Survey123 ability to have survey stored on a network drive

[GeorgePlumley]

It would be nice to have the ability when creating a survey with connect to set a different default location to save the surveys, ie: a network folder. This way admin or other staff that are collaborating on a project can edit the survey and republish if needed.

[LMedeirosUI]

This enhancement seems more important now that Mac users must use a VM to run Survey123 Connect. When running parallels, the only way to access your Survey's XLS form is to load the PVM (you can no longer permanently mount a VM's hard drive without breaking the PVM... ask me how I know), which is time consuming and creates the possibility of different versions with needing to copy and paste files.

Being able to specify the location of the default folder on my Mac, I can both access the surveys created when Connect worked on the Mac OS and access the XLS files without loading the PVM.

[PatrickMcKinney99]

It would be helpful if the user could choose what folder all the associated files are stored in.  Currently, the data is stored at C:\Users\{username}\ArcGIS\My Survey Designs.

Many organizations direct their users to save files on shared network drives or Microsoft One Drive locations.  This is a good practice, as these locations are backed up.  

By forcing survey files in the current, location, organizations must hope users will copy the files to a location that is backed up.

[AngusWarfieldMc]

@IsmaelChivite are you able to comment on this functionality?  

[Jones_AJ]

Discovered this post while searching for a network Survey123 storage solution. @Felicitychun had a good workaround but I'm not really comfortable editing my variables without more information on what it will impact. There may also be some permissions concerns with this workaround.

While it makes some sense to download an already published version of the form for local editing on a different machine this makes it difficult to collaborate with other editors prior to publishing. I would hope the option to migrate the home location of the XLSForm and related folders to a network location would be seen as a necessity with what others have voiced as concerns related to security and backing up in-progress Survey123 projects. 

[ctalleygreenville]

I am surprised that this isn't possible.  For us, the surveys are usually a part of a bigger project for which a network folder location is set up to hold various items specific to the project. It would be best to be able to work on a survey Connect file within the same project folder so that everyone can find it.  We have already run into the issue when a person left and it was unknown that all of his surveys were on his C drive (the person was not a GIS employee and therefore not monitored by GIS).

[JTessier]

Chiming in to echo prior commenters, this seems like a bad oversight on Esri's part to offer Enterprise software which Survey123 is advertised as being without it supporting multiuser workflows natively.   In addition, by requiring it to install the core software itself into a user's directory means difficulty if not impossibility for offering it via virtualized machines on secure networks.