Latest Contributions by BrianRollison

Retiring the in-app map editor For the past 4-5 years, we've offered the ability to create web maps from accessible data via the "Create a map" option found on many feature service views. When selected, you had two options: 1) "Start simple" in ArcGIS Hub with limited tools, or 2) open the layer directly in ArcGIS Map Viewer. "Create a map" options offered today. Next week, we will be removing the option to "Start simple" and will continue to offer the ArcGIS Map Viewer option. For now, the latter option will continue to link out to ArcGIS Map Viewer; however, we are working to provide a streamlined embed experience of ArcGIS Map Viewer directly in ArcGIS Hub in the future. What is happening to my "simple" maps? If you are one of the few people who created web maps via ArcGIS Hub's simple map editor, rest assured that your maps will still be editable in ArcGIS Map Viewer. We leverage the ArcGIS Maps SDK for JavaScript to create and render all web maps in ArcGIS Hub, so all your styling should continue to be supported and editable. Please engage with Esri Support Services if you find that maps created via ArcGIS Hub's simple map editor are not editable as expected within ArcGIS Map Viewer. What is the future of mapping in ArcGIS Hub? You should expect to see more components of ArcGIS Map Viewer within ArcGIS Hub next year. All product teams have worked internally to ensure components are reusable across applications, including many of the great mapping components and tools that ArcGIS Map Viewer supplies to users. From there, you should expect more opportunities to search for information spatially and a tighter integration with configurations of your web maps, web scenes, and services. This means your service's cartographic configuration will be used to display your feature layer dataset in ArcGIS Hub, replacing the default 'blue' styling. ... View more

Summary of changes Today we released a significant update to the ArcGIS Hub user experience which impacts layout editing, content management, and more. This update is considered a "beta" and requires ArcGIS Online organization members to individually "opt-in" to explore the functionality. Some important details: Authenticated users will be prompted to opt-in to the "beta" at the Hub Overview and Layout Editor, you can dismiss this message and optionally choose to not see it again. Authenticated users can opt-in/-out of the "beta" any time via their profile's "Settings" page within the ArcGIS Hub application (you cannot opt-in/-out from within the ArcGIS Online home application). Opting into the "beta" has no impact to how users experience your content on the sites you have created, this is purely an update to the management user experience. We expect the "beta" period to close around the Fall 2024 ArcGIS Online release later this year. Not all functionality you normally have access to can be performed while opted into the "beta"; as an example, non-Premium users won't be able to (yet) create new content directly on sites they manage. Please open the "About workspaces" modal where you opted in to learn more. What are workspaces? You've likely heard the term "workspaces" used quite a bit recently to describe a modern and collaborative user experience. For ArcGIS Hub, this is something we first conceptualized in 2019 and began developing mid-2023. We had a few goals in this effort: Increase the understanding of what functionality is available to you via approachable, well-organized, and approachable navigation updates. Establish a new technical foundation (react, web components, calcite components, etc.) that would allow us to more quickly enable in-app collaboration and customizations between editors. Focus the user experience around what the user can do and not a hypothetical user who has all the right privileges to do everything. Over the next 6-12 months we expect workspaces to become a central component where you manage and communicate in-app with collaborators around sites, content, and initiatives. Today, the "beta" is a humble beginning which offers workspaces on items and groups only. This means you won't see a lot of differences at "Hub Overview". What can I do in the "beta"? You will be able to manage sites, content, and groups via workspaces. Please select "About workspaces" on your profile's Settings page within the ArcGIS Hub application to learn more about functionality not yet available within the "beta" user experience. Over the next few months we will be deploying many planned enhancements to this opt-in user experience, including: Re-launch of initiatives as a stand-alone experience from a site, more on this in the next 2 weeks. Release the next generation of events, one not powered by a feature service, with more customization, and which doesn't require a group to register for. A lighter weight layout editor, focused on layout editing only, as we move site/page settings and other configuration controls into the workspace for opted in users. Streamline content create and add workflows to make it more ergonomic to understand where your content can go. As an opt-in "beta" management user experience you should expect things to evolve week-by-week, this includes running into low impact bugs and having things shifted around on you as we make updates from user feedback. When does the "beta" end? This is the first of a multi-phase release we expect to complete this year. After this release our goals are to reach feature parity within the new management user experience, address as many items of feedback as possible from our users, and then announce an end to the beta period. Tentatively, we expect the beta period will likely end around the fall ArcGIS Online release of this year. Once this new functionality is considered "generally available" later this year, all users will be automatically opted into the new management user experience. At this point users can still opt-out and use the deprecated old management user experience. A few weeks after this point the old management user experience will be retired and inaccessible to all users. Providing feedback If you have ideas for this new management user experience, then we are excited to hear them. Please voice them in the Ideas board in Esri Community. You are also welcome to sign-up for our User Lab to become more directly involved in previewing ideas and functionality. Support issues As mentioned earlier, "beta" releases sometimes surface low impact bugs or a subset of the functionality you may expect. Over time we would expect all of these items to be resolved, particularly before the "beta" period ends, during the "beta" period do not log support (BUG/ENH) cases with Esri Support Services related to the opt-in "beta". Instead, voice them here in Esri Community or directly to ask-hub@esri.com. ... View more

Summary of update Today we are releasing a key update to privacy consent configuration for all ArcGIS Hub sites, functionality offered in this update include: Ability to "Require consent" from site visitors to view the site; no tracking mechanisms will be loaded onto the visitor's browser or enabled within the application until the user provides affirmative consent. Ability for site visitor to accept none, some, or all configured tracking mechanisms. If a visitor changes their affirmative consent during their session, then all tracking mechanisms enabled via the site's domain will be purged and the page reloaded. Integration with the Esri User Experience Improvement program (EUEI). When disabled for a member's organization will ensure their browsing activity is never tracked, regardless of the site's enabled tracking mechanisms. This update is a critical step forward in enabling increased regulatory compliance for our customers and their audiences. Customers will notice changes to their site's privacy consent notice immediately (if configured to display) and can access the expanded configuration options from their site's settings in the layout editor. Updated look of the privacy consent notice As referenced above, privacy consent notices now have two display options. In this section, we'll touch on both options and what you should consider before updating your configuration. All display configurations share a secondary state where visitors can review configured tracking categories, including a general description of those categories and the ability to toggle them on/off non-necessary individually. This secondary state can be reached by selecting "Review settings" on the privacy consent notice. Consent optional By default all notices are non-interruptive to the visitor, meaning they will be displayed in the lower right corner of the screen and not prevent the visitor from interacting with the site. This is how our existing consent notices function today, the only change you'll observe is the increased in size and more explicit options available to visitors in the notice. We've also retired "Black & White" theme mode for notices due to limited usage. Please note that all tracking mechanisms will be immediately loaded upon the visitor's session start. If you want visitors to provide affirmative/negative consent to tracking upon arrival, then you should enable the "Require consent" option. Consent required Site managers can optionally configure privacy consent notices to be interruptive to a visitor's session. When enabled the notice will block interaction with the site entirely, requiring visitors to accept none, some, or all tracking configured before usage of the site is enabled. As noted above, no tracking mechanism will be loaded onto the browser or within the application until the visitor explicitly accepts that mechanism's category. Additionally, a visitor can revoke their consent at any time resulting in a refresh of the page and a purge of all enabled tracking mechanisms from the browser. Tracking categories You have likely observed categorizations of "Strictly necessary", "Performance", "Functional", and/or "Targeting" in your browsing of different web applications. These categories represent different bundles of tracking mechanisms which operate similarly; as an example, "Targeting" mechanisms may gather demographic detail during a user's session to form a profile for future marketing needs. ArcGIS Hub enables customers to enable/disable our out-of-the-box anonymous usage analytics and configure third-party tools such as Google Analytics, SiteImprove, and Adobe Analytics. We have no way of confirming what settings are enabled in these third-party providers, including whether they have targeting-like functionality enabled. For this reason, ArcGIS Hub will display up to 3 categories: Strictly necessary: core functionality that enables the application to function, such as authentication, which cannot be disabled by a visitor. Anonymous usage analytics: first-party anonymized tracking which registers stats such as "number of downloads", can be disabled by a visitor at any time. Third-party tracking: configured providers (ex. Google Analytics) which may or may not have additional targeting functionality enabled, can be disabled by a visitor at any time. These categories will display automatically in the "Review settings" state of the privacy consent notice depending on the site's configuration. Customers cannot override their availability or display by design. In the future, we plan to introduce "Functional" as another category which will enable new workflows such as your browse history being accessible for quick navigation. If you have ideas for enhancements, then please add them to the Ideas board or submit them as an ENH require through Esri Support Services. Thank you! ... View more

What has already occurred: Google announced the deprecation and pending retirement of GA3 and Universal Tracking ID configurations last year. You can learn more about the migration to GA4 and Measurement ID in Google's Help Center (view article). To support this migration ArcGIS Hub integrated GA4 configuration on sites late-2022 (view post). We also transitioned all in-app dashboards from being GA3 powered to powered by Esri's in-house first-party telemetry solution in June 2023. Google stopped processing new data on GA3 July 2023 effectively retiring those pipelines. This means any ArcGIS Hub site with a GA3 configuration has logged no traffic or events since data stopped processing. Migrating a GA3 configuration to GA4 in ArcGIS Hub: If you are a GA3 customer who has not migrated to GA4, then we recommend you consider migrating via the GA in-app setup assistant and leverage Google's documentation as needed. At the end of that process you will be able to access a GA4 configuration. Customers with an existing GA4 configuration can use that information to enable tracking via GA4 in their ArcGIS Hub site settings at any time. Configuration of GA4 has been available in ArcGIS Hub since late-2022. Changes to ArcGIS Hub next week: ArcGIS Hub sites will no longer display or allow configuration around GA3 Universal Tracking ID properties; additionally, ArcGIS Hub will also no longer attempt to log events to a GA3 configuration. We will continue to support our in-house default telemetry offering alongside external providers such as Adobe Analytics, SiteImprove, and GA4. You do not need to take any action to remove GA3 configuration from your ArcGIS Hub sites. Retirement of GA3 and Universal Analytics by Google: Google has announced (view Help Center) access to the GA3 interface and API will be terminated July 2024. They have additional help articles on their website around this retirement, we recommend interested customers read as relevant. ... View more