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]

You cannot share editing without a fair amount of work.  It is for sure a huge shortcoming of 123 in a corporate environment.  A lot of it has to do with AGOL and how it works with owners.  But I agree in order to be "enterprise class" it really needs to be addressed.  Like you said if an employee suddenly leaves or is out on say medical you are totally stuck.

To help I keep copies of all my forms on the network as a backup any time I make a change.  That way at least someone has them and they get backed up (AGOL needs a backup system to be enterprise ready also!).  Then you can change owners in AGOL of the form and service, copy the forms to your My Survey Designs folder, then change the .info file to match.  Then open 123 Connect and it will find it all.

You can also change the owner in AGOL, then open 123 Connect and it will see the forms online but not in your folder, so it will ask you if you want to download the files and it will recreate the xlsx for you.  It used to be that the media files did not come down but I think that is fixed.  So you can recover even if you do not have the files from the other user.  Make sure to test this.  Always best to have both.  Always make sure the folder names all match in AGOL when you transfer them.

You are not going to want to do this every week or anything but it will get you out of a jam if someone is out.  Using things like linked content for lists can help reduce the number of form changes.

Hope that helps

[BrittanyBurson]

This was a nightmare yesterday for our org. There was a change request but our owner of the survey was out on vacation, and the form was getting ~400 responses per day, so it was very high risk to try and follow all the informal instructions in this forum post and hope it all would work.

I've found the .info file and the references to the owner/owner folder, but what is best practice when making the new folder and making sure the folder names match?

What is the best order of operations, specifically with this folder name matching.... Do you look at the existing owner of the survey, look at the exact folder name (ie. "Survey - Infrastructure Priority Survey") and then make the exact same folder name in the new owner account. Then transfer ownership, transfer the items into the new folder with exact same name. Then update the .info file with new folder info, then open the survey and have it copy the files down locally for editing?

Thanks for your input.

[DougBrowning]

Order of your steps looks good but some clarify on the last step.

You can download the files OR copy the files to your computer and change the .info file.  You do not do both.  I tend to copy the files if I have them to insure the media folder is correct.  in theory either should work.

James post  on this  https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-survey123-questions/transfer-ownership-of-survey-to-another-use...

Also a support article on it  https://support.esri.com/en-us/knowledge-base/faq-can-an-arcgis-online-organization-administrator-ed... 

some here  https://doc.arcgis.com/en/survey123/reference/organizationsettings.htm 

[RyanBohan]

Hi @DougBrowning,

Thank you for all the information and some really great ideas.  I will have to do some testing.

A few of us have admin rights which for webmaps, webapps, etc makes making a small change pretty straightforward.  Perhaps that is an enhancement needed for Survey123 Connect, an Admin section, that keeps ownership information the same, but allows the survey to be downloaded and republished.  Definitely something I will be asking more about at the UC in a few weeks.

[DougBrowning]

If you org allows it the other option I used to use is a headless AGOL account.  That way you are all the same owner.  Still have to be careful with files.  But maybe you could have a VM that has all of the files on it that has a headless windows account.  Or IT will not allow this now though.