topic Re: building survey in AGOL using feature service from enterprise in ArcGIS Survey123 Questions

building survey in AGOL using feature service from enterprise

dsinha — Fri, 12 Jul 2024 15:19:45 GMT

Hello,

I have created a survey using Survey123 Connect on AGOL. The survey uses a feature service on AGOL that is linked to a public hosted feature service in Enterprise portal. Data for this feature service is being collected using Field Maps. The purpose of creating a Survey123 form in AGOL using the Enterprise data is to use the report and export to excel functions in Survey123 (but missing in Field Maps).

The problem is that I cannot open Survey123 form using the Manage in Survey123 website option. The webpage keeps reloading constantly with the following error message: The survey is not accessible or does not exist. Please ensure the sign in user can access this survey and that the survey link is correct. Esri Tech Support pointed me to BUG #000167494 (The 'My surveys' page on the ArcGIS Survey123 website keeps reloading if a survey is published using a non-secure reference service added to ArcGIS Online.) but I do not understand how my reference service can be considered non-secure. Aren't the services secure by default?

Any ideas? Thanks!

Re: building survey in AGOL using feature service from enterprise

jcarlson — Fri, 12 Jul 2024 15:12:47 GMT

Any reason you can't just publish the form itself to your Portal? Why go through the AGOL connection?

Re: building survey in AGOL using feature service from enterprise

dsinha — Fri, 12 Jul 2024 15:14:24 GMT

Because I cannot print reports in Portal.

Re: building survey in AGOL using feature service from enterprise

jcarlson — Fri, 12 Jul 2024 15:27:32 GMT

The documentation may have misled you. You can't print reports through a self-hosted instance of Survey123, but there's no reason you can't use the AGOL Survey123 with portal-based feature layers and forms. Self-hosting Survey132 is extremely rare, you'd only do it if your organization had serious security settings in place.

When you go to survey123, just append the portalURL parameter, i.e.,

https://survey123.arcgis.com/?portalUrl=https://maps.co.kendall.il.us

You'll see the connected portal in the upper-right:

You can absolutely generate reports this way. We generate dozens of reports every day through our portal.

Re: building survey in AGOL using feature service from enterprise

dsinha — Fri, 12 Jul 2024 15:52:51 GMT

I tried it that way. But I received an error (agetaddrinfo ENOTFOUND) when trying to generate report for which I asked for help in this post on another forum (perhaps I should have posted it here). I believe its because our portal is not public-facing, but I could be wrong.

Re: building survey in AGOL using feature service from enterprise

jcarlson — Fri, 12 Jul 2024 15:58:24 GMT

You can use this feature with private surveys and portals. When you attempt to use Survey123 with the portalURL parameter, it will communicate with your portal to properly authenticate you first. What is your portal URL? I won't be able to see it, but if I try to use your URL, it should prompt me for a login.

Re: building survey in AGOL using feature service from enterprise

dsinha — Fri, 12 Jul 2024 16:20:25 GMT

Its: EDITED

Re: building survey in AGOL using feature service from enterprise

jcarlson — Fri, 12 Jul 2024 16:16:20 GMT

Hm. I get a Server Not Found error. There's a difference between "not public facing" and "disconnected" I'd guess your site's security settings are configured to prevent traffic from outside of the network. In which case, yeah, you're kind of stuck not getting reports.

If the environment is disconnected, how does the AGOL collaboration work at all? Are you manually updating the AGOL layer? If your AGOL layer is just storing a reference to the portal layer, I would assume that it would not work.

Re: building survey in AGOL using feature service from enterprise

dsinha — Fri, 12 Jul 2024 16:54:09 GMT

Yes, I am storing a reference to the portal layer in AGOL. And it does not work.

Thanks for clarifying that there is a difference between "not public facing" and "disconnected". We are running into problems with this with our Enterprise Field Maps applications too because our portal disconnects the moment we step out of our office network. Unfortunately, I haven't found any Esri documentation that explains how to "connect" to our data sources while remaining private facing.

Re: building survey in AGOL using feature service from enterprise

jcarlson — Fri, 12 Jul 2024 17:05:52 GMT

Okay, so that's a totally separate problem, and one that your org's networking folks will need to sort out. If you set your portal's settings to prevent anonymous access, nothing in the portal or server will be exposed to a user who is not logged in. You can further prevent users from browsing the REST directory of the server, too. These measures can be taken without restricting access to traffic entirely.

Alternatively, you could set your organization's security to allow IP addresses or domains used by ArcGIS Online and Survey123. No guarantee that those are static, so it could be a chore keeping those updated, but if you wanted to really clamp down on access, it might work.

Re: building survey in AGOL using feature service from enterprise

dsinha — Fri, 12 Jul 2024 17:26:42 GMT

Thanks for all your help @jcarlson ! We are talking to our IT folks to find a solution that helps us implement GIS solutions while maintaining security. I just wish there was more documentation from Esri about how to implement this.

Re: building survey in AGOL using feature service from enterprise

Marisa_Kordecki — Fri, 28 Feb 2025 14:52:42 GMT

@dsinha I'm curious if you ever got this resolved? I'm running into a sort of similar issue. Only our issue is that our survey123 web form cannot be accessed by unnamed enterprise users (so anyone on our county network) but having our layer be public on agol is a large issue.

Re: building survey in AGOL using feature service from enterprise

dsinha — Fri, 28 Feb 2025 15:24:44 GMT

@Marisa_Kordecki After spending far too many hours with Esri tech support, the only solution that was offered is exposing the Enterprise Portal to the internet using a Reverse Proxy server. The Reverse Proxy server will maintain the level of security that our IT department requires while allowing the org's GIS users to avail all the functionalities of a portal accessible on the internet. The only way to get this done is by asking your IT team to do it, or paying an external contractor or Esri's Professional Services. Every external contractor I talked to mentioned that this is the most common challenge for organization with an Enterprise install, yet there are no heads-up from Esri before the purchase or documentation that tells you how to configure your portal with a reverse proxy (except this).

I am still waiting for our IT team to install the Reverse Proxy server and I really hope that all the problems caused by having the portal behind the firewall would be resolved once it is operational 🤞 Sorry for the rant 😐

Re: building survey in AGOL using feature service from enterprise

Marisa_Kordecki — Fri, 28 Feb 2025 16:00:56 GMT

@dsinha Thanks for responding so quickly! Unfortunately for us a reverses proxy server is an absolute no from our IT department. I'll be crossing my fingers for your group though that you get it resolved with the reverse proxy.