topic Re: Survey123 one field OR another must be filled in "Required" in ArcGIS Survey123 Questions

Survey123 one field OR another must be filled in "Required"

BradGeorgic — Wed, 26 Feb 2020 19:24:24 GMT

I have 2 fields one called email and the other phone. I want to make it so that either one of them have to be filled in for the survey to be sent. How do I set the required and constraint fields? Any help is appreciated

Re: Survey123 one field OR another must be filled in "Required"

DougBrowning — Thu, 27 Feb 2020 15:03:47 GMT

For these it always ends up in a dependency cycle. So I use a 3rd field like this.

type

name

label

hint

constraint

constraint_message

required

required_message

appearance

default

readonly

relevant

calculation

text

fieldA

text

fieldB

calculate

checkfields

.!=''

Must fill out fieldA or B

coalesce(${fieldA}, ${fieldB})

Someone may have another idea. Hope it helps.

Re: Survey123 one field OR another must be filled in "Required"

BradGeorgic — Thu, 27 Feb 2020 15:12:08 GMT

Doug Brwoing with the WIN! Thank you that solved it!

Re: Survey123 one field OR another must be filled in "Required"

RichardBuford — Fri, 10 Apr 2020 14:38:41 GMT

How did you solve this. Which one is set to required?

Re: Survey123 one field OR another must be filled in "Required"

DougBrowning — Fri, 10 Apr 2020 15:18:53 GMT

Neither is set to required. You instead set the constraint on field 3 to !=''. This will fire if both are blank but not if either one has a value.

Re: Survey123 one field OR another must be filled in "Required"

mfavorito1995 — Tue, 18 Oct 2022 22:36:21 GMT

Has anyone tried this solution recently? I had built a survey in Survey123 Connect a few months back implementing this solution, but it does not appear to work anymore. I tried setting up similar constraints on multiple fields, but they survey goes through without any issues.

Re: Survey123 one field OR another must be filled in "Required"

Czapiga_Jason — Fri, 17 Feb 2023 21:05:35 GMT

I like Doug's solution, but we solved this by creating a select one question (${contact}) that asks the user "how do you wish to be contacted" with (text message, email, phone) as options. Then you make the email and phone questions (both set to required) visible/hidden with a relevant expression. selected(${contact},'email') on the email question or selected(${contact},'phone') or selected(${contact},'text_message'). if the question is relevant, it will be required.

Re: Survey123 one field OR another must be filled in "Required"

Andre — Mon, 19 Aug 2024 15:10:06 GMT

Sorry to stir up an old post but is there any way to do this with the current web creator or is this functionality reserved to Survey123 Connect?

Re: Survey123 one field OR another must be filled in "Required"

cquick2 — Wed, 11 Dec 2024 18:02:52 GMT

Here we are years later and you are correct. Doug's solution throws the constraint in the Survey123 Connect app, but no constraint is thrown when I complete the published survey in my browser.

Re: Survey123 one field OR another must be filled in "Required"

NathanMack — Thu, 19 Dec 2024 02:18:02 GMT

I have another way to go about this. I will provide screen shots of my actual survey, so I apologize for the funny field names.

The first two rows are the questions I require one of two. I make the second relevant == 'no' if the first is answered. Third row, a calculate question checks if either of my first two questions are blank. Fifth row, combines all of the checks into a calculation that determines how many of the five question pairs was entered. Last is a read-only yes/no questions which is propagated by a calculation that looks at the concatenation previously created. In this case 1 or 0. I want all 1 (11111) for all five question pair being answered. The cell under required can be ignored in this example - It's related to something else going on in the XLS form.
If the last question is not 'yes' it holds up the user, and they are unable to select 'yes' themselves. Their only option is to fill in sub_size or sub_class.
In the example @DougBrowning gave (tip of my cap, your idea inspired mine... go packers) my users would have to submit to realize they missed a data point. My survey is very large with 11 repeats. They input about 3,000 data points before submission. Users would have to go back through their repeats to find empty fields.

Re: Survey123 one field OR another must be filled in "Required"

DougBrowning — Thu, 19 Dec 2024 15:05:27 GMT

@cquick2 For a browser I would try adding a space . = "" and also the actual field name ${field3} != "". If no then next try string-length > 0 to check. I have seen issues in the browser with all of these.

Maybe even try moving the coalesce calc to its own field then add a constraint on that field to field 3. It could be that it is checking in the wrong order.

Re: Survey123 one field OR another must be filled in "Required"

DougBrowning — Thu, 19 Dec 2024 15:24:24 GMT

Note you may see issues with a calc in a read only - yes field. I have seen where 123 assumes the value cannot change since its read only. I would go back and remove values and see if it still works. Also test coming back from a draft and back from sent box.

Typically if the check is inside the repeat then it should fire before moving to the next one. Hard to tell your use case. Using emojis for instant checks may help also https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-survey123-documents/how-to-simulate-instant-data-checking-using-emojis/ta-p/916725

Re: Survey123 one field OR another must be filled in "Required"

Lorikeet — Fri, 28 Nov 2025 03:39:37 GMT

Hi Doug,

This fix seems to be appropriate for something I'm trying to do as well - however I have FIVE fields where I want at least one with a value. I tried to use your fix but the five fields in the coalesce function but Collect kicked off that I have five fields instead of two... Any thoughts on a fix? I thought I could use coalesce for more than two fields....

Cheers! Laura

Re: Survey123 one field OR another must be filled in "Required"

Lorikeet — Fri, 28 Nov 2025 04:41:00 GMT

I should also note that I am working within a repeat - the five fields are in a repeat, and 1/5 needs to be answered per repeat. Cheers, LD