Is it possible to make changes to survey WITHOUT loosing data?

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06-09-2017 08:36 AM
Claire_Peterson
Occasional Contributor

Help!

We have 4 surveys that people are utilizing to submit data - these surveys also have editor tracking enabled. We needed to make a change to the surveys - had to reword what is displayed on the survey but did not change the actual field name on all 4 surveys. When I went to republish the surveys I received the attached warning message about how the existing data service is not compatible with the survey and I ended up loosing all the data that was already submitted for each survey. Luckily I had made backup shapefiles and was able to append the old data to the new hosted feature service but unfortunately, the editor tracking information (created by, created date, etc) does not transfer over and now displays my username and the time in which the append happened which causes some issues with the quality of the data and how the data will be used by the researchers.

Is this normal?

Is it possible to make any modification at all to the survey without loosing data?  

7 Replies
JamesTedrick
Esri Esteemed Contributor

Hi Claire,

Just changing text does not require a republishing.  The error message you provided looks like something was saved incorrectly either in your organization (is that ArcGIS Online or Portal - if the latter, which version?) or on your computer.

Claire_Peterson
Occasional Contributor

Hi James, so I do not need to republish the survey if I make changes to the displayed text - it will automatically get updated? I am using Connect with Portal.

Out of curiosity, has there been any discussion about being able to connect a Portal account (versus ArcGIS Online account) with the web version of Survey123?

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JamesTedrick
Esri Esteemed Contributor

On connecting to a Portal with the website- that's been introduced at the beginning of June (take a look in the website section of https://community.esri.com/groups/survey123/blog/2017/06/02/world-milk-day-release-21 )

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CarlHolt1
Occasional Contributor III

Claire_Peterson
Occasional Contributor

Thanks Carl

AndrewHargreaves2
Occasional Contributor III

rockchick86‌ did you ever resolve this issue? I'm facing something very similar right now...

Thanks

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Claire_Peterson
Occasional Contributor

Hi Andrew, sorry for the delay - we ended up not finding a solution at that time and the folks who wanted to use Survey123 decided it wasn't what they needed so we never pursued a fix.

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