Survey123 Connect freezes and takes a very long time when updating from CSV

[MatthewGuilliatt]

When I am working on Survey123 Connect, every time I save my excel sheet and trigger the update in Survey123 Connect it gets stuck on the "Converting XLS Form" stage for usually around 5 minutes, the program goes to not responding, but then eventually unsticks itself and gives me the updated form. I've also noticed it does this when I do other things, e.g. creating a new survey or opening an existing survey from the main page.

This seems a bit ridiculous, as it happens even on very short survey forms. Can I get some suggestions on how to fix this? Do I need a clean install of Survey123?

[Leon_AndresSabbagh_Santos]

Hi Philip, 

I have the same issue. I created the survey in survey123 web site, then downloaded it in Connect. After that, I updated the form in XLSForm and after saving it, it doesnt update automatically in Connect, when I refresh it, nothing happens, I've waited more than 15 minuts and nothing happens. Please Help! 

Form attached. 

[Anonymous User]

Hi @Leon_AndresSabbagh_Santos,

I took a quick look at your survey xlsform. It appears you are using pulldata at csv also, however you did not provide the csv files. Can you please send through any of the csv files or other files in the media folder so we can test with the entire survey configuration and files.

Also, I noticed you have quite a lot of choices in the choice sheet (idgrupo list has more than 20,000+). For large choice lists it is recommended to use external choice lists or select one from file choice lists, as this can improve the form load time and performance. 

Please refer to https://doc.arcgis.com/en/survey123/desktop/create-surveys/xlsformcascadingselects.htm#ESRI_SECTION1... and https://doc.arcgis.com/en/survey123/desktop/create-surveys/xlsformessentials.htm#ESRI_SECTION1_34A4D....

Without your pulldata csv files, the form was taking about 2 mins to open the first time (creates choice database) on my laptop with 3.12 release and 3.13 beta Connect. The second time I open the survey it takes about 15-30 secs. The likely cause of the initial delay in processing is the 20,000 choice list being loaded into the database.

Regards,

Phil.

[Anonymous User]

Hi @Leon_AndresSabbagh_Santos,

I replied to your private message, but just incase you didn't see it, here is what I found:

I had a look at your csv files and found a few issues. The csv file IDCLIENTE11 is using a semi-colon as separator, not commas, note this will not work, only commas are supported. If you do a find and replace of semi-colon to comma (provided you have no semi-colon in the actual data) this will start working properly.

Also, in the select_one_from_file csv file, you have a name column with numbers, and then the label, but in your original choice lists in the choices sheet, the name values were the same as the label. Seems to be a change here. You can remove the numbers and just make the name and label columns the same, you only need two columns in this csv file.

Also, once you move to select_one_from_file, you need to remove the same choice list from the choices sheet.

Once I changed the commas and fixed up the name and labels to all be the same, both the select one choice list and pulldata expressions all work as expected. Also the lists and form preview loaded fairly quickly for me. See screenshot and attached files.

As for the publishing errors, I did not get any errors when publishing to AGO, it could be the name of a layer or symbol or character you are using in the spreadsheet or choice list that is not supported in feature service definition and the hosting database.

Regards,

Phil.

[Leon_AndresSabbagh_Santos]

Hi Phil, 

Everthing works perfectly after your advice on both of the files, it runs very smoothly once I created the file with the 20K records I had in choices and the pulldata calculation as well. 

Thanks A LOT!!! 

[AdminCMAA]

Hi,

I have got the same issues of survey 123 connect stuck when opening survey, loading survey. it happening to the new version with 64bit 3.11 and 3.12.

thanks.

[Anonymous User]

Hi @AdminCMAA,

This is likely related to the choice list management and other database related changes made in 3.12 and 3.11, which in some cases we have seen causes Connect to take a long time to refresh the survey preview.

Good news is that improvements have been made in the 3.13 beta builds, which appear to resolve this issue. We will have the 3.13 beta builds for Connect and the field app available on the Early Adopter Community site later this week. Please keep an eye out for the latest beta builds.

Regards,

Phil.

[AJohns17]

I too am having this issue.  I had no problem updating my survey from Connect 2.8 to 3.11 and publishing to our Test environment, but it seems to be stuck at "Updating survey form package" when i repeat this process in our Production environment. 

[Anonymous User]

Hi @AJohns17 

This is likely related to the choice list management and other database related changes made in 3.12 and 3.11, which in some cases we have seen causes Connect to take a long time to refresh the survey preview.

Good news is that improvements have been made in the 3.13 beta builds, which appear to resolve this issue. We will have the 3.13 beta builds for Connect and the field app available on the Early Adopter Community site later this week. Please keep an eye out for the latest beta builds.

Regards,

Phil.