Hyperlink Not Accepting '&' Symbol

TiffanySelvidge1

I am using Operations Dashboard with Portal for ArcGIS. When I create a hyperlink in the Feature Details widget, every time I use the '&' symbol, the widget refuses to accept the hyperlink. If I display the entire hyperlinked url and then go back and type in each '&' symbol then the letters after the symbol and before another symbol are removed in the details display. The widget does not have a problem with the '?' or '=' symbols.

For example this:

Changes to this:

Any assistance will be appreciated. I have used hyperlinks many times but never before have run into this particular problem.

TiffanySelvidge1

Okay, after much trial and error and very helpful assistance from users on gis stack exchange I have figured it out.

I had to use a combination of URL encoding and HTML encoding.

In the end, there were 3 symbols the software/browser/server was having trouble with: '&', '{', and '}'

For the '&', HTML encoding was needed.

For the '{', HTML or URL encoding was accepted.

For the '}', URL encoding was needed.

In order to get the hyperlink to work I had to delete everything and then go back and enter the new url into the system.

The end encoded result: http://www.mycompany.net/records/personal/details.asp?taxyear=2015&amp ;ppt=A&amp ;acct=%7Bacct%7D

I added the spaces between amp ; so this site would not automatically translate it to '&'. The actual encoded url does not contain those spaces.

And after all of that, I needed to submit the hyperlink, click ok for the widget, then go back into the edit mode again and once more click ok. If I only did the process once, then my hyperlinked field did not translate to the actual account. For some reason, going through the process twice jumpstarted the link and my {acct} was linked to the number.