUS'];

var plans = OrderBy(Filter(FeatureSetByName($map, 'WORK ORDERS', fields, false),"LOCATION = @loc"),'WONUM DESC')

/////

//SET CARIABLES TO HOLD HTML

var planList = ``

//LOOP THROUGH TO GET COUNTS FOR CORRECT POPUP HEADING

if (Count(plans) >= 1){

planList = `<div style = "background:lightgray"><h3>Open Work Orders</h3>`;

}

else {

planList = `<div style = "background:lightgray"><h3>No Active Work Orders</h3>`;

}

//LOOP THROUGH AND GET LINKS FOR EACH WO#

for(var p in plans){

if (Count(plans) >= 1){

var desc = p.DESCRIPTION

var wonum = p.WONUM

var locs = p.LOCATION

var status = p.STATUS

var key = "WO# " + wonum + " - " + status + ":" +TextFormatting.NewLine +desc

// var src="https://survey123.arcgis.app?"

// var link = "itemID=8fa4f5a4e39e4eaa8f5442d2f176cc25?field:DESCRIPTION=" + desc + "&mode=edit" +"&field:MXLOCATION=" + locs + "&field:WONUM=" + wonum + "&field:RO_STATUS=" + status + "&callback=https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/35e7c7330c9f46ec990c2c793c99xxxx"

var sublink = "https://survey123.arcgis.com/share/8fa4f5a4e39e4eaa8f5442d2f17xxxx?field:DESCRIPTION=" + desc + "&mode=edit" + "&field:MXLOCATION=" + locs + "&field:WONUM=" + wonum + "&field:RO_STATUS=" + status + "&callback=https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/35e7c7330c9f46ec990c2c793c9xxxxx"

// var sublink = src + UrlEncode(link)

planList += `<p><b><a href = "${sublink}" style ="color:blue">${key}</a></b></p>`;

}

planList += `</div>`

return {

type : 'text',

text : planList//this property supports html tags

}

Re: Opening mobile surveys from pop-ups causing unpacking loop

ChristopherCounsell — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 22:46:21 GMT

Mode=edit is the url paremeter for the web app.

You should be using action=edit AND adding a query parameter for the inbox if using the field app.

https://doc.arcgis.com/en/survey123/get-started/integrate-launchfieldapp.htm

Field parameters are not supported when using the URL to pass values to the inbox. It can only open the existing values.