Submit a second survey if data doesn't exist in the first survey

[AnninaRupe1]

I have a survey where a user can collect data regarding a site (survey 1). In addition to geometry (polygon), the survey consists of select one, select multiple, dates, repeat questions, text, and attachments.

One section in this survey is landowner contact information. To reduce data input and for quality control (since a landowner can own more than one site), I have a separate survey where the user enters landowner contact information (survey 2).  This includes name, address, and phone number. This is basically a digital address book.

I have connected survey 2 to survey 1 by using "search" in the appearance field in Survey123 Connect in survey 1, which points to survey 2. The user can start entering a landowner's name and select it from the list. Then in subsequent questions, the data auto-displays.

However, this workflow only works if the landowner data has already been collected. If my users start survey 1, start typing a name and it's not in the list, they have to discard the survey, open up survey 2, complete that, and then go back to survey 1. I have tried embedding a link to the second survey in survey 1, but since survey 1 has already been started, and even if survey 2 is completed in a new tab, survey 1 doesn't "see" the new record. The user still has to refresh survey 1.

Any ideas on how to get survey 1 to "see" the new record? Or, even better, if the contact doesn't exist in the list when queried in survey 1, give the option to create a new contact there?

[DavidSolari]

I assume the search runs once and then caches the results to avoid performance issues. Two things you can try:

1. Add the "time" parameter to your URL to attempt to pull the latest data. This is how it works for the pulldata function but search might not work with this trick.
2. Try another calculation mode.

No guarantees any of this will work as search might go through a different bit of code than calculations do.

[AnninaRupe1]

Thanks for the suggestions. I spent a couple of hours this morning testing and neither options work. 😢

I feel like the first should work, and I got the URL to include the time = now() parameter without error, but the question still sees survey 2 in the state it was in when survey 1 loaded.

The second doesn't work because there's no calculation. However, I did try adding a "recalculate" parameter to the URL, but that failed, too.

Appreciate the ideas...and any more anyone can provide. I feel like this is a common task and am curious how other organizations do this.