Survey123 Image Question: Disable 'Required' in Inbox

JamieLambert

Currently you cannot add an image through the inbox of Survey123. The image question is also disabled. However, validations against image questions (i.e. 'required') are not disabled!

If i want a photo to be required in my (original) survey, it will not allow me to submit updates (e.g. to mark an outstanding issue as 'completed'), due to the validation issue of having a required photo.

It would be good if the 'required' condition was disabled along with the image question.

The alternatives currently seem to be:

Make the photo 'not required' which we don't want to do since user behavior sometime needs a little help
Create a new form specifically for the Inbox, which is not ideal
Use repeats - which can add other complexities

So, until editing of photos through the Inbox is supported, can the 'required' condition be disabled along with the image question in the Inbox? Thanks.

Jamie.

JamieLambert · ‎11-18-2020

I have come up with a workaround for this issue using the pulldata("@property", 'mode') function. From the Survey123 documentation (Formulas), "This has three possible values, returning new if the user is producing a new survey response (including one copied from an existing survey), returning edit if the user is editing an existing response, and returning view if the user is viewing an existing response in read-only mode."

Using this function, you can set the photo question/s to 'required' and use the value returned from pulldata("@property", 'mode') for the question relevance (see image below). A new survey will return 'new', so using 'new' as the relevant response will show a required photo question for a new survey, and will not show the photo question when the survey is opened via the Inbox, therefore the required condition will not stop you from submitting a survey.

You can set the question with the pulldata function to 'null' so you don't store it in your dataset. All-in-all not a difficult workaround to implement, and you can keep the required setting for new surveys.