Editi submission - error 400 contact the server administrator / file could not be found

User Support Data Management
1

Issue with status updates and attachments in the collection form - Kobotoolbox

Hello, everyone!

I’m facing a critical issue with a form used for managing and tracking contractual notifications in our organization. We have 34 units feeding our data collection, and everything was running smoothly until, close to reaching one year of use, we encountered a bug.

Problem description
Our form allows us to track notification stages, and once a notification is sent, we need to update its status to indicate its new phase. However, upon making this update, the bug shown in the image description below occurs, preventing the change from being reflected in the table view. Interestingly, when opening the submission for editing, the field appears correctly updated.
Image description:
Submission Failed - Data Server did not accept data. Contact the server administrator. (400)

Additionally, files attached to the form are also experiencing inconsistencies, which started occurring at the same time as the status update issue. I suspect that the file name length might be the cause
Image description: File nould not be found

Relevant information

  • User: controladoria_acqua
  • Project: Notification Management
  • Server: Kobotoolbox

Console error messages

  1. /submission/MSCSgrYa:1 Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 400 ()
  2. controller-webform.js:454 submission failed Object

Help needed
I’d like to know if anyone has experienced this issue before and if there’s a solution to ensure that status updates are correctly reflected in the table view. I’d also like to understand whether the error with attached files is related to this problem. If anyone can provide guidance on server settings or adjustments to the form, it would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you in advance for any support or insights! :blush:

2

Welcome to the community, @controladoria_acqua! Is this an issue with only a single submission or is it an issue with the entire submissions from the project?

3

In approximately 150 submissions, we detected 15 that presented this inconsistency. As instructed in a forum thread, we deleted and resubmitted the document. However, this approach unfortunately conveys an image of instability to the users who feed the system.

We noticed that the instability began after updating the form, in which we added three fields for attaching files. The issue occurs because, in some situations, in addition to internally updating the submission status in a field, we also attach a file corresponding to that status.

In one of our tests, we tried to update the submission with three attachments and received error 400. After deleting the third attachment and resubmitting, the process was successfully completed, but this solution did not prove to be a fixed rule.

4

In addition to the information above, I would like to inform you that there was no duplication of the UUID. I also tested to see if the problem was related to the format and length of the file name, but even after renaming them, the submission was still not possible, displaying the error message 400. In addition, as reported, we started to detect error messages indicating ‘file could not be found’, but despite this, this occurrence does not always prevent the submission from being updated, and it does not seem to be a determining error for updating. If you can help stabilize the project, I would be very grateful, as the collection units are very enthusiastic about it, and it is a great contribution to the organization and management of information.