Survey123 photos not saved in My Attachment photos

[NadineRaska1]

I am asking this here because although I have been getting support from ESRI tech staff, they are unable to solve my problem, and I am dumbfounded and curious if anyone else has run into this problem and might have some words of wisdom.

A bunch of surveys were saved as drafts in a phone. Unfortunately the survey was changed and saved and the drafts are unable to be submitted (I know I know, no need to smack my hand for that). I tried to recover them as I have before, copying the .sqlite file from the ArcGIS  folder. However, there were no photos in the My Survey Attachments folder where they normally were. I can see thumbnails in the individual surveys (in Survey123 Drafts), and they have a photo name, but the photos are nowhere to be found. 

Digging through other files in the phone I was able to find the photos, but they had a totally different filename (they were saved onto the SD card..). So I am unable to copy them into the My Attachment folders and link/upload everything as usual. There are over well over 100 photos, and the only way to tell what survey they should link up to, and what photo name they should have, is by looking at the thumbnails in each individual survey. This would take a lot of time as this is not just 10 surveys.. I noticed they are all the _HDR copies, so curious if there is a "normal" copy somewhere. For all other photos in her phone, they are saved alongside these. Not in this case, and I have looked/search pretty extensively.

I am confused how Survey123 knows what the thumbnail of the photo looks like though - there must be some sort of link between the thumbnail and the filename it gives there (Photo1-xxxx-xxxx/jpg), and the photo that is saved somewhere on the phone?

Any ideas on other things I can try? I have searched the phone for anything with the "correct" filename as Survey123 says it is, but nothing comes up.

The phone is an LG G4. 

Also wondering if this is a Survey123 problem or a phone problem. Don't want to deal with this again...

Thank you

[JamesTedrick]

Hi Nadine,

Form what you describe, this is very unusual.  Were the photos taken within the Survey123 app or with another app and then associated with the form?

In terms of identifying which photo goes with a survey, you will find a reference to the photo in it's question within the 'data' column of the sqlite DB's survey table.  GitHub - tedrick/ReadS123DB: Convert the survey data stored in the Survey123 Field App into a set of...  should be able to extract the information with a reference to the photo in the outputted table.

[NadineRaska1]

The photos were taken directly from the Survey123 app.

Indeed I looked at the photo filename reference of the sqlite - it references a photo filename which is not consistent with the actual photos I found in the phone.. Hence why I was wondering if they had been saved elsewhere on the phone with the "correct" name (as Survey123 said it was saved). 

I've just started renaming all the photos and putting them in the proper My Attachments folder so each point can be uploaded correctly. Just a long process..

I guess I will chalk it up to "the phone did something weird"

Thanks for your reply

[GeorgeHouck]

As a general rule we don't edit the survey while collection in ongoing.

I have seen this problem when the cell phone in question switched networks. It was switched from Verizon to T-Mobile. We had to pull down the photos off of the phone manually, and what saved us as we change the .jpg name before we save or send so we don't have to do that back at the office. Our photos were saved that way, but we lost the actual surveys, and had to collect the data manually out of the sent folder in the app and transcribed that weeks data by hand.

Once the survey was deleted and reloaded on the phone we haven't had an issue since.

Somehow the Survey123 knows something changed on the phone and didn't allow it to share that data.

[NadineRaska1]

For sure - we try not to as well. However in this case we did a last minute update to a survey the morning of field data collection, and told the surveyors to re-download the survey before commencing, however one individual did not. 

Looks like I was wrong as well, the photos I thought I had recovered with the incorrect names, were actually different photos taken with just the camera (outside of Survey123). Solves that mystery of names being different.

However now we have lost all the photos that were saved within the survey - because I can't find them anywhere on the phone  

[JamesTedrick]

Hi Nadine,

The photos should be stored in "/ArcGIS/My Survey Attachments"

[NadineRaska1]

They were not saved in the /My Survey Attachments folder. I had ESRI tech support on the phone with me for quite a while, with a screenshare, and she could also see they were not there.

That being said, in case it is of interest, I eventually managed to edit the survey to go back to the original form (before it was changed and therefore made us unable to submit), republished it, and was able to submit the surveys in the drafts and the photos/attachments were also uploaded.

They still do not exist in the My Survey Attachments folder though. So I have no idea where they were saved on the phone (a search with the attachment/photo name also came up empty).

[GeorgeHouck]

I went back and check the week we had are snafu. We also lost the pictures. They were also not on the phone and the only record they had even been there was in the sent folder there was a file name. They never showed up in ESRIonline, nor were they in any folder on the phone.

We also lost our survey data, but we were able to transcribe our data from the sent folder. The Surveys sent, but never arrived.

Moral of the story?

1. DO NOT UPDATE your survey questions without having all the devices in use download their surveys first.
2. When you switch network providers on a device, make sure the user reloads the current Survey, before proceeding.
3. Don't publish a new Survey with out verifying all surveys have been collected from all devices.

Hopefully nobody else makes our mistakes.