survey123 connect- directory folder structure

[Lake_Worth_BeachAdmin]

Inside Survey123 Connect you are presented with all of your survey projects inside one "directory" or window. Is there a way to create "folders" or "groups" to place surveys into to organize our projects? I am working on 20+ unique surveys for m,multiple agencies/departments and its a mess in here.... need some sort of organization method.

[JamesTedrick]

Hi Joe,

First, once a survey is published, it will be hidden if you are logged in as a user that is not the publisher, so that can provide some organization.  

Secondly, there are a couple of geeky workarounds you could do with a bit of effort.  All survey designs in Survey123 Connect are stored in "<user home>\ArcGIS\My Survey Designs"; you could create multiple folders to store the different projects and then switch the name appropriately (this works a bit better on a Mac because it supports Unix-style linking).  You could also do the same by enabling git or another version control system and creating a branch for each customer.

Regardless, I've written down an enhancement issue to look into this.  You mention that you have surveys across multiple agencies- would you have advice/suggestions for how this should be done?

[Lake_Worth_BeachAdmin]

I created sub directories in the path for survey designs and all surveys are still displayed the same in Connect. I am only concerned about organization of surveys in Connect. Folders like water, public services, electric (visible in connect) form there I can open those folders inside connect and see appropriate surveys.

[JamesTedrick]

Sorry I wasn't clearer - the folders would exist elsewhere and you would fill My Survey Designs with the surveys of the folder with the surveys you wanted to work on.

[Anonymous User]

James,

Is there a way to redirect Survey123 Connect to save surveys to a network drive/folder instead of a user folder on their system? We are concerned systems would fail and we would lose items we are working on that were not yet published.  I see that no matter which login I use in Survey123 connect, it still points to the files on the computer. Is there a ways to point it to a network folder instead?

Thanks,
Victoria

[Lake_Worth_BeachAdmin]

this would also be extremely helpful for collaboration when developing surveys. More than one user (anyone on a shared network drive) could access the same .xls form without having to grab it from the organizational tab, download and re-create it with the copied form. 

In addition,

users may not always be working on the workstation, sometimes we need to use other machines but if these files were on a network drive of our choosing this would eliminate that problem as well.

[Anonymous User]

Joe, we also plan to collaborate with other GIS staff within our organization and the current set up is cumbersome and would be a bit tricky for new users.  Having the software point to one network location would be more efficient for us as you had outlined. We also want to eliminate duplicate copies and searching for the updated copy on a number of devices.  Furthermore, it is confusing when opening the Survey123 Connect software and having a My Survey Designs dashboard before you log in and then viewing another similar looking dashboard once you log into your Survey123 account; however, that dashboard contains another set of surveys that doesn't necessarily reflect the same information as the My Survey Designs dashboard page prior to logging in. 

[Lake_Worth_BeachAdmin]

I agree 100%. If this is currently a limitation it should be added to the Ideas page, and I would not think its too difficult to implement, just prompt the user where the directory should be to hold all the survey data.

[Anonymous User]

Yes, I found it strange that I couldn't locate a settings option to change the path where the surveys are stored, but then I can see how it might affect where other files are written when creating surveys.

[JamesTedrick]

Hi Victoria,

Thanks for the request.  I've added your comments to the enhancement discussion was have for this feature.