Survey123 Connect Survey Design Root Folder

[AustinGootee]

Anyone know if there's a way to change the root save folder for the surveys and their associated files in Survey123 connect. Right now it looks like it saves to the local harddrive at a path such as

C:\Users\username\ArcGIS\

where the designs would be saved at C:\Users\username\arcgis\my survey designs . I'd like to change the root folder the survey123 connect app points at to a location on our company's server. Definitely can see the paths in the about section, but doesn't have an edit or change button, any ideas on how to accomplish this? 

[ZacharySutherby · Accepted solution]

Hello @AustinGootee, 

It is not currently possible to change the directory of the My Surveys and My Survey Designs folders. We have an issue in our backlog to support this in the future. We have a few different enhancements requesting this functionality (ENH-000101301/ENH-000101302/ENH-000105975/ENH-000132527) feel free to reach out to Esri Technical Support and they will be able to assist with getting you attached to an Enhancement so you can track it's progress. 

[AustinGootee]

Thanks we'll be looking out for the enhancement! Any idea on it's priority level/timeframe?

[ZacharySutherby]

Hello @AustinGootee, 

Unfortunately we don't have a timeframe at the moment on implementation, for a while there were a number of constraints that impacted this enhancement. We've recently made some updates that should resolve those constraints and make implementing the enhancement possible.  

[MichaelCherry]

How can I track the status?  Maybe I'm overthinking this, but if I make a survey in Connect and then leave the company, how will my replacement be able to pick up from where I left off in the XLS? Do we need to save the xls titled "form" from the outgoing employee's C:\Users\username\ArcGIS\My Survey Designs to the incoming employees C Drive?

[Katie_Clark]

I cannot wait for this enhancement to be implemented, it will be a game changer! Collaborating on survey design is a pretty fundamental component of working in a large organization, so having to keep things stored on local drives has been extremely cumbersome. 

[Agata]

Hello, Is there an update to this enhancement?

The ability to change the root folder would be of great benefit to my team, this is extremely important when people are away, sick or on vacations, or if they leave the company! Currently we work on same forms, creating templates that create cohesiveness and standards for our GIS team. It is cumbersome to reconcile all the changes.

[RobertAnderson3]

Any updates @ZacharySutherby ?

[LMedeirosUI]

This enhancement seems more important now that Mac users must use a VM to run Survey123 Connect. When running parallels, the only way to access your Survey's XLS form is to load the PVM (you can no longer permanently mount a VM's hard drive without breaking the PVM... ask me how I know), which is time consuming and creates the possibility of different versions with needing to copy and paste files.

Being able to specify the location of the default folder on my Mac, I can both access the surveys created when Connect worked on the Mac OS and access the XLS files without loading the PVM.

[qz]

Yet another workaround / less ideal solution (and what I'm doing for now) is to sync stuff from the local machine to your cloud storage. But while you're still not solving the problem of everyone being able to edit the same survey, it does back it up to everyone can at least see. For example if you have dropbox you can do something like below (I stole this verbatim from a superuser answer):

• Open a command prompt as administrator.
• Type in cd /d d:\Dropbox (the /d is so it changes drive too, and you don't have to type d: cd dropbox.
• Create the junction by typing mklink /d MyStuff c:\MyStuff