Migrate a Survey123 form and associated data to new organization manually (without Python)

Summary

This workflow is one of many possible workflows to migrate surveys from one organization to another. This article discusses how to do this manually by replacing survey forms downloaded via Survey123 Connect, modifying them to implement them in the new organization, and re-publishing the feature layer to the new organization.

Procedure

To replicate a survey in another organization, ensure that the same feature layer is available in the other organization, this can either be done through a Distributed Collaboration, or by publishing the data directly to the new organization. To do this, export the hosted layer as a file geodatabase and publish it as a hosted feature layer in the destination organization. Alternatively, you can publish the feature service from the original data source from ArcGIS Pro.

While publishing the data to the second organization, make sure the layer and table names (if related and is included in the service), match the originals in the first organization as the form still refers to the previous layer, described in the steps below:

Scenario: Replicate Survey123 form and associated feature service from Organization A to Organization B

After republishing the data and related tables, if applicable, as a feature service to Organization B, proceed with the following steps:

1. Sign in to Organization A via Survey123 Connect.
   • If the survey was published from the same machine, the XLS form can be found in the following location:

C:\User\<UserName>\ArcGIS\My Survey Designs\<Survey Name>\<Survey Name.xlsx.

Otherwise, you can download the survey in Connect. The XLS form is located in the same path but the survey's folder has a random id instead of the survey name.

2. Sign out from Organization A and Sign in to Organization B via Survey123 Connect.

There are two options to publish the feature service, either using an existing feature service, or publishing the survey from a file.

Publishing a Survey using an existing feature service

1. Create a new survey using an existing feature service method and select the recently published feature service.
2. Navigate to the relevant folder path mentioned in Step 1, above, and copy the original xlsx form and paste in the new survey folder to be published to Organization B.
3. If using the same name for the new survey as the original survey, you'll be prompted to overwrite the XLS form. If the new survey has a different name, delete the current XLS form and rename the XLS form you copied to have the same name as your new survey.
4. Publish the survey from Connect to the new organization.

Publishing a Survey from File

1. If you cannot create a survey using the existing feature service method, create a new survey using the File option and select the XLS form from Step 1, above.
2. Open the XLS for, go to Settings Tab > modify the Submission URL. The URL must be the Sharing REST URL associated with Portal/ArcGIS Online item. For example, "https://<host>:<port>/arcgis/sharing/rest/content/items/<item_id>". You must provide the URL of the feature layer item, as shown in the example. A common mistake is to use the feature layer URL instead, which is not supported.
3. Sign in to Organization B from a web browser and navigate to the feature layer to be used with the survey form > Item Details page > take note of the item id and the name of the primary layer in your feature layer.
4. Replace the <item_id> in the URL with the item id and type the layer name in the form_id column. Keep in mind that this is not the name of the item or the feature service, rather it's the name of the primary sub layer in the feature layer.
5. Publish your survey from Connect to the new organization.

To create this URL, you must concatenate the Item ID with the portal Content Root. As described in the article Use Survey123 with existing feature layers,

https://<host>:<port>/arcgis/sharing/rest/content/items/21a6c530b31a4523bdff7gg94c9c5d9a

This workflow is a substitute to the Clone method using Python, as mentioned in the article in the Related Information section, in cases where the Python method is not applicable due to the following limitations:

• Clone fails with non-ASCII characters in the service name
• Cloning is limited to 1000 records
• BUG-000136846 - The clone_items() method fails when attempting to clone a public hosted feature layer view hosted by another organization with the error message, "User does not have permissions to access this service."
• BUG-000141004 - ArcGIS API for Python clone_items() method isn’t re-creating the item info URL’s for surveys published from the web designer
  • The workaround is to download the survey from the target environment and immediatly update it using the file downloaded.