Survey123 publish failure from existing feature service due to GlobalID and related table inconsistencies

Description

Users may encounter issues when creating or publishing a Survey123 form from an existing hosted feature layer that contains related tables (repeats). The form may fail to publish or return generic errors despite appearing correctly configured.

This issue is commonly observed when working with feature services that include parent-child relationships or generated tables, especially if the schema has been modified after initial creation.

Symptoms include:

• Survey123 form creation succeeds but publishing fails
• Generic or unclear error messages during publish
• Issue occurs only with a specific feature layer
• Layer contains related tables or repeat structures

Error Messages
Users may encounter errors when publishing the Survey123 form:

• “Custom feature service submission_url is not compatible with this survey”
• Validation errors related to schema and field requirements

Cause

The issue is caused by schema inconsistencies in the hosted feature layer, specifically related to:

• GlobalID field issues
• Missing GlobalID field in the parent layer
• Corrupted or altered GlobalID values
• Parent-child relationship inconsistencies
• Relationships rely on GlobalID but are improperly configured
• Child table GUID field does not correctly reference parent GlobalID
• Relationship definitions become invalid after schema changes
• Generated / related tables (Survey123 repeats)
• Existing related tables may have mismatched schema
• Broken linkage between parent and child tables

These inconsistencies prevent Survey123 from properly establishing relationships required for form submission.

Solution or Workaround

The recommended resolution is to re-create the feature service to ensure a clean and valid schema.

1. Export the existing data.
   • Export the hosted feature layer to a file geodatabase (FGDB).
2. Publish a new hosted feature layer.
   • Upload and publish the exported data as a new feature service.
   • Ensure the GlobalID field is automatically created and system-managed.
3. Reconfigure relationships:
   • Re-create related tables properly
   • Ensure:
     • Parent layer uses GlobalID
     • Child tables use GUID fields referencing the parent GlobalID
4. Create a new Survey123 form.
   1. Use the newly published feature service.
   2. Publish the survey.

The Survey123 form should publish successfully without errors.