Does Survey123 Save or Retain Data when a mobile device overheats?

[GIS_Fox]

Hi All,

Summer is coming up fast and my organization is in an arid desert climate with temps often exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit. For our field workers, should their devices in the field experience a shutdown or malfunction due to heat, does the data in a survey123 form gets saved or retained somehow if it force shutdowns itself due to overheat safety features on mobile devices?

Eg. an autosave, inbox save, or warning text due to device condition?

If not, I would like to copy this over into the idea page for survey123 if it doesn't already exist.

image source: https://www.cnet.com/how-to/why-your-phone-gets-so-**bleep**-hot-and-how-to-keep-it-from-overheating... 

Best regards & God bless

Jansen Lyons

City of Rio Rancho, NM, USA

Records & GIS Section - Public Works

[LongDinh · Accepted solution]

Hi Jansen,

S123 will save a draft of the form on the device to be later submitted to your REST service when a connection is available. I also recall it logs whether the draft was submitted successfully.

Should you need to recover data following a crash from a local device running S123 offline, you can search through the device's files to find the form instance. Here's a very similar thread which discusses some scenarios: https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-survey123-questions/survey123-close-and-save-changes-to-drafts-... 

Are your concerns with S123 failing to save drafts of lengthy forms or general loss of data events? I believe S123 handles them very well 🙂 

[Anonymous User · Accepted solution]

Hi @GIS_Fox,

Yes, the Survey123 field app has an autosave feature that is enabled by default, this was added to the 2.4 release a few years ago. After each question is completed in a survey, an autosave event occurs, saving the data to a temporary file. If the app quits unexpectantly, crashes, or the device shutdowns, the next time the app is open the temporary file will be loaded and the user will be prompted that a survey has been recovered, and do they want to continue or discard the recovered survey.

Please refer to the documentation here: https://doc.arcgis.com/en/survey123/desktop/get-answers/troubleshootgetanswers.htm#ESRI_SECTION1_5C1...

And also this blog post: https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-survey123-blog/talk-like-a-pirate-release-2-4/ba-p/896019

Regards,

Phil.

[GIS_Fox]

Good morning @Anonymous User & @LongDinh ,

Thank you both for your quick and detailed responses! This is great to hear and am glad S123 has this feature. Yes, we have a lengthy form I have concern about should a device suffer a heat or field related crash, this will be great to know should it happens and I will pass this information on to our field workers. I will be noting the links each of you offered and will be referencing them especially 🙂

My sincere thanks, have a great day!

Jansen Lyons

City of Rio Rancho, NM

Records & GIS Section - Public Works