Mandatory Observation Fields

General
1

Has anyone experienced an issue where a mandatory observation field shows as blank in the final observation?

The project in question has some mandatory observation fields, which normally seem to work as intended. I frequently log observations in the project (on an Android phone) and if one of the fields is missing, it will not allow for me to proceed with logging the observation.

While reviewing observations from this season, I noticed that one of the project participants had a few observations that were missing mandatory fields. I let them know the fields were missing and they were able to update them, but I’m wondering how the project would allow the observation to post with those mandatory fields missing?

Here is an example from the project. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/276862595
This observation was able to post, although it is missing mandatory fields ‘Building Name or Address, downtown STL’ and ‘Incidental find’.

Could this occur if the app is out of date? Does OS make a difference? I know that one participant, who seems to have this issue particularly often, uses the app on an iPhone. Any ideas and insights are greatly appreciated. Thank you!

2

I have noticed some of my observations with blank mandatory fields because those were added to a project after I had already added my observations. Could that be the case here? Or were those fields always mandatory since the beginning of the project?

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3

I notice the observation was made with the iPhone app. I know the Android app has less than ideal functionality for observation fields, so I’m wondering if that is the cause. I’ve seen on my own observations when I add it to a project from the android app, the observation field will be set to whatever the default for the field is.