Story Map Tour Builder: Settings Not Opening

ColleenKutter

Settings functions not available to use. I created Story Map Tour App from template from existing web map. Builder had been working fine for a bit, but now I can’t access or change settings in builder mode. All other tabs (save, share, help) are opening and show pop up info to use. Have tried starting over, recreating same app from same webmap but still had these issues. App and web map are hosted on ArcGIS server. Ran Story Map analysis, says no issues. How can I re-access settings?

RupertEssinger

Hi Colleen

Sorry about the issue. What you found is a bug in the latest version of Story Map Tour. If the web map used in your Map Tour (or a web map that you are going to publish in a new map tour) references its basemap layer(s) via HTTP instead of HTTPS, the locator maps that let you interactively specify locations in the Add, Import and Settings dialogs in the Map Tour Builder don't draw, and in addition because of that the Settings dialog won't open at all. 

The workaround to this is to update the web map used in your Map Tour (or the one you are intending to use in a new Map Tour) so that the basemap layer(s) are referenced from the web map via HTTPS instead of HTTP. You can't do that inside the Story Map Builder.

The easiest way to do that is as follows:

1. Close the Story Map Tour Builder if it is open.
2. Open the web map that your Story Map Tour uses (or open the web map that you intend to use in a new tour). An easy way to open the web map used in your existing Story Map Tour is to go to the My Stories section of the Story Maps website, find your story, expand it to see its content listing, click Maps and then click Edit Map next to the map. You can also access the web map used by your Story Map Tour via ArcGIS My Contents. 
3. Once your web map is open in the ArcGIS Online Map Viewer, make sure that the URL in your web browser address bar starts with HTTPS not HTTP. For example you may need to copy the URL out of your web browser address bar, paste it into a new tab, and edit it to start with HTTPS.
4. Save the web map. That should update your basemap to use HTTPS. If you now open your Story Map Tour (or create a new Story Map Tour from that web map, you should hopefully not experience the issue above anymore.

Another way to update your web map so that it references its basemap layer(s) via HTTP is to follow steps 1, 2 and 3 above and then change the basemap that it uses by adding the basemap again. For example in your case, where your web map uses this tile layer as its basemap, you'd choose Add > Search for Layers, find that layer, and  in the search results instead of clicking Add, you'd click the title of the layer and then choose Use As Basemap in the panel that appears.

If that doesn't work for any reason, or if you are an advanced user who wants to see some behind the scenes stuff that you don't normally need to see, you can also use the ArcGIS Online Assistant to manually edit the JSON (i.e. the underlying info behind any item in ArcGIS Online that details what that item contains) of the web map to use HTTPS instead of HTTP for its basemap layer(s). To do that you would do steps 1 and 2 above, and then open the ArcGIS Online Assistant, sign in to it with your ArcGIS Online account, search for your web map in the contents or paste in the ID of the web map, choose "View an item's JSON" from the "I want to" dropdown, click on your web map, scroll through the JSON to the Data section, click the Edit icon, scroll to the bottom of that section to the baseMapLayers part, and edit the URL(s) to make them HTTPS instead of HTTP, then scroll up and click the save button next to the pencil icon to save your change. You should be good to go at this point. Note that editing the JSON of entries in ArcGIS Online can introduce errors if you make a bad edit.

Note: Map Tour users don't all need to do the above steps. The above steps are only needed if you experience the same issue that Colleen did with the Settings dialog not opening, and the locator map in the Add and Import dialogs not drawing.

Sorry again about the issue and thanks for letting us know you found this problem. If possible let us know if the steps above fix it for you.

Rupert