Open Data Download - Map services vs Feature Services

Question

Hello,

We are noticing that our map services are somewhat difficult to download off of our Open Data Hub Site. When we click on a map service to download, we have to go through a few extra steps to make the download button appear. Below find the options first presented off a map image:

We contacted Esri support and consulted with our Esri team and we were told we had to republish all our map image services to feature services. Note below all options made readily available for feature services:

Has anyone experienced this issue? We have plenty of map services and are looking for an efficient way to republish all of our map services.

JanelleGuzman · Answer

Hi Russell,

The first option didn't entirely work for us. I have been publishing the feature service from the server side to cut down on redundancy. What I did notice is that I am unable to eliminate the map service entirely, I am having to retain the map service and feature service in the collaboration. When I remove the map service the open data item disappears since they are dependent on each other. This is a little problematic as too many items in the collaboration will become an issue as we have seen in another collaboration we have with portal and AGOL within our organization. In order to make it work we sometimes have to remove items and this is something that will not work in this scenario.

I am going to try to just publish the item as a feature service alone to remove all map services all together. A little labor intensive, but it may be the best solution for us currently. It seems that lately that map services are losing their functionality within applications, such as dashboards, which is something I showed and confirmed with our Solution Engineer Team Lead Will Myers and it is evident with this logged BUG in our org.

Thank you for the suggestions, I will update the thread with the option that worked best for us.

JanelleGuzman · Answer

Hi Alex,

Thank you for this. Unfortunately we tried this prior to the post and it did not prove to be successful for us. Attempted it again and still no success.

RussellH · Answer

Hi @JanelleGuzman,

There was a defect logged for this behavior which originates from a distributed collaboration and how the item is being shared that can be reviewed within your My Esri account (BUG-000150797).  Esri Technical Support provided two workarounds for the time being until the defect can be addressed and one is also outlined above by Alex.

* Add the map service directly to ArcGIS Online without a distributed collaboration using the Add Item option in ArcGIS Online.
* Add the item to Portal for ArcGIS referencing the specific sublayer (for example, https://server/arcgis/rest/services/Title/MapServer/0)

Republishing all your map services as feature services could also fix the issue but it is definitely a lot more intensive and could cause extra/unnecessary work as well as unnecessary load on your servers since a feature service is a larger and more complex item.  Since these are not hosted services, the most efficient way to generate a Feature service from your Map service is to enable "feature access" in ArcGIS Server Manager.  This is completed by accessing the item > selecting Capabilities > checking the box for Feature Access > then Saving and Restarting the service.  A new REST endpoint will be generated for a feature service and if the ArcGIS Server is federated with Portal then a new Feature layer will be available in your Portal content.