Survey123 unable to capture current location

[ShoumenChatterji]

Survey123 location not working on my android phone. Even we have 4g and location service turned on, after that also its not working. Please tell us solution ASAP

[JenniferSmits]

Thanks Joe and Phil. Joe I am glad you were able to try the Beta version - I was unable to go through all the steps due to our systems being locked down. The error is occurring on both iphone and ipad.

[Anonymous User]

Hi Jennifer,

After doing some more investigation into this issue, what you are seeing is the expected behaviour. The "Unable to connect - Position source access error" is a system error, not an alert. Changing the Alert settings in the app menu for each internal or external position source, will only apply to alerts and warning, not system error messages.

Some changes were made in 3.6 beta to ensure this message does not appear when location services is enabled on the device and gets reported falsely on start-up, this is now resolved. But in your case you are seeing this message as expected.

As all feature collected with Survey123 require a location (geometry is required) if you disable the Survey123 app from having access to the position source (location services on the device) you will always see this system error, this is expected and correct behaviour.

Phil.

[JosephMootz1]

Hello Phil, Thanks for your reply.

In regard to your statement "As all feature collected with Survey123 require a location (geometry is required)", our workflow is that we calculate the geometry by passing in to the Survey123 form a latitude and longitude from a url or by using a lookup table to get the latitude and longitude as described in this ESRI post from 2016 (https://community.esri.com/groups/survey123/blog/2016/06/08/calculations-on-geopoints). Therefore, we do not need the device location. We are opening the survey123 form from a url from the popup of a Web App builder app which passes In the latitude and longitude or a reference to a lookup table with a latitude and longitude. This is primarily done from Windows 7 desktop computers so I don't know if they have a location services setting and I don't think we should have to turn them on if they are not already on just to use Survey123.

Also, wouldn't another workflow be to allow the user to choose the location from a map without having the device location turned on?

Let me know if I am missing something.

Shouldn't Survey123 support a workflow where the location is entered independent of the device location without receiving a system error message every time? The scenarios above describe two such workflows.

Thank you.

--joe

[Anonymous User]

Hi Joseph,

In this case, to support the workflows and desired behaviour you are after, I would suggest you raise an enhancement request via Esri Support with all your use case information and examples, to allow the user to disable the system error message pop-up for location services when the system setting has been disabled on app startup.

The problem is that if the message is disabled by the user and the user actually does want a location via GPS or location services, they will never know why it is not working as they will never get a system message, simply the app will never get a location but will look like it is trying to with no message. You can see how this is a problem for the reverse case when you want it on but it got accidentally switched off.

Phil.

[JosephMootz1]

Hi Phil,

Thanks for your answer. If I were to enter an enhancement request, I think the proper solution is for the developers to put the message in a status bar not a popup that requires user interaction. We have people entering hundreds of forms a day opened via urls. Having to press "OK we know our device doesn't have a location" every time a form is opened is pretty cumbersome.

The workflow we use is valid for us because it forces the survey to be associated with an existing point. In our case it forces an ADA ramp inspection to be associated with an existing intersection point. The user does not have the option to change the geometry of the survey which is what we want. So there is no need for a device location and the survey should be usable on a device that does not support device location.

Since this is a Workflow ESRI suggested three years ago, I would hope the developers would be a little less dismissive of the end user that has been using the product this way for a couple of years as to require the end user to put in an enhancement request for an issue their updates took away. There are plenty of mobile apps out there that warn you of no device location without making it so obtrusive to the workflow.

For now we have a work around to use older versions of Survey123.

Thanks,

--joe

[DougBrowning]

Are you using an iPad by chance?  Just had a support call because iPad will shut off location access to the app every time you update.  Go in and make sure it has access to Location.

[JenniferSmits]

Thanks Doug. Yes ipad and iphone. I require location access to be shut off, it is important that no location information is collected with the survey.

[Anonymous User]

Hi Jennifer,

As I mentioned in above comment, all features collected with Survey123 require a location (geometry is required) if you disable the Survey123 app from having access to the position source (location services on the device) you will always see this system error, this is expected and correct behaviour.

Is it possible you could leave location services enabled, but then set the location in the survey to be 0,0 by default so that the location of the user when taking the survey is not recorded?

Phil.

[TimothyKing3]

Hi all,

I have been having a similar problem with a setup using iPad Mini 2s without cell service and even with Ipad Mini 4s with cell service that are paired with an EOS Arrow 100.  Our crews collect a point in collector and I use the URL_Schema to send attribute info along with the  ESRIGNSS_LAT and ESRIGNSS_LONG as the center point to Survey123, But what seems to happen is that the current location of the device is where the Survey123 point is located in its feature service even though the ESRIGNSS LAT and LONG fields in the collector feature service have the correct locations. This also happens when the crews use collector on the way back from fieldwork or back at the hotel to update 123 forms.  This has become a big issue with our implementation of Survey123 and we may have to go back to just using collector if we are unable to figure this issue out.  Is there a way to force 123 to use the stored ESRI GNSS values from the collector point?

Thanks,

LTK

[Anonymous User]

Hi LTK,

Are you still having this issue? Have you tested the latest 3.5 release of Survey123 which now includes support for external GNSS receivers?

Phil.