Fix painful repeat navigation issues - have navigation mirror that of the pages group appearance

[ChrisShuck]

Repeat groups are an incredibly useful tool. However, navigating through repeat records in the field app to reference or edit a record when there a lot of them can sometimes be tedious and unbearable, especially given that the navigation arrows are at the bottom of a repeat rather than the top. This causes the survey to jump around when navigating between records of various lengths, and it is often not clear what record you are on without scrolling up. I have seen other Ideas listed that also concern this issue and have potential workarounds listed, but I believe the following would save space and would make it easier to find what a user is looking for. If repeats were set up in the same format as Survey123 pages, they we be much easier to navigate. When a user clicks on the page numbers at the bottom of the survey it brings up a menu with all of the various pages that can be navigated to in one click, and it also gives the option of typing in a page number. Repeats could be set up to have one field, probably the first, which will be the shortcut name of that record (analogous to the page name) that would be clicked on to navigate to that repeat record. The shortcut name would be something like an artifact ID number, a species name associated with a record, a nest number, or a unique ID. While this would be ideal, if it is not possible, at a minimum it is desirable to at least enter a repeat record number that would be navigated to, so the user does not have to scroll through all records to get close to the correct record.

Other fixes mentioned in other posts include:

• Stacking repeat records vertically
• Positioning the navbar at the top and bottom of the repeat
• A number navigation popup to enter the number of the repeat
• Moving the navbar to the top of the repeat

[FieldGIS]

Agreed, this would be a great update to add to Survey123! We have field biologists out collecting wildlife and plant observation data using the repeats, and these staff may have 50+ observations per site. Swiping through all of those reports to check to see if a particular species is recorded, or to confirm the associated information is all entered, such as flight direction or abundance, is tedious for field staff and a major barrier to implementing field data collection.

I know that other field data collection apps have a similar set up to what Chris has described above. Fulcrum, for example, takes you to a main repeat page when you click the repeat field; this page lists all the repeats (or child records) that the user has entered, based on a user defined title (ie species name, or a combination like species name,total number), and you can scroll through the list to see what's been entered. This main repeat page also has the "+" sign to enter in new repeats. If you hit the "+", Fulcrum takes you to a third screen where you can enter in all of the data that goes with that repeat (total number, flight direction etc). And then it's easy to navigate back to either the main repeat page or back to the main survey page. This set up also means that the main survey page isn't too cluttered. I don't how why Survey123 doesn't have some way to display repeats differently yet!

[SarahPC]

Has there been any fixes or options as I am in the same boat with 50+ tree observations. But no easy way of seeing this list or editing. 

[CamilleBeasley]

Agree, repeats are the most logical way to collect species survey data because you never know how many species you may need to enter. But if you discover you need to go back to edit a repeat entry, it's a slow tedious process to hit the arrow until you find the right record. At the very least you should be able to click the "1 of ##" bar at the bottom and select by number, but even better would be to designate a field to label each repeat record and be able to select it that way. Alternatively you could stack each repeat record vertically on the screen and be able to scroll through them instead of tabbing horizontally.

[Strahanjen]

This feature is essential for our workflow as well. Biologists may add anywhere between 20 and 100 observations and need a way to return to a particular species and edit the record.