Using a Survey to update existing data

[NickPannu]

I've got a use case which I'm not sure how to approach. I should note I'm fairly new to using any of the ArcGIS tools, and therefore might have missed something to make this easy.

In short, I'd like to be able to set up a list of people, then update their status so it will show on a dashboard. I don't care about old information, so I only want one entry per person.

I can create a survey to enter the base information into a layer, but I'm not sure how to update certain fields with another survey without it creating new records. Is there a way to run a script after a survey is submitted that can update this? 

[DeonLengton · Accepted solution]

Hi Nick

You can have a look at working with existing data in Survey123

https://doc.arcgis.com/en/survey123/desktop/create-surveys/prepareforediting.htm

You can create a new editing survey based on your existing base information survey by clicking New Survey in Connect, Then choose Feature service and choose the base information survey's service (you need to be logged into Connect to do this).

Then you can set up your editing survey to edit the status and enable the Inbox to retrieve the existing base data for editing.

Hope that helps.

[NickPannu]

Thanks Deon and Derrick.

The only flaw with this seems to be the need to have the inbox enabled and then to edit an existing survey. With 100+ people trying to edit their own status I'm imagining a lot of user error, especially amongst less technical users. If a new survey could be created which could automatically fill in the static data and just ask for the couple of new pieces of information to update the dashboard it would be better.

Although it may work, I will play around and see.

[DerrickWestoby]

That's possible as well.  

I'm typing on my phone and being brief, but you could restrict the questions that editors would have access to, or even use your static layer to prefill questions on an entirely different survey.  

Read through the help docs and blog posts about url parameters to launch the web form and you'll get some good ideas about how to integrate it.  I'll be back in the office on Friday and could show a few examples as well if needed. 

[DerrickWestoby]

Here's another help doc on the same topic - https://support.esri.com/en/technical-article/000021897 

And a few blog posts from Ismael that I always find really helpful:

https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-survey123-blog/survey123-tricks-of-the-trade-embedding-a-survey... 

https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-survey123-blog/survey123-tricks-of-the-trade-web-form-url/ba-p/...

[NickPannu]

Thanks, I got it to mostly work.

Slightly unfortunate that a reply will disappear from an inbox when you resend it, but they can just refresh the inbox to get it back and update it again.

I'm playing around with how to calculate or force them to update a field when re-submitting, but some of that will come down to user behavior training.

[Anonymous User]

Is this workflow only possible with survey123 connect or can it be achieved with the Survey123 Web editor as well? I'm pairing Workforce with Survey123. The workforce portion is used to identify damage locations that need to be repaired. I would like staff to click on a point in Workforce, fill in a survey and have the assignments status update based on one of the survey answers. I have to include the Survey portion in this workflow in order to generate an email when damage locations that were identified by service requests are fixed.