How to update Survey123 Connect on Windows without uninstall?

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02-08-2018 09:38 AM
deleted-user-st4HsVxccxgs
New Contributor III

Every time I update to a new version, I have to either uninstall the old one first, or install the new one to another directory. I saw this related idea:

https://community.esri.com/ideas/13982-auto-update-survey123-connect-for-arcgis#comments 


But was wondering if I am missing something, or if this is expected behavior. If so, it should be documented somewhere to avoid confusion in the updating process.

9 Replies
JamesTedrick
Esri Esteemed Contributor

Hi Jeremey,

As mentioned in https://community.esri.com/message/748924-re-survey123-connect-will-not-install-over-existing-versio... , manual uninstallation is currently required due to a limitation in the cross-platform framework Survey123 uses.  We plan on implementing a workaround in the future to automate the uninstall/install process.

JamesKelly4
Occasional Contributor

Is the same true for Survey123 (not Connect) on Windows? 

by Anonymous User
Not applicable

Hi James,

Yes, both Connect and App on Windows do not currently support update installations (install over the top) and require you to uninstall the old version and install the new version separately.

We are currently working on this enhancement and something we hope to support in the near future.

Phil.

AdamDaily
Occasional Contributor II

Is a uninstall / reinstall still necessary for updating versions of Survey123 or Survey Connect? I want to update to Connect 3.7.

DougBrowning
MVP Esteemed Contributor

The issue for me is while our security settings let me install Connect it will not let me uninstall it.

I just have to give it a new directory to install into each time.  

For me the bigger issue has been that the My Survey Designs folder goes to a place that IT does not back up (or any other IT).  And I cannot change it.  Already lost all my work once due to a harddrive crash.  This one has always confused me as to why it would be built like that.

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by Anonymous User
Not applicable

I just posted a similar question before seeing this - having Connect and Survey's be installed and stored in each user's profile folder is a sharing nightmare when trying to manage and share survey's from multiple people. And we also had an issue where someone lost a bunch of S123 work because they were stored in the user profile folder and that wasn't backed up. Our network/shared drives on servers are backed up daily. Would be nice to store everything there and be able to have multiple work on one survey. At least that way if someone screwed something up we'd have multiple backups to restore from.

DougBrowning
MVP Esteemed Contributor

Agreed.  123 has to move past just on one computer now.  It needs to scale to the Enterprise.  Scalability with Esri products has always been tough but I was hoping 123 would be different.

Next year I will be running 125 forms!  There is not even a scroll bar in Connect or a non icon list - which tells me it was not tested at that scale.  2021 I am looking at having 250 forms.  And, as you mentioned, I cannot share the workload with anyone!  Plus if someone is out on vacation we just have to wait it out. 

And I too have already lost all my data due to a hard drive going out.  Backing up just My Documents is the standard in every company I have every worked at so not sure how this got missed.

Seems like letting users choose, and switch between, directories of forms would be a super simple fix.  

by Anonymous User
Not applicable

Hi Doug and Nathan,

Thanks for your feedback and suggestions on this issue above. There is already an existing enhancement raised through Esri support for Connect and the field app and we have them in our backlog (ENH-000101301 and ENH-000101302). I would suggest if this enhancement is also important to you your and your projects, to raise it with Esri support and have your account and details attached to the existing issue. This will help prioritise and understand the scope and demand for the implementation of this enhancement.

Currently the limitation of not being able to change the install directly and user data folder paths is a limitation of AppStudio. This issue will need to be addressed in a future AppStudio release, before it can be available to Survey123 and other apps built with AppStudio.

Regards,

Phil.

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by Anonymous User
Not applicable

Thanks Phillip, I'll try to do that. I don't actually use S123 a ton, but one of our Departments do and they recently showed me that if a survey is shared correctly, they can download the survey to their machine. That helps a little, but then we run into the publishing issue. So being able to download someone else's survey to edit the XLS form is nice, but somewhat pointless since they can't make a change and overwrite the existing survey in someone else's account.

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