"Creating form item" during publishing to Portal from Survey123 Connect hangs

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02-21-2017 09:21 PM
ChrisMcLean2
New Contributor III

Hi, thank you in advance for the your inputs.

I think I know what the problem is, and need some guidance to whether or not this can be solved. We have a Portal and Server setup here, and the servers are not connected to the internet. I think that (even through I'm publishing a survey from a PC with access to the internet) the server can not reach the XLS Conversion Service to create the xForm. Is there a way around this? Could I host the XLS conversion service privately? Or could I manually upload the xForm?

Here is the information I could gather:

1) When I try to publish a Survey123 form to the Portal it stops at this point:
image

2) The feature service is uploaded correctly to the Portal:
image
image

3) However, the xform service is not being created and/or pushed to the Portal. This is the log from the publishing:
image

The survey "staging" folder has this in it, is there some way to publish this manually?

I appreciate the time taken to look through this problem. 

Thanks,

Chris

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ChrisMcLean2
New Contributor III

Hi Keith,

Is a QA environment not available to test the different configurations?

We've setup a 3-tier infrastructure here - so separate Portal, ArcGIS Application and Database servers. We're still implementing single sign-on through IWA. This is my experience, I'll include as much information as I can... might not be highly technical, but will hopefully solve your issue.

Working without a problem:

1) The web adaptor was install on the Portal machine and configured with remote administrator access

2) Installed Connect and the survey's published immediately with IWA and not issues

Then to optimize the ArcGIS servers (we're having performance issues), ESRI changed the web adaptor configuration and installed it on the App servers and removed remote admin access. I started to receive the same error when publishing forms.

I thought that it must be the web adaptor configuration that caused this error. So, I bypassed it using the:

https://server.domain.com:7443/arcgis/  (the last "/" is important... same with the normal setup). This setting was applied in the Survey 123 Connect settings... you'll have to sign in with a built-in Portal account (I just used the portaladmin account) to be able to publish (no web adaptor = no IWA)... the form and features published correctly.

For Survey123 (the app) I use the "normal" address via the web adapter. https://server.domain.com/portal/

If you share the form and feature correctly, then users (connecting via web adapter though AD) will be able to access, download and use the survey form.

I hope this helps, can't promise anything... it depends highly on your server configuration. Please let me know if it does help on your side, if so it's something to report to the Survey123 team.

Using version 2.0.11 Survey123 Connect

Thanks,

Chris

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23 Replies
AndrewWatkins
New Contributor

I am having the same issue, were you able to resolve it if so how.

Many thanks,

ANdrwe

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IsmaelChivite
Esri Notable Contributor

Hi Andrewmcgwatkins‌   Survey123 Connect for ArcGIS requires access to our hosted Survey123 API at the moment, even when working against your own Portal.  Creating a setup for our API is in our backlog.

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ChrisMcLean2
New Contributor III

Hi Andrew,

After going through the problem with ESRI's technical team here in South Africa, the conclusion that they made was that the Portal we have deployed is configured in a Tier 1 configuration (which they deployed) (so everything is installed on one server - the Portal, ArcGIS Server and Data Store) and the Windows Authentication that we have setup. These two issues seem to be the reason as to why it's not working. At least this was their conclusion.

Another issue could be the Security Certificate being used which is SHA-1, and not SHA-256. This is also (apparently) the reason why the ESRI Maps for SharePoint installation has limited functionality and does not allow for a Portal guest account to be configured on the ESRI map web part, and we're not able to select feature in the ESRI Map web part (select function is disable).

Currently, we've been busy trying to troubleshoot these issues for 2 months now, and we still don't have a solution for the Pilot server. We're waiting for the QA and PROD servers to test whether or not the different configuration will have better results.

It's very frustrating this side not being able to test to the functionality of these products on our system. Having the free ArcGIS Online Trial account does help though to test the functionality, but we can't deploy and test with our users.

Let me know if you have any luck that side... I'll let you know if there's any progress on this side.

Thanks,

Chris

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PaulDavidson1
Occasional Contributor III

Chris:

We are seeing the same issue in our Portals here. 

We are pretty sure it is related to using AD/IWA (Integrated Windows Authentication.) 

In fact, given the work around, I don't see what else it could be.

We have a DEV/Test/Prod setup, all three are all in one servers (Portal, Data Store and ArcGIS Server are all running on same server, which are VMware (Vsphere)  virtual servers (Win2K 2012R2.)  All three are using the web adaptor under IIS.

Test and Prod both are set to use IWA and both fail when publishing a Survey123 in the same manner you describe. The Feature Service gets published but the Form does not.

The work around we have found is to:

Turn off IWA, publish your Survey123, Turn IWA back on.

1. Using IIS Manager on your Portal server, Navigate to your Portal website and open Authentication.

   a. Disable Windows Authentication

   b. Enable Anonymous Authentication

2. Publish your Survey123 using a publisher account on Portal that is not your AD login. 

3. Go back to IIS Manager and reverse what you did in #1 to turn IWA back on (Enable Windows Authentication and Disable Anonymous Authentication.)

You should end up with your Survey123 published (both Feature Layer and the Form) and IWA working.

Obviously, probably need to do this after hours when others are not on your Portal.

Not an optimal fix for sure but it does seem to work for us.

Hope this works for you.

JamesTedrick
Esri Esteemed Contributor

Hi Paul,

Could you retry with v2.0 of Survey123?  We've introduced support for IWA Portals in this release.

PaulDavidson1
Occasional Contributor III

Hi James:

We are still having publishing failures when in IWA mode.

So far it appears that we are creating the Feature Layer

but we're still getting shutdown when the Form tries to upload:

code: 400

[

   "Folder title 'Survey-Test Upload to Test Portal' not available.

]

  Unable to create folder.

However, this problem has occurred on our Dev and Test Portal.  And Dev is not using IWA.

Yet, when we take Test Portal out of IWA mode, then we can upload ok.

Very strange....

This looks to me like a standard folder permissions problem.

Do we need to open up permissions on the Portal VMs folders such as: arcgisportal or arcgisserver or arcgisdatastore ?

Where are the forms written to on the Portal server? 

I'm guessing that they're stored server side?

Suggestions?

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IsmaelChivite
Esri Notable Contributor

Hi Paul. Have a look at this thread to solve the Error 400 you are getting: https://community.esri.com/message/613133 

KeithHupperts
New Contributor III

Hi James Tedrick,

  We are also experiencing this issue with the latest version of Connect (downloaded from the ersi site today) and publishing to ArcGIS Server 10.3.1.  Shutting down IIS isn't really an option for us as there are hundreds of users on the system.

Keith,

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ChrisMcLean2
New Contributor III

Hi Keith,

Is a QA environment not available to test the different configurations?

We've setup a 3-tier infrastructure here - so separate Portal, ArcGIS Application and Database servers. We're still implementing single sign-on through IWA. This is my experience, I'll include as much information as I can... might not be highly technical, but will hopefully solve your issue.

Working without a problem:

1) The web adaptor was install on the Portal machine and configured with remote administrator access

2) Installed Connect and the survey's published immediately with IWA and not issues

Then to optimize the ArcGIS servers (we're having performance issues), ESRI changed the web adaptor configuration and installed it on the App servers and removed remote admin access. I started to receive the same error when publishing forms.

I thought that it must be the web adaptor configuration that caused this error. So, I bypassed it using the:

https://server.domain.com:7443/arcgis/  (the last "/" is important... same with the normal setup). This setting was applied in the Survey 123 Connect settings... you'll have to sign in with a built-in Portal account (I just used the portaladmin account) to be able to publish (no web adaptor = no IWA)... the form and features published correctly.

For Survey123 (the app) I use the "normal" address via the web adapter. https://server.domain.com/portal/

If you share the form and feature correctly, then users (connecting via web adapter though AD) will be able to access, download and use the survey form.

I hope this helps, can't promise anything... it depends highly on your server configuration. Please let me know if it does help on your side, if so it's something to report to the Survey123 team.

Using version 2.0.11 Survey123 Connect

Thanks,

Chris