Notifications Alerting User of Retirement of item

parkcountygis

Just last week I became aware of two of our long standing story maps being unavailable due to retirement. I know I am not alone in that I do not read every newsletter for every application/service/etc. that ESRI puts out. I do however login to ArcGIS Online every single day. Can we please implement a notification when an item will become completely inaccessible if no replacement has been linked? I had no idea I would not be able to access these storymaps whatsoever. They were created in 2014, I inherited them when I started my position last year. I did not understand they'd not even be able to be viewed. It's difficult to recreate something you cannot see.

Please implement a notification system via ArcGIS Online for things like this. I didn't know these weren't open-able until I went in and clicked on them. 

Laura

I definitely understand the frustration—especially with older StoryMaps that get inherited without clear visibility into their lifecycle.

Esri does communicate retirements in a few ways: through product lifecycle pages, release notes, blog posts, and webinars, and for major tools there are often multi-year timelines (for example, Web AppBuilder was announced for retirement years in advance). In some cases, items also show warnings or banners on the item page itself when they’re deprecated or tied to older frameworks. I've seen this with things like basemaps. 

That said, I agree there’s still a gap in discoverability. Those communications are easy to miss if you’re not actively following newsletters or release updates, and there isn’t always a clear in-product notification in ArcGIS Online when you’re just viewing an item day-to-day.