topic Re: Setting up cascading selects in ArcGIS Survey123 Questions

Setting up cascading selects

JimmyErnst — Thu, 27 Dec 2018 17:08:01 GMT

I need to set up a set of cascading selects that narrow down from a Region to Parish (county) to an Area and then to a Habitat type. Each is a Select One type, no multiple selects involved. I have the first question set up for region but I can't get the proper parish groups to show up that match the selected region.

Region - 6 choices (city names)

Parish - I only want the parishes that occur in the selected region to be available choices, so there will be six sets, or groups of parishes, and only one parish is selected from that group.

Area - 10 choices (1-10)

Habitat Type - ten choices which are all the same for each possible choice selection, and only one is selected by the user.

I just discovered Survey123 and I think it would be a great tool to use for one of my surveys and am trying to self-learn this. Most of the help I have found is for more advanced users and not so much for a novice. Is there any basic instruction available for this?

Re: Setting up cascading selects

StephenM — Thu, 27 Dec 2018 20:54:10 GMT

This documentation describes how to set up cascading selects and has a downloadable sample:

Cascading and external selects—Survey123 for ArcGIS | ArcGIS

In your case, it sounds like you'll want four select_one questions with one (parish) having a choice filter.

For example:

type	name	relevant	choice_filter
select_one region	region
select_one parish	parish		region = ${region}
select_one area	area	${parish} != ''
select_one habitat	habitat	${area} != ''

On the choices tab, you'd add a column for region and enter the region for each parish. That way when users select a region the choice filter will look in the choices tab and filter the options to only show those list options whose region field matches the user's region selection.

The "relevant" field expressions are set up to only show those questions if the preceding question has been answered (value is not empty).

Re: Setting up cascading selects

JimmyErnst — Fri, 28 Dec 2018 19:14:35 GMT

Thank you for that. It helps to understand the flow of things. I was able to build that part of the survey in Survey123 Online and looking at that one and the other one helps. My ultimate goal is to reproduce a survey in the app that will replace the Excel spreadsheet we use. We collect data in the field and enter it into the spreadsheet back at the office.

I have a list of 126 plants and we check the ones that occur on a transect. Of those that occur, we count the "bites" by deer (the # of plants browsed by species). We run 5-20 transects per property. The spreadsheet does some basic calculations to generate the numbers we need for the survey. BTW, I'm a deer biologist with Louisiana Dept. of Wildlife and Fisheries trying to simplify and speed up data collection and reporting. We have ArcGis and want to integrate data with it.

Are there any examples of Survey123 being used for this type of application? Tutorials?

Re: Setting up cascading selects

StephenM — Mon, 31 Dec 2018 21:20:47 GMT

That definitely sounds like something Survey123 could be suited for. I don't know about specific examples, but there are a number of Survey123 tutorial videos online that might be useful:

Survey123 for ArcGIS: An Introduction - YouTube

Survey123 for ArcGIS: Advanced Topics - YouTube

Survey123 for ArcGIS: Tips and Tricks - YouTube

What's New in Survey123 for ArcGIS - YouTube

Extending Survey123 for ArcGIS - YouTube

A playlist of shorter, more specific videos:

Survey123 - YouTube