What's new in ArcGIS Survey123 (August 2022)

An update to ArcGIS Survey123 is now available. This release includes many critical fixes, and some great new features too. Read on to learn more!

What’s new in the Survey123 web designer

Do you want to visually create powerful smart forms? You are just one click away! Sign in to survey123.arcgis.com and before you know it, you will be up and running.   Use the Add panel in the Survey123 web designer to drag questions into your forms. You will find many question types including: free text, numbers, dates, lists, check lists, photos, files and of course: maps and addresses.  Keep things tidy with groups and pages and make your work shine with your own custom theme. Once you are happy with your design, share your form within your organization or make it public. As data comes in, you will be able to visualize it and make decisions right away.

Find question types more quickly

You will find that the Add panel in the web designer now looks different.   We added new question types recently and it was getting a little busy. We also have more in the works so this is the right time to reorganize.

Note how question types have been split into different groups. This makes it easier to find the question type you are looking for.

The switchers to show and hide the survey header, description and footer are now in the the Add panel.

Boost the quality of addresses

You might be familiar with the address question type. If not, check this post for details. This release introduces the concept of minimum address accuracy, which you can optionally set to boost the quality of your address data.

As respondents type an address, Survey123 checks how well the text entered matches existing entries in your locator. A perfect match gives a score of 100.  It is always good practice to store the match score as an attribute. That way, you will know how good your location data is!  Additionally, you can now use the accuracy score as a data validation rule: If the score is below your threshold, the address will not be accepted.

Note: You will want to use this new feature with caution. For example if your locator is not up to date, it is not a good idea to pick a high score.

Changes to choice lists (single choice, dropdown, ranking…)

Starting with this update, you can’t modify existing choices in a list. This used to be allowed, but it had the potential to cause data inconsistency.  With this release, if you need to update choices in a list, you will need to delete the choice first, and replace it with a new one.   It may seem like more work at first, but it will save you headaches in the future.

Fixes

• DE-000005673 BUG-000150545 Placing the cursor before a character by a single click on a question label in ArcGIS Survey 123 website auto selects the character
• DE-000005751 BUG-000150958 In ArcGIS Survey123 Connect 3.15, the select_one questions with an autocomplete search() appearance in a CSV file display the choice list name in the web form.
• BUG-000150405 If the type is decimal in the browser with the French language, the question hidden using body::esri::visible in ArcGIS Survey123 Connect is not hidden.
• BUG-000147721 ArcGIS Survey123 web app returns different results for the measurement calculations compared to the field app and the measurements on the map question
• BUG-000146779 The ArcGIS Survey123 web app does not allow using ‘appearance: “multiline”’ for a text question with ‘multiline predictivetext’ or ‘multiline nopredictivetext’.
• BUG-000146859 The Overview tab of the ArcGIS Survey123 website accessed from Portal for ArcGIS 10.9.1 does not display the summary graph of a survey if the existing feature layer used in the survey is published as a reference.
• BUG-000150000 – Default value of ‘0’ is not present in XLSX or XML file for numeric questions

What’s new in the Survey123 web app

What about having people complete your forms over the web?  Your web forms can be embedded within a website, linked from social media, and so on. That’s what the Survey123 web app is for. Nothing to install!

File uploads get easier: just drag and drop

Do you want to upload a PDF or some other file as part of your form?  Simply drag and drop your files and Survey123 will do the rest.  This new feature is particularly useful if you complete a form on a laptop or desktop computer.

What’s new in the Survey123 field app

The Survey123 field app is available for iOS, Android and Windows. Use it if you need to work offline, or if you want additional features not available in the web app: photo markup, watermarks, integration with laser rangefinders and external GNSS receivers…

The latest build number for the Survey123 field app is 3.15.156. Download it from the app stores to benefit from the following fixes:

Fixes

• BUG-000147248 The ArcGIS Survey123 field app cannot load the dynamic choices using the search appearance from a feature service hosted in a different web GIS platform (ArcGIS Online vs. Enterprise) than where the survey is published to.
• BUG-000148482 In the ArcGIS Survey 123 app, opening a public survey from another portal or organization while logged in returns the error message, “Survey not found – Survey ID … does not exist or is inaccessible.”
• BUG-000148938 Long pressing the survey tile in the ArcGIS Survey123 app allows the submission of new survey entries when the ‘Allow new surveys to be collected’ setting is disabled.
• BUG-000148973 Polygons and lines shift position when using the panning option in the ArcGIS Survey123 app for Windows if the display scale is not set to 100 percent.
• BUG-000151130 Inconsistent device outputs for iOS devices when using the parameter pulldata(“@Property“, ‘deviceModel’).
• DE-000004990 BUG-000144605 ArcGIS Survey123 ignores the forward proxy settings..

What’s coming next

A localization issue in the calendar control of web forms was recently reported. The fix did not make it to this release, but we will address it before the end of next week.

Within 2022, we plan updates in September, October and December.  A few features planned include:

• Spatial calculations in designer
• Enhanced XLSForm support: pulldata(“@layer”)
• Configure your own Survey123 organization templates
• Captcha for web forms
• Reports in Microsoft Power Automate
• Multilingual surveys in the web designer
• Update feature layer domains when an XLSForm list is updated

Support for location sharing, indoors and smart assistants coming in 2023, among many more things. Get the details from the Survey123 Early Adopter Program.