Getting Service Information

[DanielKonzek]

I have 4 surveys that have recently quit working after performing well for 3 months.  All 4 of them now stall when a user tries to submit data.  The wheel spins at 'Getting service information'.  The problem appears to be that these surveys were originally published by copying the previous year's forms and publishing them fresh to be used for the current year.  New folders, feature services, and forms were created in AGOL and used successfully.  I republished the forms a couple of weeks ago using Connect 3.5, and the forms no longer worked.  When I look at the form info in 'My Survey Designs' and in 'My Surveys', the inteminfo file is different.  The iteminfo file in 'My Surveys' is now the old file from the previous year's form (with the previous year's feature service).  I am able to manually swap out the old iteminfo for the current version on my PC and the data submits.  I'm not sure how to do this on a ipad though for my field techs?

I have attempted to republish the forms from a previous version of Connect, and deleted the iteminfo file from My Surveys' and then re-downloaded the form (the old iteminfo file is redownloaded instead of the new one).

2 questions:  Can i manually update the iteminfo file on ipads?  Is the iteminfo file stored somewhere in AGOL that would allow me to manually replace it?

Thank you,

Dan

[Anonymous User]

Hi Dan,

The iteminfo file is stored inside the Form item in AGO/Portal. The Form item is a zip file that contains all the required files and folder for the survey to work when it is downloaded to a device.

You can browse to the location of these files and folders on iOS via iTunes or another file browser for iOS (such as iExplorer or iMazing) and then update the files and folders by copying over them. The iteminfo file is located here: ~\ArcGIS\My Surveys\{itemID of survey}\esriinfo\

Hope this helps.

Phil.

[DanielKonzek]

Hi Phil,

  Thank you for your reply.  I was able to fix this issue by manually editing the forminfo.json file as it had somehow reverted back to an old form name (the one from the last survey season that I had used to create this season's forms).  I'm not sure how or why this reverted back after 2 months of successful field work and multiple republishes of the survey to add new domain values for pick lists?  Once I made that change and republished the form, the crews were able to redownload and submit all of their stuck data.

  I did try an access the iteminfo file through itunes, but since they switched to the 'File Sharing' feature, I am not able to open any folders through itunes.  For example, in the screen capture below, I am able to see my ArcGIS folder that would have the 'My Surveys' folder and corresponding data, but itunes will not allow me to open this folder.  I can save the entire folder to my local machine and swap out the iteminfo file, but then there is no way to load them back onto the ipad through itunes.  The 'Add File' button only allows you to add individual files and not folders.  Maybe I will need to download one of the other apps that you recommended (although this can be tricky with IT restrictions).  It would be great if we could access the survey files through itunes like we used to be able to do.

Thank you again,

Dan

[Anonymous User · Accepted solution]

Hi Dan,

Great you were able to resolve the issue after republishing and users now have the updated survey that works. Not sure how your .info file got out of whack, maybe you had an old one in a different version of Connect on another computer and republished that survey, which overwrote the update file with an older one, could happen if you hadn't updated and redownloaded the survey to Connect on that device.

Unfortunately we can not control what Apple and iTunes will allow and not allow, and what you can do when interacting with the files and folder on the device for an app. They are very strict and limiting in this area compared to other OS and devices. It is possible to better navigate and manage files via the other applications I mentioned above and I use them regularly for this purpose.

Phil.