Survey123 Feature Request: Persistent Answers.

[JonathanPendleton]

When working with larger, more complex surveys. I find that there is often a real need to see what you had previously entered for a specific question. The "Set answers as favorite" option attempts to address this but falls short in a two main areas. First, the favorite answers option saves/pastes 100% of the answers from your favorited survey. This is not ideal with large surveys with many questions, because it can be difficult to remember which answers need to change and which need to stay the same. Second, every time you want the favorite answers to change you need to reset them and save them again. So in order to bring answers from survey to survey dynamically, you have to reset them, save them, and paste them every time. This eats up a lot of time, is cumbersome, and is just one more thing to think about when in the field surveying.

So what's the solution? I think the solution is persistent answers. By persistent answers, I mean the ability to either in the .XLS survey form, or in the survey123 app it's self, flag specific questions in order to make their answers persist to the very next survey. For example, if my survey has a question named "question #1" I want to be able to flag that question so every time a new survey gets opened, the form or app looks at the previous data that has already been collected for that question, and returns the most recent answer for question #1 automatically. So if I decide to leave the question with an answer of "123", it would automatically fill out the corresponding question on the next survey with the same answer of "123". But if I decide to change the answer from "123" to "ABC" it would see that "ABC" was the most recent answer and return that answer for question #1 when the next survey is opened. This would address both problems I have with the "Set answers as favorite" option.

I think this feature would be very useful and could potentially save quite a bit of time. I would love to see it implemented. From a programming standpoint (given my limited knowledge of programming) it doesn't seem like it would be that difficult to implement either. It would be a nice quality of life improvement for those of use who work with larger survey forms.

Let me know your thoughts! Also, I tried to explain it as clearly as possible but if anyone needs further clarification let me know and I will do my best to further explain.

[Anonymous User]

Jonathan,

I had worked my way through the following two reads and then did some experimenting in order to devise a method I described above.

https://community.esri.com/groups/survey123/blog/2016/07/30/understanding-survey123s-custom-url-sche... 

Integrate with other apps—Survey123 for ArcGIS | ArcGIS 

In terms of the workflow, I am not entirely sure how the hyperlink is created? Meaning, I'm unsure if the hyperlink is being dynamically created as you answer the questions or if the hyperlink is created after you click on the Hyperlink Text?

For sake of conversation let's use the Form 1 and Form 2 as our forms that will contain data (Form 1) and pass data to (Form 2). I have my field crews download both Form 1 and Form 2 onto the device they are using; mostly because they will not have access to a data connection. Then I am having our field crews fill out Form 1 as they need to complete their work. Next when a special condition is met, I have them go back into the correct instance of Form 1; which contains the information that will be passed over to Form 2, and have them scroll to the bottom of the form. I have a Note question that states would you like to open Form 2? The hyperlink text that I used says "click here to open Form 2".

My Form 2 opens up and and the data from Form 1 is then passed into Form 2 based on the custom URL schema for integration with other apps. I figured out that you can use a custom URL hyperlink within a note field that uses a concatenate command to pull data from previously answered questions and pass them into other forms.

The custom URL is saved within the database that houses the rest of the form data. WE have not seen any change in the loading of the form, which makes me think that the custom URL is not created until the Hyperlinked Note test has been activated.

Here is my previous posting about using this to create a custom email link that utilizes this same functionality of passing data from one app to another, but you could use it in the same manner with some tweaking to pass between Forms.

https://community.esri.com/thread/194609-not-your-standard-note-question-email-link 

Cheers,

Mike

[RebeccaFuda]

I agree with Jonathan that a "persistent answers" option would be extremely useful!

[NicolasRoger]

I would also like to see a betther way to save favorite answers.