Latest Contributions by ReinaCMurray

@ChrissyRothgeb-- we haven't noted this as an issue at our institution (although I'm now afraid to ask). One thought, could the "Access Notice" settings in AGOL count enough as "written consent"? Right now in the org settings, it's just an enable/disable option, but what if there was the option to customize/write your own access notice?   ... View more

@RussRoberts that's great to hear! thanks! ... View more

The idea of being able to package a StoryMap is an intriguing one. Here's another use case for offline StoryMaps: as a geospatial data curator, I am tasked with preserving and archiving geospatial research data for my educational institution. When a researcher creates a StoryMap as part of their research output, our workaround has been to create a pdf of the StoryMap to include as part of that researcher's submission to the institutional data repository, as well as a link to the StoryMap in the ReadMe. This works, but isn't ideal -- over time, the link may no longer work or the StoryMap may not show properly (for example, I remember when Esri updated basemaps from raster to vector tiles, some of our old webmaps no longer displayed properly and had to be fixed). The pdf provides the reader with a sense of the StoryMap's content, but without the full experience of interacting with the data. Being able to package up a StoryMap and open it offline (provided the user sets up the right environment for it), would allow data curators to better preserve and archive these applications for future use and future reference.  Note, the preservation of web-based applications has become a big question in the data curation and preservation field, and there is interesting work being done on this question (see, for example, NYU https://guides.nyu.edu/blog/NYU-Wins-Major-Grant-From-Alfred-P-Sloan-Foundation-To-Expand-Capabilities-For-Archiving-Digita). Perhaps some ideas can be drawn from there.   ... View more

Thanks @OwenGeo! We do encourage the use of groups, and I'll make sure to point out the different view options. We've also had success with faculty exploring using Hub sites to showcase classwork. ... View more

Thanks, @AmyWork3.  I just want to emphasize Amy's point about who this impacts -- as Amy says, we in academic institutions see increasing interest in using StoryMaps by non-traditional GIS users, such as those in the humanities. If I have a student who is studying GIS as part of an undergraduate or graduate course, I have less of an issue explaining the limitations of StoryMaps' editing capabilities to them. I expect them, as future power users of GIS and geospatial technology, to adapt and figure out a workaround that works for them and their classmates. I'm also not worried about their adoption of GIS tools; they are already invested, so to speak.  However, one of the great things about StoryMaps is that it appeals to and has extremely useful applications outside of traditional uses of GIS. It's an excellent communications platform that appeals to non-traditional GIS users because of its relative ease of use and lack of need to know how to code. We have also observed that it can serve as a great entry point for some users to learn and use more GIS tools in the future.  From a user perspective (for example, a faculty or student studying classics, English literature, history, etc) -- a lot of the other digital platforms they use allow simultaneous editing. Platforms like Google docs, MURAL, Confluence have set expectations for being able to work collaboratively together at the same time, on the same document/page/whiteboard. I would argue that this is what users expect and assume is the norm for digital platforms, and when they encounter a platform that cannot accommodate this, the simpler solution is to just not use it, rather than deal with the headaches of scheduling individual editing slots or working out a collection. When possible, individual StoryMaps grouped into a Collection is a great solution. However, as Amy points out, sometimes students need to work on the same content, and it can be difficult to reframe an approach to groupwork that gets StoryMaps to fit nicely into it.   ... View more

Hi @OwenGeo, thanks for your comments and suggestion. We do also use collections, and you're right, it's a good approach for group project. One snag: there's a limit of I believe 60 ish items in a collection, and we've had professors teaching large survey courses of 150 students or so wanting to use StoryMaps. So not every individual can have their StoryMap in the collection. This is where groupwork comes in -- students working in groups of 10 or so may work together on a StoryMap to add to the final class collection. From what you're saying, we could encourage the students to use a collection for their group work as well. Can you have nested collections (ie, a collection as part of a collection)? Thanks!     ... View more

This is a great idea. I'd like to offer both an additional use case and a good workaround, from an educational institution perspective: Use Case: We use StoryMaps to teach workshops, and also have faculty using them to teach semester-long courses. We often reuse/duplicate sections of a StoryMap across different workshops (for example, an About Us / Workshop policies section, or important content information on say, Esri Demographics and the Living Atlas). Having the ability to copy over a block or widget, as opposed to duplicating a StoryMap, would be a useful feature when working on a new StoryMap. You can always duplicate an existing StoryMap that has the most content that overlaps with the new one, but may still need to go copy and paste in content or web maps and images from others.  Workaround: Our workaround right now is to utilize collections extensively. We try to break down StoryMaps into small modules. This means each StoryMap may be quite short, as a single storymap may just have info on say, workshop policies. While this works quite well, if you have too many items in the collection, it can get overwhleming from a user perspective.  ... View more

This is a great idea. We currently recommend users to format tables in external software (ie: excel, illustrator) and then export them as images to insert into a StoryMap. However, this doesn't allow for the viewer to interact with the table. Some cool interactive features that could eventually be included as part of a table widget: link to external site/document/etc hover over row/column for additional information via a popup click on a row --> query results of a feature layer in a complementary web map (or just change visibility settings of a feature layer so that another appears) Would there be a way to incorporate arcade expressions into tables, if they are linked with a feature layer in a web map shown on the StoryMap?     ... View more

Improved versioning control and track changes would be huge -- I manage an educational institution's ArcGIS Online org, and often have groups working on a StoryMap together for a class project or presentation. As simultaneous editing is currently not possible with StoryMaps, having a time stamp as well as version comments or track changes would be beneficial for groups working on a StoryMap together to review changes.   We currently encourage groups using StoryMaps to make use of external tools like google docs or microsoft onedrive to 1) manage who works on the StoryMap at what time and 2) to keep a copy of written content, so that edits to text can be tracked and managed there. This is a tedious workaround.  ... View more

I didn't see this post until after I posted mine, for the same request -- yours is much more detailed! YES to all of this; the majority of our automatic emails are for password requests, but we use enterprise logins, so it's just about us, like @SamPalmer described, referring users to the screenshots and FAQs we've prepared showing them how to log in properly. I'll have to see if we can use @PeterKnoop's workaround, just having this ability be part of AGOL would resolve a lot of issues for a lot of people.  ... View more

This would be a useful feature for us as well. As a workaround, I currently have, in addition to my admin account, two other accounts that are set to other types/roles, which I will log into through another browser if I need to run checks on permissions. It's cumbersome but works fine.  ... View more

Hi @GIS_Fox,  Thanks for commenting -- we do that   🙂  We encourage using groups for any collaborative project, including but not limited to courses, and encourage faculty to create additional groups as needed for student assignments, and consult on how to set share settings and group update capabilities depending on their needs and use case.   Scheduled edits and coordination is a good idea, but I do think it's hard for students/faculty to adjust to -- it's just not how other cloud-hosted platforms that are commonly used operate. We can recommend/encourage all we want and preach to our users to do this, but some will forget, simply lose track of time and encroach on another users' time, etc. We also now recommend other platforms/tools for users for content management and collaborative editing of text and image selection, and stress the importance of prepping before starting/building a StoryMap, which also helps, but simultaneous editing would still be great to have.  Thanks again,  Reina ... View more