Unable to "Send" Surveys from Survey 123 iOS application

[DustinCokely]

I have recently completed two surveys, using a provided form from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. When I have attempted to submit / send the surveys, they have failed repeatedly.

• Initially when I attempted to send the surveys, the submission would freeze in the middle of uploading the included attachments.
• After waiting a couple days, I have attempted to send the surveys again, and this time the attachments finished uploading, however, when the first survey submission hit the “Send Data” stage, it forcibly quit/closed the Survey 123 application. When I attempt to send either survey now, it states that it is attempting to send data for the survey which crashed the application, then it crashes the application again a few moments later.
• I have had a solid, uninterrupted WiFi connection and have tried under other networks when attempting to send the surveys, with the same result.

During data collection for the surveys, it was necessary to use a coworkers mobile device to collect data for a third survey, but this was logged using Guest Access to the Survey123 application. They were able to successfully send the report, however no notification or receipt was sent to the emails listed as the Applicant or the Preparer (I have also reviewed our email filters/junk folders etc).

Questions;

• The survey which crashed the application has a large number of attached photos, (334), however I have not read that this has been an issue for others, but could this be an issue?
• If I attempted to uninstall and reinstall the application, it would delete my survey data, and I would have to recomplete the survey, correct?
• When submitting a survey through the mobile application, do the applicant or preparer receive an email confirmation, or receipt of any sort? Is this decided when the survey form is developed?

Attached are three example screenshots of the errors I received while first trying to submit the surveys. The third screenshot which does not state an error occurred, was frozen with the image shown.

Thank you for your assistance and time on this matter (And thank you to all the contributors on the forum, everyone is an immense help here).

[DuncanC · Accepted solution]

You're going to need to get a proper useful error message to find out what's going on.

https://doc.arcgis.com/en/survey123/desktop/get-answers/troubleshootgetanswers.htm

If you get the sqlite file off the device when you open it up there is a status field that should have what you need.

I have my suspicions about the cause, but speculating may just send you down the wrong path.

[DustinCokely]

Thank you very much Duncan, this ultimately worked for me. You are a life saver.

I had to find someone with a Mac, to pull the SQLite file from my iPhone. This wasn't required for my colleague who used an Android to collect data. During this step I was also able to remove the Survey123 attachments (photos), which were saved as JPGs (along with .INFO files). Once the SQLite file was pulled from our phones, I used the DB Browser application to save the SQLite files as .JSON files, then converted those to .XLSX (MS Excel) files to QAQC.

Regarding the cause, I believe the response from @abureaux is correct, in that the large number of attachments was timing out the Survey123 application. My colleague was able to successfully send their survey which included only a few dozen attachments. 

I was unable to access any settings through my application which would have allowed me to fix, reinitialize, or restart the survey submission @DCWade. Those settings were not available on either of the Mobile Application versions used in my office. I believe I saw something like this through the browser version though. 

Thank you again, this was a massive help, and I definitely would not figured it out this way.

[abureaux]

When submitting a survey through the mobile application, do the applicant or preparer receive an email confirmation, or receipt of any sort? Is this decided when the survey form is developed?

Not by default. You can set that feature up though using Power Automate or Make (formerly Integromat).

As for the error. That is a lot of attachments. I am wondering if it is just timing out. Can you successfully submit the same survey with fewer attachments?

[DCWade]

We were having a very similar issue with one of field iPads suddenly not being about to submit and giving the same generic error. We ended up going into Survey123 settings and running "Reinitialize Database" and "Fix Database". After that he was able to submit surveys with or without attachments.

Very strange that it only occurred on one of the field iPads, and the error was just a generic 400 error in the log file from the failed submissions