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Add a lock and alert messages to StoryMap projects when they are being accessed

SaraJL

Hello everyone!

While multiple people can collaborate on a StoryMap project, multiple people can't edit at the same time. From a dev prospective it can be difficult to add synchronous editing, but it would be extremely helpful to place a lock on projects if they are being accessed to anyone that is not an admin.

For example - if a StoryMap is currently being edited by User A, if User B tries to open that project from a Group - instead of the project opening, User B would receive a message that says something along the lines of "This project is currently being accessed by another user" with a redirect or a button that says to View the project instead.

Admins currently receive a message that alerts us that we are allowed to open the project (any project) because of admin status. So it would be similar.

There is still a big learning curve with this because of how people are used to Google Apps and Microsoft collaboration. Something like this would be really helpful and would prevent some occasions where we've had users open up the same project and overwrite edits.

Thank you!

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Administration

Implemented

Status: Implemented

Kommentare

AaronKoelker

I agree some kind of notification would be nice, but my one concern as a user would be what happens if somebody leaves the project open and then walks away from their desk for an extended period, or even overnight when they leave the office for the day. They'd be holding the project hostage until somebody can track them down and ask them to close it.

I think a simple warning message might be better than hard lock-out. "Another user has this story open, proceed at your own risk" kind of thing.

A time-out that closes the page after an extended period could be another option—but I those can be annoying in their own way. If you make it too long, then it doesn't really solve the problem. If you make it too short then it could become disruptive to what's considered normal usage. Then there's the auto-saving and undo history to consider too, and what happens with that if a time-out triggers.

SaraJL

@AaronKoelker that's valid!

We've had a lot of difficulties with users leaving tabs open, and then another user in the group will try to access it - that's typically when we run into the issues of edits being overwritten or some things may/may not save. I'm hoping a message will be a stop-gap for this, because it's a pretty big problem. I think it will teach users to get more in the habit of closing out of projects, rather than people unknowingly not realizing that the project is already open.

Even Google Apps will lock people out of certain things when there are simultaneous editors (ie Google Sheets will lock cells that are being edited by a user).

People will also try to open the same project in multiple tabs on the same computer - they open Project A in a tab, and then forget that it's open, and then open Project A again in multiple tabs - which causes some problems because if they edit one tab and not the other, it looks like it not saving or it will cause issues with the edits as well.

I definitely think it's better to have an alert message, but I would prefer an access lock - I was in a class yesterday, and even though I had told people multiple times not to open the same project (in multiple demo sessions) it's the first thing everyone does because it's expected bahavior now from other applications. Since there is no prompt now, there is nothing that tells the user to not edit the project - it just opens in edit mode and it's assumed that the user just "knows" to not edit the content.

PeterKnoop

ArcGIS StoryMaps is supposed to provide a notification when someone else is already editing a story.

"If you are editing an ArcGIS StoryMaps item at the same time as someone else, a notification will appear and display their name and how long ago their last change was made." (source)

If you're not seeing such a notification, then perhaps you've uncovered a bug?

AaronKoelker

@PeterKnoop Huh, I haven't seen that before. Maybe haven't actually opened a story that someone else already had open yet, although feels unlikely.

PeterKnoop

@AaronKoelker it was introduced back in August 2020, so if it isn't working now, I would suspect a bug was introduced, perhaps in the most recent (Feb 2026) release.

AaronKoelker

@PeterKnoop Thanks. In that case it's probably has come up before and I'm just not remembering. Good to know it's a feature already!

SaraJL

@PeterKnoop for our org - it was a huge problem in fall semester! I go to a lot of working sessions in class, and I was able to see students opening the same project without a message. A message only shows up if admin try to access a project.

I think it may have been more than fall - I can't remember ever seeing an access message appear (and I've been doing StoryMaps for 7 years). We've had reoccurring issues with people openning projects and overriding edits, or losing updating because multipel people were accessing the same project.

I'm going have my students test this again today - but can anyone confirm if they get a message if they are NOT admin?

SaraJL

Quick update - I just had my student workers test this - and they are able to edit the same project at the same time as well. No message pops up when they access the project.

I'll probably submit a support ticket - but is this working for anyone else? If it is, could you share a screenshot?

PeterKnoop

@SaraJL I can confirm that is NOT currently working for us in ArcGIS Online. It has worked previously, however, so seems to be a new bug.

From an early 2025 presentation I did, below is what the pop-up notification looked like at the time:

PeterKnoop

I can also confirm it is still working as expected in StoryMaps on one of our ArcGIS Enterprise 11.5 instances, so the issue seems to be limited to ArcGIS Online.

SaraJL

I spoke with tech support and they confirm this is a bug! It was logged in. No timeline yet for when it will be resolved, but just passing the information along.

Thank you everyone for the help! I hope everyone is doing well!

oevans_storymaps

@SaraJL @PeterKnoop -- We just did some testing and the message appears to be working as expected for us in ArcGIS Online for non-administrators. The message was updated slightly since the screenshot posted above.

This is what I am seeing (and it is the expected result):

Authors A and B open an item in builder from the same saved state
Author A makes a change (autosave is triggered)
Author B makes a change (autosave is triggered)
"Someone else is editing..." message appears for Author B

This message appears for an author who attempts to make a change after another author tries to make a change from the same saved state.

The message would not appear in this case...

Author A opens an item in builder
Author A makes a change (autosave is triggered)
Author B opens the same item in builder (after Author A's change was saved)
Author B makes a change (autosave is triggered)
[No message is shown at this point]

Since B opened the item after A's change, B would see A's change and would be editing the item from that new state. If the authors both edit the item from this point, the message would appear as it did in the first case, above.

Please do submit a support ticket with more details if you are not seeing the behavior described above. If there are other issues you see or if you have more questions about this workflow it might be best to create a new thread in the questions board.

SaraJL

Incredibly frustrating - I received a message today that the bug was closed because the dev team determined this was expected behavior. So revisiting this as an idea.

I'm not sure how this is possible to do in Enterprise, and how a message can show up for admins accessing ArcGIS Online projects, but this is not possible to do for StoryMap projects hosted on ArcGIS Online.

So anywho - refloating this as an idea. It's fine if we can't have synchronous editing, but having some type of message or lock will prevent users from accidentally overwriting edits.

SaraJL

@OwenGeo I submitted a support ticket and it was closed because it was flagged as a bug and now the bug is closed. The message is still not working for us, I can reproduce it on all users.

It was flagged as non-reproducible, but the tech I was working with confirmed that they could reproduce this. So I'm not really sure what to do at this point. So incredibly frustrating.

PeterKnoop

@OwenGeo The issue is happening for us as well with "regular" accounts.

Our "regular" accounts, however, do have the "admin" privilege, through a custom Role, which enables them to create Shared Update groups on their own. Is the presence of that privilege perhaps triggering this issue?

oevans_storymaps

@SaraJL - Sorry for the confusion on the support side. Can you please share the incident number so I can look into things on that end?

@PeterKnoop - Can you specify which admin privilege(s) you're referring to? See Privileges granted to roles—ArcGIS Online Help | Documentation

Could either/both of you share a short video of the issue?

oevans_storymaps

@SaraJL -- Sorry, nevermind. I see the bug number in your screenshot and can use that to look into this.

PeterKnoop

@OwenGeo we have a case and bug open as well, BUG-000184405.

After following your steps closely, I can conform that I am able to trigger the notification by having both users attempt to make changes.

So the admin privilege observation maybe a red herring. For reference, these are the admin privileges that we grant to the custom role given to all of our typical users:

portal:admin:createUpdateCapableGroup -- Groups > Create with update capabilities
portal:admin:manageEnterpriseGroups -- Groups > Link to organization-specific group
portal:admin:reassignGroups -- Groups > Reassign ownership

Was it always the case that both users had to make an edit? Around here our recollection -- maybe flawed -- is that the notification used to appear without both users having to attempt to make changes?

SaraJL

@PeterKnoop For you last question, I was also curious about this. I thought there used to be a message that appeared right when users tried to access the same project in edit mode at the same time. But I might be wrong about that.

Back in 2018 when I started working here, I did have a student group that ended up having a major issue with their StoryMap because they had been editing it at the same time and overwrote eachother's edits (no message appeared to lock them out while editing it or accessing it) - I have a lot of documentation on it, and we have a pretty detailed training session in classes, but there are always a couple groups every semester that run into issues no matter what we do.

@OwenGeo We also use a custom role in ArcGIS Online (we're a smaller org and don't have Enterprise) - it's pretty much the Publisher role, but I gave everyone the ability to create groups with update capabilities.

Thank you for the help! I feel a little less crazy now 🙂

oevans_storymaps

@PeterKnoop @SaraJL - Ok, sounds like things are working as expected (and your custom roles are not affecting the appearance of these messages). 👍

Yes, this message always behaved as described above. BOTH authors need to make a change from the same saved state. When this happens, the second author that makes a change will see the message. ArcGIS StoryMaps was released in 2018, and this message was added after that (in 2019 or early 2020) based on feedback.

I'm not sure blocking an author from opening the builder is desirable, but we'd like to hear more about how you'd like that to work. How much time should the lock to be in effect after an author makes their last change?

In an upcoming release, we are planning to make the "Overwrite" button red to further discourage people from choosing that option.

SaraJL

@OwenGeo I'll see if I can get a video recording to show what we're seeing! It's a little hard to set up and test without getting 2 non-admin users and then recording it. I'm doing some logistics to try and figure it out. But I'll try to make a video recording and share it next week.

SaraJL

Just wanted to post a quick update - I have a meeting with a student group today who is reporting that their edits are being overwritten. They are not receiving a lock out message when they are trying to edit the same project.

Not exactly sure what to tell people at this point - my hunch is that people are probably leaving the project open for days on end, and then another person is accessing it. But I was also in a class on Tuesday where groups were able to access the same project in Edit mode and make changes without getting a message, so - it is what it is, I suppose.

oevans_storymaps

@SaraJL - Thank you for the update. I'm sorry that you appear to have another report of this. 😞

I wanted to reiterate that the current message does not appear simply if two people have the same item open in the builder. The message will also not appear if one person opens the item, makes a few changes, and then—after autosave completes for the first person's changes—a second person opens the item and makes changes.

The message only appears when a branch in the editing activity is detected. In other words, when changes are made by different authors to the same draft state. For example, in the situation I described in my earlier message.

Prompted by this thread, we have done extensive testing of these workflows over the last few weeks and have not been able to produce a situation where another author's edits are overwritten...except when we click the Overwrite button.

As I mentioned earlier, we are making some visual changes in a release at the end of the month to further discourage people from choosing the potentially destructive option. Here is what the new message will look like.

Here is the current message for comparison.

This was a quick change we could make to try to minimize accidental overwrites in the short term.

We are also still thinking about other things we can do minimize the chances of authors overwriting others' work while maintaining flexibility and will post here when we have more to report.

oevans_storymaps

@SaraJL - The update to the style of the button mentioned above was deployed in yesterday's release.

We are also testing some additional changes to try to further minimize the chances of lost work:

1) We are looking to add more friction and prevent accidentally clicking the wrong button. The overwrite option will not be clickable unless you first check the acknowledgement box.

Screenshot 2026-05-22 at 1.03.17 PM.jpg

2) We are also working on detecting "stale" builder sessions. This is a browser tab where someone has the builder open that they leave and come back to after a period of time. In those cases we'll require the author to exit the builder if changes have been made by others (so they won't even see an option to overwrite changes). They can then reopen the story in builder to load the latest draft so they can continue editing from there.

Please let us know your thoughts on these changes.

SaraJL

@OwenGeo Thank you for letting me know! This is really helpful - I think having people acknowledge the message should hopefully catch some other groups while working.

I'll do some testing early next week when the summer student workers are in and let you know - thank you again for looking into this!

Adjusting the tab functionality would also be excellent - we definitely have scenarios where people just open projects in tabs and they're just left open for days/weeks/sometimes months. Then it either causes conflicts were group projects, but it happens with individual projects too. I'm not exaggarating when I say sometimes people have 20+ tabs open in a browser (they just forget where the project is open and open a new tab....)

I'll try testing it and see if I can make a video recording. Thank you again!

LoreyStinton

For those concerned about locking other users out when someone has the storymap open but isn't working on it for extended spans of time, perhaps it would be good to automatically logout the "idle" user (just from the storymap) if they are idle for too long. The warning message is a good start but it would be better to only allow one user the ability to edit at a time, with others locked out from that functionality and only have the ability to view it. If closing the storymap application to the idle user could be an option, could that be a setting established by the group, the org, or Esri? (would this need to be considered as a separate idea?)

oevans_storymaps

@LoreyStinton - Thanks for sharing your feedback on this issue.

Locking authors from opening the builder is not feasible and also quickly gets into complicated logic and potentially frustrating situations for group members if someone accidentally leaves the builder open, so we are not considering that at this time. However, I believe the update I mentioned above that will detect stale edit sessions meets some of the same needs that you mentioned, so we'll be interested to hear your feedback on that when it is released next week.

oevans_storymaps

@SaraJL @PeterKnoop -- After last night's update, we've updated the messaging and workflows for situations where multiple authors are editing the same StoryMap item. Here's how it works now:

If you leave a browser tab with one of the ArcGIS StoryMaps builders and return to it later and then try to make a change, the builder checks whether anyone else has made changes in that time. If no other changes have been made, you'll be able to continue editing. This was already happening, as described above.

After last night's update here's what has changed...

If someone else has made changes to the same item (including you in another browser tab), you will see one of two things:

If it has been less than 2 minutes since the browser tab was active, you will see a message that shows who made changes and provide you with the ability to exit the builder or overwrite the other changes. However, to overwrite the previous changes you must check an acknowledgement box, and only then will the overwrite button become active.

Screenshot 2026-05-22 at 12.32.52 PM (2).jpg

If you returned to the browser tab after 2 minutes, you'll see a message that the item has been edited and you must exit the builder.

We hope this improves the experience and further minimizes the chances of losing work.

I will mark this idea as implemented since the alert messages and workflows have been updated, and there is now essentially a lock after two minutes of inactivity.

Please comment on this thread to let us know what you think about the latest updates. If there are additional changes desired, please submit a new idea for consideration.

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