Skip to main content

In the past couple of weeks two previously-reliable webhooks from separate Survey123 surveys to Flow have received empty JSON payloads, or possibly no payload at all, whilst still triggering our respective webhook automations and email actions. 

Below is what the automation log is showing with nothing seemingly coming through for the feature object:

I’m curious as to whether others have observed this recently and whether there may have been a change in the JSON provided by Survey123 - I will enquire to our ESRI vendor/Geonet about that - but thought it also worth posting here from a Flow point of view, not least if we unearth a solution that helps us all.

Webhooks were set up following this Safe article https://support.safe.com/hc/en-us/articles/25407775273101-Push-Data-from-ArcGIS-Survey123-to-an-Application-in-Real-time-with-Webhooks

We are on Flow Hosted 2023.1.11 Build 23636 - linux-x64

Hi @chriswilson, thanks for reaching out about this. 

I am not aware of any changes to the Survey123 JSON on the Esri side. Were any changes made to the FME Flow configuration or Automation that might align with the change in behaviour? 

If you configure a new Survey123 and Automation, is the webhook payload still empty?

Does your Automation parse the JSON payload into webhook keys, or does it intake the full payload as a JSON object?

Thanks, 

Sanae


Hi @sanaeatsafe , thanks for your message.

No changes were made by us to anything on the Survey123 side or in Flow, this behaviour just occurred.  When I set up the webhooks I was following the default approach in the documentation I linked so parsing the JSON keys as the article instructs.

Creating a new Survey123 webhook and Flow automation worked around the issue - I have done this for one of our two surveys with the other to follow shortly.  Once I’d recreated the first one our local ESRI support closed their case, so I’m not sure we’ll get to the bottom of what happened, but if I find anything else out I’ll post it here.

Thanks, Chris


Thanks for the update @chriswilson. I’m not sure how to explain the change in behaviour, but this could happen if the payload content or request parameters (like headers) has changed. As far as I could find, Esri does not offer official logging for Survey123 webhooks: https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-survey123-ideas/provide-webhook-logging/idi-p/1059514. However, since Survey123 is a client-side Webhook, you might be able to just use your browser’s developer tools to view the outgoing request. With dev tools open, submit a survey from both the old and new apps. Use the network tab to compare the body, the headers, and responses. Any differences between the two may give you insight into the issue. Hope that helps!
Thanks, 

Sanae


Thanks Sanae - if the issue recurs I’ll try that.


Reply