Some time during last week (2/15/16), the RSS feed that announced updates to the service packs and patches to software was removed or moved elsewhere. The old RSS URL is 'http://rss.esri.com/support/patchesandservicepacks. There was a RSS icon on the service pack and patches webpage on the right-hand side of the screen (see screen shot). This older blog article described the steps to subscribe to the feed 'https://blogs.esri.com/esri/supportcenter/2012/07/13/subscribing-to-an-rss-feed-for-patches-and-service-packs/.Did anyone else experience this?
Hi Bryan, the Support website, where the service packs and patches downloads are hosted, is currently in the process of migrating to a new site. The new Support site will include a way for users to receive notifications when new content is added to downloads, the knowledge base, and other repositories. This new website, and the new content subscription functionality, will be coming online in the next few weeks.
Thank you for the reply and information...that answers my question. Looking forward to the new site.
And how are you going to notify current RSS subscribers of the new notification system?
When the new subscription system is launched, there will be a new notice on the Esri Support main page and a corresponding blog post on the Support blog.
Hi Joseph - your last reply to this was March 7. Can you provide an update?
Thanks
David
Hi all - so no response yet to this? No time estimate on when the feeds will reappear? It's been six weeks since the last reply
Short response:
I just took another look, and nothing of use yet specifically for download announcements.
Long response:
Esri's new support (beta) site is available here: http://newsupport.esri.com/sitecore/content/support/Home. However, as far as I can tell it does not contain a RSS capability (or similar capability) on its downloads page, which is here: http://newsupport.esri.com/Downloads. Note: many of the links from the downloads page do not seem to work (as of 5/5/16). Esri also has its support blog, which is here: https://blogs.esri.com/esri/supportcenter/. The blog does have a RSS feed, but it looks to be for any blog announcement: https://blogs.esri.com/esri/supportcenter/feed/. Of course, I could have missed something...but I guess that might be more of a site usability issue.
To Esri - it would be very beneficial to have a RSS (or similar) capability specifically for announcing new product releases / patches. Can the 'support site' support this functionality?
Hi Bryan - Yes I just discovered all this as well and you are correct, no RSS feed on the new support page as far as I can tell either. In fact, I had difficulty finding patches and service packs at all on the beta page, had to revert back to the current page
One step forward, two steps back. That is how almost every "new and improved" Esri site works for at least a year or two after it is stood up. I was just talking with my Esri contacts the other day about bug-related information that used to be visible in the Customer Care Portal and My Support but don't exist in My Esri, yet another two steps back.
This transition is being bungled, but I can't say I am surprised seeing how the transition to My Esri or just about any other "new and improved" Esri administrative site has gone in the past year or two. But we shouldn't worry, they will get all the kinks out just in time to replace it by something else so we get to start over yet again.
Sadly, I think Esri is abandoning RSS for patch and service pack notification. As Joseph Mayfield stated, they are moving to a "new subscription system." Why have a publically available RSS feed when you can smother the information through extra process and subscriptions?
It gets worse, the subscription system appears to be bogged down in minutia. I found the "Subscribe" button after I followed some Download links. I clicked it and appeared to get subscribed, although I have no confirmation of that subscription and am not sure if I will ever get a notification from subscribing. Suspending disbelief and assuming I will eventually get a notification, it appears my subscription was only to Desktop > ArcGIS for Desktop > ArcGIS for Desktop > 10.4. If I want to subscribe to Desktop > ArcGIS for Desktop > ArcGIS for Desktop > 10.3.x or Desktop > ArcGIS for Desktop > ArcGIS Pro > 1.1.1 (yes, 1.1 is separate from 1.1.1 or 1.2), I need to hit the "Subscribe" button again. Marvelous, absolutely marvelous. I can't wait to subscribe to dozens or hundreds of subscriptions instead of a single RSS feed.
Who knows, maybe the site is simply broken and my one subscription covers multiple products but it just appears not to. I think in this case, I will hope for a broken site instead of believing Esri really wants subscriptions to be available only at such a fine level.
Joshua Bixby David Coley Bryan Kelley
Thanks for your feedback on the patch and software updates notifications. I understand that this is important functionality that is needed on the site, and we are working to build a solution that meets these requirements. The subscription service for the beta version of the new Support site is still being refined. We are currently updating the backend process and expect to roll out the improvements in the next few days. When it is launched, the new subscription service will be introduced and explained on the Support Blog.
Regarding no longer supporting RSS and replacing it with a subscription service with kinks: I am not really excited with having to have yet another point solution hanging on to the periphery of things once again presented as the "new and better way".
I have created a python script that scrapes the Esri support website for patch listings.
You can modify the URL scraped to match the products and versions you are interested in.
You can also check if the date of the patch is X days or X weeks old. That is, if you run this script every week, you would enable the logic to check for any new patches released within the last week.
The script is available at https://github.com/pmacMaps/esri-arcpy-python/blob/main/check-esri-patches-website.py.
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