Transfer ownership of survey to another user

[KyleGarrison]

Hello,

I have a survey being used by multiple members within and outside of my organization. I've authored and published this survey and the feature class, etc under my AGO credentials (therefore the feature class, etc. are in my AGO content) and it is shared within a group to end-users. I need to transfer 'ownership' to another user within my organization so that they can take over the management of the survey form/feature class (the form content needs to be routinely updated). Because the survey is already vetted and in use, we prefer to not re-publish the same form under a different name and require end-users to re-download. Is this possible? I've found that survey123 connect only allows the creation/publication of new surveys when using another machine/user, rather than providing the ability to update an existing form/survey.

Thank you for the help!

[DougBrowning]

Agreed and I have been asking for this a lot.  In order for this to be enterprise ready this needs to be addressed.  People on vacation, people quit, etc and our multimillion dollar project is dead in the water.  

The other major issue for us is that the forms are stored in a location where most IT depts do not backup.  Already lost my forms once.  Really wish we could just point to a directory like most other programs.

Both is these issues give managers pause (and heartburn) in trusting a roll out of the product.

I do not mean to harp I am just hitting a wall here with so many different projects and forms (will be over 250 forms next year to manage).

thanks for considering!

[LeighDurland]

James Tedrick‌ this really needs to be addressed. why cant a group be owners? giving ownership to one person is just bad business. this is already giving me nightmares and were just starting out. Is this going to be looked into and hopefully changed? 

[JamesTedrick]

Hi Leigh,

This is directly inherited from ArcGIS Online's ownership model - an item can only have one owner.  We are researching how practical it is to use the 'all update' group with the form and feature services (it is primarily designed for web map and web application collaboration).

[Anonymous User]

James

Any updates on if this is being worked on? We just ran into an issue with this again where I created a survey in Connect and shared to a group for field work tracking shoreline erosion and I went on vacation for a week and on day 2 of my vacation, the group needed questions changed and nothing could be done because I used Connect and was the owner. Having someone else from our GIS department be able to load the survey, change a few things, and republish the survey would have solved it in 5 minutes. Instead they had to wait a week for me to come back.

We're going on several years of having S123 and it's frustrating that simple stuff like this continues to be an issue.

[VanessaSimps]

Couldn't agree more with this comment! We have someone going out on maternity leave and we are struggling to figure out the best way to transfer/share ownership. Would love an update from the s123 Team as this thread is fairly old, any changes since 2019?

@JamesTedrick 

[TimothyKing3]

Hi James,

What specifically needs to be updated in the 'owner' and 'ownerfolder' and what is the process of updating that?

Thanks,

[PatrickClaflin]

James,

I agree with Nathan and Doug above. The process of transferring items is likely an ArcGIS Online platform problem beyond simply Survey123, but I think the S123 team strongly needs to consider better support for transfers.

The higher-ed site licenses recently changed to now differentiate between academic users (professors, students) and administrative users (campus police, facilities, planners, utilities managers, etc). Many administrative users had created surveys on accounts which now need transferred to new accounts for their departments. 

We have gone through the transferring process several times and it's been quite frustrating, particularly for live surveys which have hundreds or thousands of features with attachments, which don't transfer. Re-attaching these files to features is a cumbersome process and some folks here have resorted to manually re-entering data.

We have lots of folks who will need to transfer surveys in the near future. Many of them are likely to be too busy to recreate data or figure out how to reattach files and would abandon Survey123 for paper or other methods.

[SolanaFoo2]

Hi James,

So does your solution keep the item id for the survey the same?  So the end-user does not have to re-download the Survey form when the ownership change is complete?

Thanks!

[SolanaFoo2]

Item ids staying the same is also important because we are using a jump link from Collector out to our Survey123 forms.  If the item id changes between owners, then the link in Collector must be manually updated to point to the new Survey form.  If not, users may accidentally enter data into an old survey form or one that no longer exists/is available to push to.

[Dannyvan_Kempen]

Hi guys,

Does anybody have experience wit the directory changees in the survey123 connect folders and the best way for succes?

"Additional note is that if you need to update the survey via Survey123 Connect, you would also need to update some information in the form's .iteminfo file - specifically the `owner` and `ownerfolder` properties".