How to display full metadata in ArcGIS Online open data

Question

Our organization, for the most part, tries to offer at least basic metadata for our open data offerings. However, for feature services where we provide fairly robust metadata, viewers are only given a subset of the metadata we took the time to enter.

I have gone through the metadata setting on our organization's setting page and none of the options appears allow the display of the full metadata. Is there a setting I am missing?

-Michael

DataAdministrator · Answer

Our agency ended up splitting in how to resolve the display issue with ArcGIS Online, but both of us moved away from an ESRI solution. Now we only use ArcGIS Online for a subset of our data.

One group wrote up a custom app that only displays a subset of metadata, but allows them better formatting. I set up an internal, third-party metadata catalog (Geonetwork opensource) that stores and displays all metadata fields. While superior for the display of metadata, its reason for being, Geonetwork opensource is not user friendly to configure. Needless to say, neither option syncs with actual services, so there is an extra step when updating any data set. That said, because both of our efforts are independent, our catalogs can link to any data source, regardless of provider, with a public URL that people can download the data from.

Koeller_Christine_A_-_DOT · Answer

I just posted a similar question and our organization is also having difficult getting metadata we've entered into our enterprise database to appear in AGOL: Metadata link in Item Details for Feature Layer

I can get a link to an XML version of the metadata but its not formatted nicely and would be difficult to read. For the interim, we are thinking about linking to the XML metadata link that publishes with our web service but it is not ideal. Alternatively, we could take the time to duplicate the metadata using the metadata button (https://doc.arcgis.com/en/arcgis-online/manage-data/metadata.htm) but that is problematic because it will not be in sync with our enterprise metadata.

What did you end up implementing at your organization?

DataAdministrator · Answer

We have two feature services that have a separate data originator and metadata author contacts and only one contact displays in the metadata returned by ArcGIS Online. That said, I was able to track down one other feature service we have that also has a separate originator and author and both are returned in the metadata. There are no special characters or formatting in the one as opposed to the other so do not know what could be causing it. So it does appear the metadata function is working as intended, but buggy, so I will leave it as is and move on.