My team recently encountered a bug in our Survey123 Survey that I wanted to share here to see if anyone else has experienced similar issues, and to possibly report the bug to the software team.
Details of workflow:
The buggy behavior on iPad that we have been experiencing is that in one of our surveys in the Survey123 field app keeps crashing after 5-10 photos have been taken, losing all data. It also has a slow processing behavior where it won't render the first tap on the screen but then processes it after the second tap. This lag creates a difficult UI for entering data and results in data errors.
I was able to narrow in on the lines in my xls form that were causing the issue and get our survey back on track. I realized that it was just the presence of a calculation field within a repeat that is counting the number of repeats. When moved to outside of the repeat itself, the issue goes away.
After more troubleshooting though I am realizing that it is slightly less simple than I thought. After testing it more, it seems as though when the survey only has one or two repeats, the bug isn't present even if the calc field is within the repeat. I created some generic forms to demonstrate the issue. Here is the breakdown of the files I am attaching:
- V1.0 only has 1 repeat with the repeat count field within the repeat (no bug present)
- V1.5 has 3 repeats with the repeat count field within the repeat (bug present)
- V2.0 has 3 repeats but with repeat count field moved outside of repeat (no bug present)
I am hoping that maybe this can help someone else who might be trying to do a similar thing in a survey. Also maybe by logging this it can get flagged as a bug to maybe bring up a syntax error without letting the user publish a survey that will result in data loss when used in the field.
System Details:
Publishing a survey from desktop Survey123 Connect on PC Windows 10 (version 3.19.116)
Running into bug on iPad iPadOS (17.4.1) on Survey123 Field App (v2.19.121)
