Latest Contributions by ArthurButo1

One of our offices has created a Story Map Journal shared with Everyone that presents information about community meetings that are scheduled throughout the year.  They add sections to the Story Map as more of these meetings or related activities/events are planned.  Is there a way to "subscribe" to or follow a Story Map so that subscribers are notified when it's been modified (e.g., a new section has been added)? ... View more

When I create a Story Map Tour using an Excel spreadsheet as the starting point -- from Excel create a map using Maps for Office, then share the Feature Layer and web map to AGOL, then in AGOL create a Story Map Tour from the web map -- the images don't display even though there are columns in the spreadsheet with proper URLs. Apparently Maps for Office renames the columns/fields in the spreadsheet when it creates the map.  These renamed fields are not recognized by the Story Map Tour -- it prompts you to point to the fields for 'Name' and 'Caption' for the photos and the field for 'Color' for the icons. The stickiness/persistence issue could be resolved if you were also prompted for the fields that contain the 'URL to Photo' and 'URL to thumbnail.'  These fields should also appear in 'Settings' in the 'Data' tab, which allows you to set/reset these pointers. [this is an alternative to the solution I proposed in 'Excel, Maps for Office, and Story Map Tour'] ... View more

When Sharing a Map from Excel, Maps for Office should use the column headings as Attribute names instead of as Aliases in the Feature Layer.* I have a spreadsheet that has columns for lat/long coordinates along with columns containing URLs to photos.  I can successfully create a web map using Maps for Office, and I can Share the Map to AGOL.  But when I create a Story Map Tour from the web map, there are no photos or thumbnails associated with the map locations.  Furthermore, if I manually add URLs that point to photos, they don't "stick" or persist.  That is, if I Save the changes, then close and re-open the Story Map, the images are gone.  Esri support tells me it's because spreadsheet column headings are replaced with "f1", "f2", etc. and the column headings are relegated to being Aliases when the Feature Layer is created in Maps for Office.  This is done, at least in part to prevent data corruption if there were duplicate column names.  If that's the case, I think that a validation check should be performed before the Feature Layer is created.  If found, duplicate headings could be appended with a "2," or "3," or illegal characters could be replaced with "_", or a null column heading could be named "null1," "null2," etc.  Or at the very least, an error message should display describing the problem. * You can see this in AGOL by going to the Item Details of the Feature Layer, select the 'Data' tab, click on any of the column headings, then select 'Show Detailed View.'  You'll see that the 'Name' of the Attribute is listed as "f1", "f2", etc. ... View more

When Sharing a Map from Excel, Maps for Office should use the column headings as Attribute names instead of as Aliases in the Feature Layer.* I have a spreadsheet that has columns for lat/long coordinates along with columns containing URLs to photos.  I can successfully create a web map using Maps for Office, and I can Share the Map to AGOL.  But when I create a Story Map Tour from the web map, there are no photos or thumbnails associated with the map locations.  Furthermore, if I manually add URLs that point to photos, they don't "stick" or persist.  That is, if I Save the changes, then close and re-open the Story Map, the images are gone.  Esri support tells me it's because spreadsheet column headings are replaced with "f1", "f2", etc. and the column headings are relegated to being Aliases when the Feature Layer is created in Maps for Office.  This is done, at least in part to prevent data corruption if there were duplicate column names.  If that's the case, I think that a validation check should be performed before the Feature Layer is created.  If found, duplicate headings could be appended with a "2," or "3," or illegal characters could be replaced with "_", or a null column heading could be named "null1," "null2," etc.  Or at the very least, an error message should display describing the problem. * You can see this in AGOL by going to the Item Details of the Feature Layer, select the 'Data' tab, click on any of the column headings, then select 'Show Detailed View.'  You'll see that the 'Name' of the Attribute is listed as "f1", "f2", etc. ... View more