topic Re: Survey123 Users/Permissions/Feature Layers in ArcGIS Survey123 Questions

Survey123 Users/Permissions/Feature Layers

DonShort — Mon, 05 Feb 2018 16:26:43 GMT

We have a survey that we've been tweaking/updating over the course of the last few months that we are now experiencing problems with.

When I log into Survey123 as the user who owns the survey, I can see 8 records that have been submitted. When another user logs in, they can only see 2 records that have been submitted. The really odd part is that the 2 records the non-owner can see aren't in the list of 8 records I can see as the owner.

I assumed we were having some type of permissions issue, but I've checked everything I can think of don't have the ability to give the non-admin user any more rights (the user is in a group that can submit and analyze the survey).

I'm still new to Survey123, so I started poking around a bit in the Content folder for the Survey (where the feature layers are created). For this particular survey, I see we have 3 layers that are "Feature Layer (hosted)" and 1 stakeholder layer that is a "Feature Layer (hosted,view)."

The other odd thing I see is that the 2 records the non-owner user can see when logging in are in the data tab of one of the older feature layers. The 8 records I can see as the owner are in the most recent feature layer.

So now, a few questions:

1) Does a new layer get created each time we republish the survey with new changes (fields/answer options/etc)? If so, should the older feature layers automatically be removed? If they aren't automatically cleaned up/removed, should I manually be deleting them?

2) Is there any explanation as to why a non-owner user is seeing data in an older layer and not the data in the most recently updated feature layer?

3) Am I even barking up the right tree here thinking the problem is with the feature layers?

Re: Survey123 Users/Permissions/Feature Layers

BrandonArmstrong — Mon, 05 Feb 2018 18:08:55 GMT

Hello,

In order to understand the creation and overwrite process that takes place in Survey123, I would recommend taking a look at the following documentation resource...

Publish your survey—Survey123 for ArcGIS | ArcGIS

To answer your first question, as noted in the linked documentation, "Most changes to your survey will allow you to republish your survey without deleting and recreating the feature service." There should not be a need for you to manually alter the items within the survey's folder after being placed in the My Content section of ArcGIS Online during creation. Instead, sharing should be handled by making changes within the 'Collaborate' section of the survey's settings at survey123.arcgis.com.

Having said that, it would be helpful if you could outline the workflow that you have been using to update your survey after originally publishing. Answers to the following questions would be helpful...

1. How was the survey originally created? (Survey123 Connect, or the Survey123 Web Designer)

2. How have you been making updates to the survey? (Survey123 Connect or the Survey123 Web Designer)

3. What method did you originally use to share the survey? (Collaborate section of survey123.arcgis.com or other)

The answers to these questions may give us a better idea of the behavior that you are encountering.

Thanks,

Brandon

Re: Survey123 Users/Permissions/Feature Layers

DonShort — Mon, 05 Feb 2018 18:25:02 GMT

Brandon,

Thanks for the quick reply and the link to the documentation.

I've reviewed the link and it leads me think that when we republished our survey the feature service was recreated, but the corresponding feature layer wasn't deleted.

I'm still not 100% clear if I'm understanding correctly that each feature service should only have one feature layer? I also don't know the uses of the "Feature Layer (hosted)" vs. the "Feature Layer (hosted,view).

I used Connect to build the survey originally and to make changes to the. I also use Connect to publish the survey.

I did use the survey123.arcgis.com site to adjust the Collaboration permissions.

Re: Survey123 Users/Permissions/Feature Layers

BrandonArmstrong — Mon, 05 Feb 2018 22:07:33 GMT

Please take a look at the following regarding the feature layer view and how it is related to the sharing of a survey...

Share survey—Survey123 for ArcGIS | ArcGIS

As mentioned, "Analysis sharing uses a feature layer view of the survey data that has read-only restrictions. The feature layer view can also be used in other view-only applications such as Story Maps"

In your case, it is possible that you are running into the following issue, documented in this bug...

BUG-000109152: Re-publishing of a Survey123 for ArcGIS survey fails..

Please take a look at the 'Alternate Solution' and let us know if it works for you.

Re: Survey123 Users/Permissions/Feature Layers

DonShort — Mon, 05 Feb 2018 23:01:37 GMT

Thanks Brandon. I've read the docs and have deleted the feature service layers and republished. I think this will likely fix us up. Still don't understand how one user would authenticate to the Survey123 site and see different results from others, but we'll move on.

Re: Survey123 Users/Permissions/Feature Layers

BrandonArmstrong — Tue, 06 Feb 2018 22:16:23 GMT

The workflow that is outlined in the 'Share survey' documentation that I previously referenced above should be used in order to accomplish the sharing of a surveys submission and analysis features to a Group.

Once the issue referenced in the bug is addressed, it should fix the inconsistencies related to what members of the Group see after authenticating.