topic Nested repeat creating blank records in ArcGIS Survey123 Questions

Nested repeat creating blank records

danbecker — Tue, 31 Jul 2018 15:20:12 GMT

type	name	label	required	relevant
begin repeat	freq_plot	Freq Plots
integer	quad_id	Quad ID	yes
begin repeat	freq_plot_species	Species List		string-length(string(${quad_id}))>0
select_one species	species_name	Sci Name	yes
select_one livedead	live_dead	Live or Dead	yes
end repeat
end repeat

Basic nested repeat as shown above.

Here's the survey form. The first record, Quad ID 1, has 2 inner repeat records, sp1-live and sp2-dead hence why you see the 2 of 2 count on the inner-repeat. This is the behavior one would expect.

This is Quad ID: 2, the 2nd record. Here's a screenshot immediately after entering the Quad ID value. Notice how the inner-repeat is already pre-populated with 2 blank records. If the previous record, (Quad ID: 1) would of had 3 inner-repeat records, then this record would of also had 3 blank inner-repeat records and so forth. The biggest issue is when you arrow < to previous outer repeat records then try to navigate through the inner repeat records. You get validation errors because the blanks are not meeting the field required.

After more testing, turns out that these blank records are ONLY created when you have a formula in the relevant column, as shown in the table at the top of this post. If that relevant formula is removed, then the blank records are not created.

This is the same behavior in S123 Connect, S123 Windows, Android and iOS, all the latest versions.

ESRI, is this expected or is this a bug?

thanks.

Re: Nested repeat creating blank records

JamesTedrick — Tue, 31 Jul 2018 20:51:58 GMT

Hi Dan,

This is an issue we are working to resolve. It is caused by the relevant statement in the form; removing it can resolve the issue.

Re: Nested repeat creating blank records

ToniKnust — Wed, 29 Aug 2018 19:50:31 GMT

Unfortunately the fix was not in the latest release of Survey 123 - will it be in the next release?

Re: Nested repeat creating blank records

JamesTedrick — Thu, 30 Aug 2018 20:28:43 GMT

Hi Toni,

We are planning to look into this in for our next release, but cannot promise we will have a fix for it then.

Re: Nested repeat creating blank records

JohnathanHasthorpe — Tue, 27 Nov 2018 05:18:38 GMT

A fix for the repeat issue is now available on EAC: Welcome to our Feedback Community

Please download the release candidate and test your survey.

Thanks

John

Re: Nested repeat creating blank records

Anonymous User — Tue, 15 Jan 2019 02:46:41 GMT

Hi Dan,

Just an update to let you know that we have been working on the issues described in this post and a lot of progress has been made with repeats/nested repeats and defaults/calculations/relevants/groups and missing values when opening the survey, so we believe the issue has been resolved for our upcoming 3.2 release which is due end of January.

If you have time, can you please check out the latest 3.2 RC builds (Connect 3.2.192 and App 3.2.262) available on EAC here: Welcome to our Feedback Community and provide any feedback. The sooner we can get feedback the sooner we can address any outstanding issues before the release.

Regards,

Phil.

Re: Nested repeat creating blank records

BryceHancock — Mon, 15 Jul 2019 11:42:59 GMT

I have a complex form with nested repeats. I am experiencing issues with the nested repeats not recording data even when the field is set to required. When the user enters data into the repeat and then tries to enter another record, the required alert appears in the populated field and the user cannot move to populate another repeat. I removed the required option and then republished the form thinking there might be a bug with the required feature. but now when the user enters data into the repeat and scrolls back to review, the data is missing. To complicate matters the issue seems to occur intermittently as I have not detected a discernible pattern. To confirm that the data was not recording, I uploaded it to AGOL and am missing many records in the repeats. I am using the latest version of Survey123 for Android and my Android OS is 6.0. Any ideas?

Re: Nested repeat creating blank records

Anonymous User — Thu, 18 Jul 2019 01:28:15 GMT

Hi Bryce,

We do not have any known outstanding issues with nested repeats following the 3.5 release.It could be related null values and loading order and the way you have configured your survey with relevant expressions and calculations.

Can you please share a copy of your xslx file and further description of which questions are not working? Are you able to make a simplified survey with less questions that replicate the problem?

Have you tested the latest 3.5 release as well as the 3.6 beta on EAC?

Phil.

Re: Nested repeat creating blank records

BryceHancock — Thu, 18 Jul 2019 16:40:00 GMT

Thank you for getting back to me. Here is a link to the question I posted a few days ago with the xls folder. https://community.esri.com/thread/236617-bug-nested-repeat-not-recording-data

The issue was occurring with the ground cover repeat. I had repeat count set to 8 for the ground cover repeat and when the user entered a record and attempted to move to the next record, the required alert appeared and the user was unable to enter another record. I removed the repeat count and the form seems to be working now but it would be great if you could confirm the issue.

Re: Nested repeat creating blank records

Anonymous User — Thu, 18 Jul 2019 22:50:19 GMT

Thanks Bryce,

I will take a look at the xlsx you provided over on the other post, and reply there if have any questions or an outcome to your issue.

Phil.