Sending Survey Results in Blank Record

[GaryBowles1]

I was testing a new survey today and the following happened. Survey created using Survey123 Connect v 2.2.14. When I collected data on a Samsung Galaxy 6 phone using v 2.1.6 Survey123 app, all was fine. When I collected data on a Samsung Galaxy S8 using v 2.3.29 Survey123 app, the uploaded data resulted in blank records in my database. The app showed the data as sent but the data was blank (see attached).

Thanks,

--gary

[Anonymous User]

Hi Gary,

Thanks for all the information and your surveys. Today I will be working on this and will get back to you, I want to replicate your issue and a possible solution.

Phil.

[Anonymous User]

Hi Gary,

I have been able to reproduce the issue you were having with "blank survey records" being uploaded to Portal using your xls forms. As previously outlined, this issue is due to a case difference between the field names in the survey xls form and the case of the fields in the hosted feature service in Portal. As you are probably aware, Portal (Data Store) requires all fields to be lowercase.

Previously in Survey123 2.2 or earlier, the fields names where converted to lower case on publish to Portal automatically, even if you had mixed case or upper case names in your xls form. The field app would do the same conversion to match the survey to the hosted feature service when sending surveys. However it actually meant your survey and hosted feature service had different cases in the field names.

In Survey123 2.3 a change was made in Connect and the field app to ensure that the cases matched when publishing or sending surveys, to avoid such problems in the future. This change was required to improve the way Survey123 works with Portal and more specifically Federated Services, which allows mixed case field names. Unfortunately this change has affected some surveys published with 2.2 or earlier to Portal where mixed case was used in the xls form and the hosted feature service was created with lower case names in Portal.

The good news is you can simply re-publish your survey to the same hosted feature service with Connect 2.3, re-download your survey in the field app using 2.3 and successfully submit surveys again with all data being stored correctly in the hosted feature service. To be able to re-publish your survey you will need to change all field names to lower case in your xls form (don't change anything else in the name besides case) and also change any references to those field names in calculation, relevant, instance_name or other parts of the survey parameters where the name has been used. Connect 2.3 will now check and won't let you publish until all the cases match and are correct in your xls form.

Hopefully that helps and you can update your surveys and get all the devices working on 2.3 again.

Regards,

Phil.

[GaryBowles1]

Philip,

I am able to republish the survey without data loss, however when i open an existing survey to resend, the survey is blank. I assume it is pulling the record from the feature service instead of the survey stored on the device. is this accurate? Can this be changed without having to go into the field and collect all 14 iPads and manually download the data? I am aware of several surveys that were sent prior to finding this issue and this will result in data loss and the need for our field crew to perform the surveys again as these are required regulatory surveys.

Thanks,

--gary

[GaryBowles1]

Philip,

Bottom line – is the data from any collected survey since the 2.3.29 update going to be available for removal from the iPads? If no, I need to get our people back out repeating their inspections as these are regulatory inspections and we are required to report these to the state DEP.

Was the lowercase field names option not tested against feature services that had uppercase letters in their field names prior to release? I do not remember seeing anything other than the note in the release blog from July 20

This is potentially a large issue that will cost significant time and money to fix.

Please respond today and let me know if the data that has been collected using the 2.3.29 app can be removed from the iPads. If it cannot, then I need to inform the program managers involved and determine our best method to recapture the data.

Thanks for your help,

--gary

Gary H. Bowles, GISP

GIS Database Administrator | Seneca Resources

Office : 412-548-2544 | Cell Phone: 412-334-5273

[Anonymous User]

Hi Gary,

As discussed offline with James Tedrick the best solution to be able to resend the surveys is to use the steps outlined in the data recovery workflow documentation: https://doc.arcgis.com/en/survey123/desktop/get-answers/troubleshootgetanswers.htm#ESRI_SECTION1_A97...

If you have any further issues with this process please let us know.

Phil.