What's coming in ArcGIS Survey123 (September 2021)

8864
33
08-30-2021 06:28 PM
IsmaelChivite
Esri Notable Contributor
4 33 8,864

Our next update to ArcGIS Survey123 is planned for September 16, 2021. This post is a brief heads-up of what is coming and help you prepare for the release.

Getting ready

 

As many of you are aware, our initial plan was to ship this update prior to the Esri User Conference in July, but we had to postpone the release. We now feel comfortable with it and are proceeding with the last rounds of certification. Our aim is to have the release available on September 16, 2021. You can access the Release Candidate version now through the Survey123 Early Adopter Program.

We will update the following components:

  • Survey123 website and web app: You will see new features in the Survey123 web designer including the new address question type, support for calculations, input masks and other things described in more detail below. The update to the Survey123 web designer will happen automatically. You will not need to do anything on your side.   It is important to note that updates to the Survey123 website will NOT affect surveys already published if you are using version locking. If you want new features and/or fixes to take effect on your already published surveys, you will need to either disable version locking (not recommended) or republish your survey with version with 3.13.
  • Survey123 field app: We will update the field app in the Google Play, Apple and Microsoft app stores on September 16, or the day before. As announced in our Deprecation Notes from May 2021, this will be the last version with support for macOS. That is, 3.14 will no longer support the field app in Mac desktop computers.  If you run the field app on a mobile device, depending on the update policy set for Survey123 in you operating system, it may update automatically, or not. Generally speaking, for production use, we discourage automatic updates.  Testing our Release Candidate builds in the Survey123 Early Adopter Program is always good practice.  You do not want your Survey123 users to be caught by surprise: Take your time to know the new release an anticipate any changes that may affect your users.
  • Survey123 Connect: This update includes fixes and expanded XLSForm support.  If you are already running Survey123 Connect version 3.12, you will not need to uninstall before you can get the latest build.  Survey123 Connect 3.12 supports over the top installation. That is, as soon as the new update is available, you can install the latest version and 3.12 will be automatically removed. If you have older versions of Survey123 Connect, you will want to uninstall it before you install the new version. As with the field app, version 3.13 will run on macOS, but 3.14 will not.
  • Survey123 connectors for Integromat and Microsoft Power Automate: No updates planned.

Tip: Load your production surveys into the Release Candidate Beta version from the Survey123 Early Adopter Program. Get familiar with the latest features and make sure your existing surveys work well with this version. Prepare your users for any changes you plan to incorporate.

New features

 

Here is a summary of some of the new features we are adding. We will provide more detailed information and how-to guides with the general release.

New Address question type

 

The user experience you choose for users to submit data, dictates the quality of the data you get.  In many scenarios, an address, not a map, is the simplest and most natural way to describe the exact location of something. With the new Address question type, you will help end users enter an address into a Survey123 form easier and faster than ever before. 

The new address question lets users quickly and accurately enter an address within a Survey123 form. You can leverage the Esri World Geocoding service, a view of it or your own ArcGIS locator to configure this type of questionThe new address question lets users quickly and accurately enter an address within a Survey123 form. You can leverage the Esri World Geocoding service, a view of it or your own ArcGIS locator to configure this type of question

You will see this new question type in the Survey123 web designer.  For Survey123 Connect users, we will support this question through a new appearance type called geocode which you will be able to apply to text questions.

Starting September 16, you will see the new address question in the Survey123 designer. We will also add a new Survey123 Connect sample to teach you all the XLSForm secrets for working with addresses.Starting September 16, you will see the new address question in the Survey123 designer. We will also add a new Survey123 Connect sample to teach you all the XLSForm secrets for working with addresses.

 

We see a lot of use cases for this new question type, particularly for online surveys. The address question has the potential to help you streamline data capture and improve the quality of the data collected.  This will be a great addition to help you design better forms.

Image support in the Survey123 field app inbox

 

Up until this release, records in the inbox included the geometry and attributes as well as related features, but not attachments. Starting with version 3.13, the ArcGIS Survey123 field app will let you dynamically download images associated with records in your inbox.

The animation below shows a hydrant inspection workflow.  A hydrant record previously downloaded into the inbox is opened showing its location, attributes, and information about previous inspections. Note that the inspection log includes photos as well.

Survey123 field app images in Inbox-Long-4MB.gif

 

Support for images in the inbox has been sitting at the top of ArcGIS Ideas for Survey123 for a while, so we are pleased to get a good start on this one!!

 

Calculations in the Survey123 web designer

 

In addition to the new Address question, this release introduces support for calculations in the web designer. Through a calculation, you can populate a question using previously entered data from your form. For example, you can take values from two numeric questions and automatically calculate their average in a third question.

Survey123 version 3.13 introduces calculations in web designerSurvey123 version 3.13 introduces calculations in web designer

We will continue evolving support for calculations in the web designer to give you more flexibility, but with this release you will already be able to do quite a few interesting things.  Support for hidden and read-only questions also nicely complement calculations. You will use them together often!

XLSForm improvements

 

  • Dynamic lists: Using the search appearance you will be able to dynamically populate a choice list from an ArcGIS layer, or a CSV source, using a query.
  • The new body::esri:visible column will let you use an expression to control the visibility of a question, page, group or repeat. At first sight, this sounds very much like what the relevant column is for, but they are quite different: The body::esri:visible column controls visibility preserving the values calculated or entered by the end user. The relevant column clears out values when the question is hidden.
  • Using the body::accept column you can now control which file extensions can be uploaded into ArcGIS through a file question type in your form.
  • Guidance hints, external CSV files and input masks are now supported by the Survey123 web app.
  • A new URL parameter will help you force the recalculation of a question when the form is opened in edit mode in the Survey123 web app.

All the above is well documented in our Survey123 Early Adopter Program so if you want to get started now, you can.

Other important enhancements

 

  • Streamlined annotation tools user experience: Did you know you can annotate photos, maps and diagrams right from within the Survey123 field app? Even if you do, take a look at the massive user experience improvements in this release. Do not let your end users be surprised by the changes!

All this annotation UX work in 3.13 is part of a major overhaul of our annotation tools in Survey123. In 3.13 you will be able to use the annotation tools we always have supported, plus more.  In 3.14, we will give you a chance to create your own annotation tools and tailor them to specific business workflows. For anyone interested on this, the go-to place is the Survey123 Early Adopter Program.

  • Enhanced web accessibility in the Survey123 web app: Starting September 16, for any survey published with version 3.13, we will add support for screen readers and incorporate many other web accessibility improvements.  We will publish an update of our Survey123 Web Accessibility Report to highlight all the enhancements. If you want to take advantage of the new web accessibility enhancements, you will need to republish your surveys with the 3.13 version of Survey123 web designer or Connect.
  • Survey123 report service: We recently made major improvements to accelerate the creation of reports with many maps and images. We are confident you will be able to tell the difference already!  We will add on September 16 options to help you better format numbers and to specify custom symbology for Survey123 features in the map.
  • Do you love Python? We are working on a new publicly available gallery of Python scripts to help you automate common Survey123 tasks: cloning surveys across organizations, downloading data, automating reports and much more. Best of all? All scripts will be shared under the Apache 2.0 Open Source license and the gallery will be open for your contributions. You will learn more about this soon!

Fixes

 

Survey123 website, web app and report service:

 

  • BUG-000141535 When the language and region are set to Deutsch - German and Schweis in ArcGIS Online, the basemap is missing when adding a map point element in the ArcGIS Survey123 website.
  • BUG-000139232 Removing and adding a new rule in Survey123 Web Designer after saving and returning to the survey design results in rule corruption.
  • BUG-000136446 The editing mode of a read-only dateTime question is displaying incorrect date on the ArcGIS Survey123 Data tab.
  • BUG-000136255 Unable to change the post-submission screen text in the Survey123 web designer for surveys created in ArcGIS Survey123 Connect.
  • BUG-000135538 Setting a rule based on a choice which includes a greater than or less than symbol (> or <) corrupts a Survey123 survey in the Survey123 web designer.
  • ENH-000124334 300 Pixel image size restriction on media image of note type question on Survey123 web form.
  • BUG-000137634 When logged into the ArcGIS Survey123 web app with an ArcGIS Online account assigned the ‘Viewer’ role, few attachments do not display the related survey information.
  • ENH-000137084 Improve performance and loading time for Analysis tab in Survey123 Web App
  • BUG-000141844 The long text in the individual response does not wrap correctly
  • BUG-000135544 Label issue on 2 buttons of the ArcGIS Survey123 website.
  • BUG-000135151 Hidden questions from Connect are not shown in Analyze tab
  • ENH-000124712 Allow user to create hidden question types in the Survey123 web browser designer.
  • BUG-000136526 Reverse geocoding with a custom geocoder fails in the ArcGIS Survey123 web app.
  • BUG-000136503 There are issues submitting the required DateTime question in the ArcGIS Survey123 mobile browser.
  • BUG-000136079 In the Data tab in ArcGIS Survey123 web designer, renaming photos does not work and reverts to the previous name after submitting the changes.
  • BUG-000138673 jr:choice-name() function yields 'TypeError: Cannot read property 'previousElementSibling' of undefined' when used on cascaded selection question & mode=edit for the URL parameter
  • BUG-000125125 The pulldata() function fails for web form surveys if Portal for ArcGIS is configured with IWA
  • BUG-000126788 Cannot access itemsets.csv on Portal with IWA
  • BUG-000140054 The ArcGIS Survey123 web app fails to load a form with a large CSV file when open in a browser on a mobile device.
  • BUG-000137706 BUG-000137670 Language switcher not changing the result of pulldata("@property",'language') or jr:choice-name
  • BUG-000138683 Multiline appearance is not available in the ArcGIS Survey123 web form for an Image question with a Count-Selected constraint.
  • BUG-000138319 Relevant expressions using the selected (${questionName}, 'answer') syntax are not honored when "Select One" values have spaces in them
  • BUG-000140240 Support the new body::esri:visible column to hide a question
  • ENH-000131088 Allow Survey123 WebApp to toggle between repeatable collection of questions specified under 'Repeat'
  • ENH-000120355 Include the ability to utilize Input Masks into the Survey123 Web Application
  • ENH-000138218 Allow geo point symbology to be customized in ArcGIS Survey123 feature reports
  • BUG-000135518 The Event Data is not passed as a Dynamic Field through the Survey123 Connector
  • DE-000004525 BUG-000136604 When generating a report on the Survey123 website for a survey response with many maps the tasks fails with the message: "An error occurred when printing. "
  • ENH-000136451 Enhance Survey123 website feature report tool to allow more than 10 minutes for printing each object or add the capability to change the waiting time to avoid timeout errors in surveys with a large number of related records.
  • BUG-000140099 Survey123 feature report export jobs do not complete if there are too many records exported at once even if the same dataset/quantity of records could be exported all at once in previous versions of Survey123.
  • DE-000004656 DE-000004304 BUG-000129586 Generating the feature report fails when the records have a large number of photo-enabled related records.
  • DE-000004394 BUG-000138738 When printing a report, if the survey is complex and survey data is large enough, the error message "An error occurred when preparing. " will be raised

 

Survey123 Connect

 

  • BUG-000113652 Republish hangs when you have added questions only to a repeat or nested repeat
  • BUG-000116136 Survey123 Connect for ArcGIS sends an empty payload for the /addtodefinition and /updatedefinition calls if the server responds with a 301 or 302 during the publishing process, which results in empty hosted feature layers.
  • BUG-000135737 ArcGIS Survey123 Connect and the ArcGIS Survey123 field app crash when creating a survey or opening an existing survey with reverse geocode on some Windows devices
  • BUG-000137194 - A white screen displays in ArcGIS Survey123 Connect with VMware SVGA 3D 8.17.2.2

 

Survey123 Field App

 

  • ENH-000110614 - Support adding image attachments during the editing process
  • ENH-000112172 View/Add image attachments to existing features while online
  • ENH-000121761 In Survey123 for ArcGIS, allow the option to preserve the Exif (exchangeable image file format) metadata containing location information for the annotated images.
  • BUG-000138199: Provide a mechanism for strings that can be parsed as numbers to remain strings
  • BUG-000136248 'Send' (outbox) and 'Empty' (sent folder) buttons on certain devices don't always work
  • BUG-000138281: The ArcGIS Survey123 field app locks users out of Active Directory when accessing a survey with a linked web map over a Portal for ArcGIS connection using Integrated Windows Authentication (IWA)
  • BUG-000138406 - Using the OpenStreetMap Daylight Esri Street Style (Beta) layer in a linked map causes ArcGIS Survey123 to crash on Motorola Moto G6 and E6 devices
  • BUG-000130821 ENH-000126229 Table-list appearance not working when style is set to pages and using field-list
  • BUG-000138381 Survey123 failing to submit when moved to background
  • BUG-000137976 Issue when uploading images to Image question on iOS 14
  • BUG-000127404 When selecting the drop-down list for an auto-complete question on Android, the keyboard momentarily appears
  • ENH-000128920 Survey123 login sequence- requests with improper user-agent

 

What to do next

 

To be well prepared for this release, sign up for the Survey123 Early Adopter Program and access the Release Candidate version of the software.  At the very least, get your existing surveys tested with 3.13 Beta and make sure that everything looks good.   Check the new features too and identify if they are of good use to you. If so, start experimenting so you are good to go by the time we release.

September 16 is around the corner. Do not let days go by!

 

33 Comments
DougBrowning
MVP Esteemed Contributor

Was there any work done on nested repeats (calcs, etc from the list I sent)?  It was due to happen in 3.12 but I have not seen anything about it.  I had a list of bugs for nested repeats.  My main concern now is if it did change I have to make sure my forms do not break.

Second what about calculations not working when coming back from a draft.  This one has turned into a huge nightmare for us.  We have to have crews start a new form the next day and then manually merge them.  We have hundreds of these!  I can see posts back to 2016 on this but have never seen it on the list to address.  Can we please have some word on it.

Thanks

DylanT_EsriCanada
Esri Contributor

On the linked depreciation notes page it says "ArcGIS Survey123 3.13 will be the last version with support for Ubuntu and macOS." but on this page it says 3.13 will not be supported on macOS. Can you confirm which is correct?

Thanks!

GIS_Fox
Occasional Contributor III

Looking forwards to using the addressing tool, it's one of those features you didn't know you needed until you found it!

Thank you for the updates list and will be testing everything out.

Best regards & God bless,

 

pat_algura
New Contributor III

Would the Geocoding capability work when a user is offline?

DylanT_EsriCanada
Esri Contributor

@pat_algura No, geocoding needs online access.

by Anonymous User
Not applicable

Hi @DougBrowning,

As you will see from my replies to other posts today, the issues you are referring to around repeat_count and saving to drafts, as well as nested repeats, are not resolved in the upcoming 3.13 release. These require further work to resolve the outstanding issues.

Regards,

Phil.

by Anonymous User
Not applicable

Hi @DylanT_EsriCanada,

We have updated the blog post above, you are correct, the 3.13 release will be the last release to support macOS and Linux, the next release 3.14 will not support these platforms.

Regards,

Phil.

by Anonymous User
Not applicable

Hi @pat_algura ,

For the 3.13 release, the address question (geocoding) will only be supported online as we do not download and cache the geocoding service, meaning it will not work when the device is offline. This is something in our backlog to possibly support in the future release.

Regards,

Phil.

rcasagrande_imagem
New Contributor II

Hi @Anonymous User. Are the dynamic lists going to be supported on ArcGIS Enterprise? Thank you,

ThomasHamill
Occasional Contributor II

The new Address question type will be a game changer when the exact address is known.  Also nice to have the full address (from Geocoder) populate in a secondary field based on the device coordinates with use of the pulldata function in the calculation cell:
pulldata("@geopoint",${FeatureLocation},"reversegeocode.address.Match_addr")

by Anonymous User
Not applicable

Hi @rcasagrande_imagem,

Yes, with 3.13 release, dynamic lists will be supported on ArcGIS Enterprise.

Regards,

Phil.

DerrickWestoby
Occasional Contributor III

Looking forward to this update, especially CSV support in web forms and the python sharing repository (I'm already using the search() appearance with the beta app, which is working wonderfully). 

 

Any chance we'll see support for hyperlinks in the feature report anytime soon?  I'm just printing it out as a full URL right now, but would be great to just have a normal "Navigate to Point" blue-text hyperlink displayed instead. 

DerrickWestoby_0-1630603597496.png

 

vijaybadugu
Occasional Contributor II

Just asking about getting unique values  from duplicate list from CSV using search() function. is this available in 3.13 ?

BrettStokes
Esri Contributor

Hi @vijaybadugu , can you please provide more details? I'm not exactly sure what you're asking. If you have duplicate list values in a CSV, they will all be displayed in the choice list (and be selectable) when using the search appearance. If you use the search appearance to populate a choice list dynamically from an existing feature layer with duplicate list values, only the first of the duplicate values will be displayed (and be selectable). Perhaps you could provide your XLSForm and CSV so I could get a better understanding of what you're trying to achieve? You could email directly to me using bstokes at esri.com.

Brett

vijaybadugu
Occasional Contributor II

CSV File Contents look as below 

vijaybadugu_0-1631020079974.png

XLS form 

vijaybadugu_1-1631020140039.png

right now, I was using 3.12 Surevy123. It is pulling data using search() function but it includes duplicated in Final Dropdownlist 

 

vijaybadugu_2-1631020259318.png

Will this be resolved in 3.13?

 

 

BrettStokes
Esri Contributor

Hello @vijaybadugu ,

Ok, so you just don't want duplicate values in your choice list (even though they are in the local CSV file)? I guess the short answer is no - it's not coming in 3.13. I would suggest hosting the CSV as an ArcGIS CSV item as a workaround for now. The first search expression in your screenshot search('Stands_CSV','','UNIT_ID') looks incorrect - there is no point specifying a seachColumn value when there is no seachType specified. I'd also like to see a screenshot of your choices worksheet (or the whole XLSForm) in order to investigate this use case further. I don't think either of these things will impact the duplicate list values though. 

Brett

vijaybadugu
Occasional Contributor II

Yes, I don't need Duplicate choice list in the dropdown list. search('Stands_CSV','','UNIT_ID') I want to pull only UNIT_ID Column data from the CSV as don't need seatchType.

can we do sorting ? whatever the values order in CSV

Please find worksheet choices

 

vijaybadugu_0-1631106676479.png

KerryKang
Occasional Contributor II

Hi @IsmaelChivite 

 

Does the dynamic function work in the webform as well? I was also wondering the new address question will consume the credits?

 

Thank you!

 

Kerry

 

 

IsmaelChivite
Esri Notable Contributor

@KerryKang  Dynamic lists will work in the Survey123 web app if you publish your surveys with version 3.13 or above. The release date for 3.13 is September 16 (evening). To use dynamic lists please check @BrettStokes great article at: https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-survey123-blog/dynamic-choice-lists-using-search-appearance/ba-...

LVeksland
New Contributor

Can the number type to accept decimals in the Survey123 web designer new version 3.13?

How to display number with decimals?

MikailaBell
New Contributor III

>Support for images in the inbox has been sitting at the top of ArcGIS Ideas for Survey123 for a while, so we are pleased to get a good start on this one!!

 

Yess!! Like an S123 Christmas release, this is awesome. THANK YOU SO MUCH! ❤️ 

IsmaelChivite
Esri Notable Contributor

@LVeksland  Yes. See animation below.

Decimals.gif

 

SamMeacham
New Contributor

Since the September 16 update, several surveys no longer work in the webform, even after rebuilding and republishing the survey using the latest version of Survey 123 Connect.

We get this error - 

This survey cannot be accessed in the web app. Please contact the survey owner to republish the survey with 'Create web form' enabled. Error: Missing .webform file.

Press here to try to open this survey in Survey123 field app (installation required).

Interestingly, when I look at the webform that gets created successfully during the publishing process, the content of the .webform file is as follows:

{
"error": {
"code": -1,
"details": [],
"message": "Error: [object Object]"
},
"success": false
}

 

This issue appeared immediately after the September 16th update, prior to any efforts to republish or change the form.

Thanks!

vijaybadugu
Occasional Contributor II

 

When I try to republish using Survey123 Connect 3.13 , I am getting 401 Authorized error 

 

vijaybadugu_2-1632249991947.png

 

 

 

by Anonymous User
Not applicable

Good morning, 

Are the image questions with signature appearance supported now in the Survey123 field App inbox? On the previous versions, they are displayed blank on the inbox

Thank you!

juan_luisGarcia_González
New Contributor II

Hi, la funcion serch() es realmente útil para mostrar opciones existentes en servicios alojados. En el caso de usarlo en tablas sin elementos espaciales tengo la duda si existe alguna manera de buscar (con los tipos de busqueda "matches" o "contains") valores nulos, o si es posible hacerlo en la "filtercolumn" indicando un valor vacio o nulo.

Me refiero a , por ejemplo,en esta tabla:

columna1columna2
valor11
valor21
valor31
valor4 
valor5 
valor6 
valor7 

 

poder mostrar los valores : valor4,valor5,valor6 y valor7 indicando en la funcion search() la busqueda de los valores vacios de la columna 2.

Saludos

 

SaraMiller
New Contributor III

How do I apply some of these improvements to existing S123 surveys created with S123 Connect without republishing a new version of each survey? 

Specifically:
- Image support in the Survey123 field app inbox
- BUG-000113652 Republish hangs when you have added questions only to a repeat or nested repeat
- ENH-000110614 - Support adding image attachments during the editing process
- ENH-000112172 View/Add image attachments to existing features while online

by Anonymous User
Not applicable

Hi @SaraMiller,

For BUG-000113652, this issue was only seen when re-publishing and adding a new question/field to the schema inside a repeat. Therefore you will not see the benefit of this improvement unless you are republushing the survey and adding new questions, Connect will no longer hang.

As for support for viewing and adding images via the Inbox (editing existing features), depending on how your surveys have been configured, you can actually make the most of this without needing to republish the survey. If you have image questions in your survey, after you update the field app to 3.13, and open a survey record via the Inbox, you will now see the previously collected images displayed in the form. If no images for that question have been collected yet, you can now add new images, and if you are using multiline appearance, you can add additional images.

If you are using repeats, the same applies as above, you can view existing and add new, however you need to ensure you have allowUpdates=true and allowAdds=true on the begin repeat, to ensure you can add or update the repeat records, which includes the images.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Phil.

MariaCarolinaJurema
New Contributor II

Hi @Anonymous User, we're testing the new address question, but we're still not sure about how the geocode appearance works, will it consume arcgis online credits? Thank you!!

by Anonymous User
Not applicable

Hi @MariaCarolinaJurema, please refer to these two great blogs regarding the address question and geocode appearance. There is also a section on credit consumption in these blogs:

https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-survey123-blog/working-with-the-address-question-type-in-the/ba...

https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-survey123-blog/survey123-tricks-of-the-trade-addresses-and-the/...

FYI @IsmaelChivite 

Regards,

Phil.

RobertAnderson3
MVP Regular Contributor

I thought I had seen it in the bug fixes but maybe I'm wrong.

On Android 11, Samsung Galaxy S10 (I believe it was the same on the Sonim XP8 on Android 8 I have access to) I find that the decimal question type still doesn't work properly.

If I type in 8.5 it changes the entry to 85which definitely causes problems. Thankfully our users are on iOS so it's not an issue in the field, just when I test on my device.

Is this noted and being looked at, has anyone else had this problem?

by Anonymous User
Not applicable

Hi @RobertAnderson3,

This sounds like a locale issue, what locale is your device set to, and what locale is the form using? Do you have a different default language compared to device, or multiple language locale survey? The issue appears to be you are entering a decimal dot (8.5) when it is expecting a decimal comma (8,5), thefore removes the dot as it is not supported for that locale.

Regards,

Phil.

ThomasANDRE
New Contributor

Hello, 

The annotate function does not work in the Survey123 web app. 

Is there a special setting to make for this to work?