Repeat appearance not working

[EmilyRayner]

Hi, I created my App a year ago and it was working great. Just opened it for our next season of data collection and one section is not displaying properly. It is a 'repeat' section and will not display across the entire screen, only in the first column, shown below. Even though I have 'w8' in the appearance column, area highlighted in yellow does not display properly. 

Disclaimer: I'm a biologist so don't know the technical terms but App worked great for our first season of data collection.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Anonymous User]

Hi @KatherineBarrs,

Thanks for sending me your XLSForm. It appears you were setting the group for those pages to w8, however every question inside that group and the nested repeat were also set to w8. Meaning that everything inside this page always takes up only one column. In that case you should set the page to w1, and then every question and the nested group will also be w1. The outcome of this is that it looks the same as it did before. You can then use a nested group inside the repeat to set a different number of columns, as you have done with the other page.

As described in other comments, the reason his has changed in 3.13 compared to 3.12, is we fixed some issues with nested groups and repeats in grid theme, but in some cases it causes the nested groups and repeats to only display in one column, as that is all they should occupy by default. We updated the blog post about groups and grid theme to reflect this change.

One thing I noticed is that some of your questions and notes do not have a w appearance. With grid theme you should ensure every question has a w appearance, to ensure it displays correctly. Some of your notes only take up one column, and other questions only half the columns, but there is not another question of same width next to it, this kind of looks odd. I would suggest to update this in the form, make every question have w appearance, (including notes, hidden etc) and also make sure you use the lowest dividable numbers for the total columns you want on the parent groups.

I also noticed for some of your other pages, you set w8 for the parent page group, and then use w4 for individual questions inside it (end result is two columns). Why don’t you use w2 for the parent, and then w1 for the questions, the layout will be exactly the same, but less grids/columns are being created behind the scenes.

Regards,

Phil.

[IFI]

Hi,

I am seeing the same issue. Could you please advise on why the repeat is only taking up one row?

Any help on this would be great.

Thanks,

Paul

[Anonymous User]

Hi @IFI,

Please refer to the following blog post and specifically the "Working with nested groups (and repeats) in grids" section:

https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-survey123-blog/survey123-tricks-of-the-trade-groups-grids-and/b...

Previously nested groups (including repeats) were not honoured correctly. Some enhancements were made in 3.13 to resolve these inconsistencies. Unfortunately it means depending on how your groups and grid theme w appearances have been configured, some minor changes may be needed to your forms.

Regards,

Phil.

[IFI]

Hi Phillip,

Thanks for getting back to me. I have been using that Blog post as the basis for my surveys, it is helpful, but I cannot figure out why, in this instance, the repeat is only one one column width when I would like it to be two.

Was there anything in the short Excel snippet I originally attached that I have done incorrectly?

Thanks,

Paul

[Anonymous User · Accepted solution]

Hi @IFI,

The key part from the blog post is that nested groups or repeats now always only take up 1 column:

As for the number of columns used to render the group or repeat within the parent group, it will be one. That is, a group or repeat always takes one single column from the containing group.

Therefore with your survey (from the screenshots) you need to set the parent page to w1 (the group that has field-list on it) and then put another nested group directly inside it with w2 (underneath the page group). This will create a group that takes up the entire w1 row, but then has two columns in it for your lat and long questions next to each other that are w1 each. Close that group before the repeat. The repeat group will then take up the entire row as they always now fill 1 column, which the parent is set to. But if you want more than one column in the repeat, set the w appearance accordingly on the repeat.

Hope this helps. We are also working on a future enhancement to be able to set two values on a nested group or repeat, one value that tells it how many columns to consume from the parent, and one value that set how many columns to create in the group/repeat. This will make it much more flexible and easier to configure in the XLSForm and require less nested group to achieve the same thing. Keep an eye out on the Early Adopter Community for an update on this enhancement.

Regards,

Phil.

[IFI]

Thanks Phillip! That worked perfectly, I knew there was something I was missing....now I need to go back retrofit a couple of other surveys!

Thanks again,

Paul

[IFI]

Hi @Anonymous User,

I have another question on this please?

How do I deal with nested repeats? I have tried adding a group inside the parent as per the original solution, but I can't figure out how to get the Fish Details to span the entire width? Sorry this section of the Excel is quite long, so I added it in two parts.

Any help would be much appreciated...

Thanks,

Paul

[Anonymous User]

Hi @IFI,

Are you able to share your XLSForm (xlsx file and media folder) so I can take a closer look? If you prefer you can send to me via private message. 

What you are describing shoudl be possible by setting the correct w on the page group, and nested groups and repeats to make them span the entire width.

Regards,

Phil.

[Anonymous User]

@IFI did you ever find a solution? I'm hitting the same brick wall. 
I want a repeat inside a repeat, with both having multiple columns. 
The second (nested) repeat only takes the first column of the parent repeat, which is frustrating. 
Any ideas? 
Cheers, 
Mike 

[Anonymous User]

Hi @Anonymous User,

Yes I was able to assist @IFI to have the repeats and nested repeats appear as expected and span the entire width not just one column with a few minor changes to the form.

If you would like to send me your XLSForm (and media folder) via private message I can also take a look. Also details on which page/group/questions are not working as expected.

You may also want to check out the Early Adopter Community, we have introduced a new way in the 3.14 beta builds to specifiy with theme-grid w appearances to both account for span and columns for a group or repeat in the one w appearance notation. This will simplify things moving forward and make it easier to configure your forms (less nested groups required), expecially in your case mentioned above.

Regards,

Phil.