External Select Lists

[ChrisRoberts2]

Hi All

I am in the process of building a Survey123 from for Opportunistic Flora collection. 

As the species, common name, genus and code numbers are large I have gone with the external_choice options.

My question is this, I fairly sure that as per the BDBSAFloraNSXCode if the user knows the code I can get the GENUS, SPECIES and COMMONNAME fields to populate.  However I am not sure how to go back the other way that is the might only know the COMMONNAME or SPECIES or GENUS and how to filter or populate the other choices and then place the appropriate NSXCODE.

Can I just use one select list for the "species" Filed types or do I need to create a separate choice list for each field and do something with a calculation.

Any pointers would be appreciated.

Cheers

Chris

[ChrisRoberts2]

An addition to this, in Survey123 Connect when trying to save the spreadsheet I am getting an error stating that the List Name is not in the Choices sheet ... this is happen for each list  I have in the external_choices tab .  Am I missing something here

[JamesTedrick]

Hi Chris,

External selects are designed to work as part of a cascading select; the external_choices tab will not be processed unless at least one select_one question has a choice_filter.  You can provide a choice_filter of 1=1 as a 'stand-in' if you want to load all values, though I'll note this does not provide any performance benefit in loading the form.  Assuming that two plants do not share the same common name, it would be possible to load the taxonomic information from the common name using pulldata() function on a table with the common name and taxonomy columns.  Going the other way around is a little more tricky - you would need to have an identifier that combines the taxonomy (i.e., genus_specis_supspecies) linked to the common name as a table for lookup; the pulldata() function can only compare based on 1 lookup field.

[ChrisRoberts2]

Thanks for the reply James

That clears things up a bit.  However I am real troubles with this in Connect (2.6.6) It just keeps crashing when try to load the lists.  I think they are just too big.  I just need a point in the right direction to get this started.  I have worked with such large choice lists before and its dong my head in!  Any further help would be greatly appreciated.  Once I have got the first choice filter working I will be able to get the rest of it going.  I will be needing to build a second survey form for fauna as well.

[JamesTedrick]

Hi Chris,

Yes, I see the loading difficulty with your form.  I noticed the NSXCODE begins with a letter - is that a category that could be filtered on?

[ChrisRoberts2]

Thanks James 

Good Tip!  I applied a "first letter" filter for both the NSXCODE and COMMONNAME fields and then moved those choice list to external_choice.  The form now loads without much issue. It does make a slight overhead for the user having to answer a pre-question, but I guess that is negated by the performance improvements.

Cheers, Chris