topic Survey123 "Failed to load the choice list" in ArcGIS Survey123 Questions

Survey123 "Failed to load the choice list"

SWT_TL — Fri, 17 Jan 2025 14:29:37 GMT

I am having an issue where the web form version of survey123 returns the error below for most users on a select_one autocomplete search() question.

I saw a similar issue here https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-survey123-questions/web-app-quot-failed-to-load-the-choice-list-quot/td-p/1312260 regarding the search appearance which has not resolved the issue.

I have since realised that all elements that are calling data from the layer are not working.

I do not experience the issue as the survey creator but other users do. The survey form is public and layer is approved for public data collection but the results are only shared to a group. There are two users within my organisation that have access to all content within the organisation, and only one of them seems to experience the issue, regardless of their group membership. The other has experienced an issue in some browsers.

Viewer level users with whom the layer is shared (these users being viewer level is the reason for the form being shared publicly to allow entries to be submitted) are consistently getting the issue, though it seems weird to me if they would need edit access for search and pulldata functions to work when they can see the data as viewer members of the group with the results and the survey is approved for public data collection.

Though this post https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-survey123-questions/pulldata-layer-queries-working-for-some-not-others/td-p/1274189 seems to suggest that may be the case. It would be great to confirm this?

It would b

I'm out of ideas for fixes or workarounds so any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Re: Survey123 "Failed to load the choice list"

abureaux — Thu, 16 Jan 2025 15:46:34 GMT

"...the administrator of our organisation..."

Like, Esri AGO/Portal admin? They shouldn't need permission for anything, as being an Esri admin overrides all other settings.

May be worth engaging Esri Support so they can look into how things are configured.

My only thought is if that <URL> is external to your AGO/Portal. In that case, sharing would be a little different. But if it's internal, it should [relatively] straight forward.

Re: Survey123 "Failed to load the choice list"

SWT_TL — Fri, 17 Jan 2025 14:16:35 GMT

I'm not 100% sure on the exact terminology. I mean that they are not an ESRI employee but they are the top of our 'organisation' hierarchy on AGOL.

Re: Survey123 "Failed to load the choice list"

abureaux — Fri, 17 Jan 2025 16:22:48 GMT

When I say "Esri AGO/Portal admin", I mean: If you go to the "Members tab in AGO/Portal, look up that user, their "Role" is "Administrator":

Re: Survey123 "Failed to load the choice list"

KayleeRivera — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 17:42:50 GMT

Due to some data security concerns, I would do the following to make the choice list work correctly, and also limit the amount of data that public users can see:

Create a view of your layer
- In the view creation steps, ensure that the only fields that are included in the view are ones that must be available to make your form work (e.g., the field(s) needed for the dynamic choice list or any pulldata functions)
Once your view is created, ensure that editing is not enabled
Share the layer publicly (or with the lowest appropriate sharing level -- just happens to be public for your use case)
Update your survey in Survey123 Connect so that your search() function points to the service url for this new view layer. Publish this change.

I would recommend checking out this blog post and/or this technical paper to understand some of the data concerns a bit more, if you're interested.

Re: Survey123 "Failed to load the choice list"

tssaus — Fri, 14 Mar 2025 19:24:16 GMT

@SWT_TL did you end up figuring this out? I'm having the exact same problem.