Survey123 Connect select_one drop-down question - have to delete what was entered in order to select a new value

ColForbin · ‎11-08-2023

I have a Survey published to ArcGIS Online, created in Survey123 Connect 3.18.124. There are a few questions on the survey that are of type "select_one" that are using the search function in the appearance column to get its values from a hosted feature layer in AGO. That part works fine. On the web survey, if I click inside the drop-down field I immediately see the available choices. I can then click on one to select it. If I then want to change that selection and click on the drop-down field again, there is no list of choices that appears. I have to delete the text I entered first, and only then does the list of choices appear.

What I see when I first click in the drop-down field:

What I see after I choose a value and then want to change it:

Clicking the drop-down arrow itself does not make a difference.

So this is a frustrating issue for users that first selected a value and then want to select something else. They have to delete what they chose first before the list is displayed again.

This is what I have in the appearance column in Connect:

Any ideas on this?

ChristopherCounsell · ‎11-08-2023

It's because of the search appearance. It's searching for the text currently in the cell. Which has been populated by your choice.

The inverse experience would be that if you click the list again, the text gets cleared, then you have to search for 'bylaw' again. This would be much more frustrating for other search questions that want to retain the text.

If it's too much for the users to delete their answer, you could consider not using the search appearance. It looks like there's only 10 choices in there? Other ways you could approach it.

ColForbin · ‎11-09-2023

@ChristopherCounsell thanks for the reply. There is a subsequent select_one question that also uses a search function to select the choices based on the choice of the previous select_one. Having these choices in a hosted feature layer in AGO makes this easy to update the choices without having to re-publish the survey. But yes you are correct that I could bring all the choices into the choices tab of the XLSForm.