Add next/previous record navigation when viewing a record in Inbox

[PeterKnoop]

In the Survey123 Field App, after opening a record to view from the Inbox, I sometimes want to step through the adjacent records from the Inbox list. I would like to avoid the extra steps of going back-and-forth from list to a record to list to record to list to record and so on... It would be helpful to have a way to navigate to the next/previous record in the Inbox directly from the record view.

Perhaps next/previous arrows could be added to the bottom of the screen? When Viewing a record the bottom portion of the screen is blank space (when Editing a record it is where the submit checkmark is displayed.)

On a touch screen device, when viewing a record, perhaps swipe-left and swipe-right could also be enabled for navigating to the next/previous record?

[abureaux]

I could 100% see my users getting tripped up on that. They have a hard enough time finding the "Updates available" banner to keep surveys up-to-date 😔.

Maybe make the Field App into a tabbed experience like browsers? Then the "Home" page and "Survey" pages could be pinned by default, and each new survey would open in a tab. That way you could jump back to the parent survey page to open another inbox survey? I can see this being safer for end-users, but this wouldn't allow for "infinity-style scrolling", which I think is more what you are after.

[PeterKnoop]

@abureaux would you say more about how users might get tripped up by having next/previous record navigation when they are viewing an individual record? 

[abureaux]

The way I am understanding this is you have two screens:

• List: You open S123 Field App > click on a survey > click on Inbox > you are in the List view. You can scroll through the list or use the search bar to locate an entry.
• Record: From the List view, you click on an entry and are taken into your survey with that records data. At the bottom of this page, this is where you are wanting navigation arrows to flip between records.

From my understanding, it sounds like you are looking for the arrows to be in the area where the submit check-mark normally is? If so, I can easily see my field staff looking at those arrows and confusing them for either the page navigation arrows, or repeat arrows.

Our old Leica system's interface has a "hidden" feature where swiping right from the left-hand side of the screen pops out a menu where you can jump to a different job. If it were something more out of the way like that, then I don't think there would be an issue.

[PeterKnoop]

That is very helpful, @abureaux! We were looking at single page surveys when this came up.

Hopefully the Esri user experience designers can find an elegant solution that would support the desired functionality without creating confusion. For example, up/down arrows and left/right arrows, or double-arrows and single-arrows, are common solutions for stepping through content with two levels of nested hierarchy (i.e., records containing pages.)