topic Re: Replica not removed if Offline Area removed while Offline in ArcGIS Field Maps Questions

Replica not removed if Offline Area removed while Offline

DougBrowning — Fri, 20 Aug 2021 14:44:07 GMT

I noticed we have a lot more Replicas now with Field Maps. Initial testing shows that if I am online and remove a offline area the replica is removed. But if I remove the offline area while the tablet is offline it does not remove the replica. Even when I get back online and refresh the app, map, etc. Testing with iPad Pro using AGOL hosted service.

Is there a trick to this? Is this a known issue?

We have to move some content to a new owner and the admin is saying all replicas must be removed first. I have 800 in just one service. I think so many due to the above. Is this true? Is there a API way to remove them all?

thanks

Re: Replica not removed if Offline Area removed while Offline

Anonymous User — Fri, 20 Aug 2021 14:58:30 GMT

I'm not sure if this is expected behavior or not.

There is a REST API and Python wrapper to remove them:

- https://developers.arcgis.com/rest/services-reference/enterprise/unregister-replica-feature-service-.htm

- https://developers.arcgis.com/python/api-reference/arcgis.features.managers.html?highlight=replica#arcgis.features.managers.SyncManager.unregister

It looks like if you use "*" for the replicaID it will remove all the replicas.

Re: Replica not removed if Offline Area removed while Offline

DougBrowning — Fri, 17 Feb 2023 15:35:53 GMT

Well that star would sure help! Thanks. Not sure why this would be expected behavior to have orphan replicas.

Re: Replica not removed if Offline Area removed while Offline

ColinLawrence — Fri, 20 Aug 2021 16:07:20 GMT

Doug,

What platform are you using Field Maps on? Also, check the troubleshooting logs within the app. We have logs for when an unregister attempt happens and whether or not its successful.

Regards,

Colin

Re: Replica not removed if Offline Area removed while Offline

DougBrowning — Fri, 20 Aug 2021 16:44:56 GMT

iPad Pro 2020 using a AGOL hosted service - latest Field Maps and at 14.6 iOS.

The log is saying [UNREGISTER] failed to load task for (then url of service).

Seems like it is not checking if you are offline at the time?

thanks

Re: Replica not removed if Offline Area removed while Offline

ColinLawrence — Fri, 20 Aug 2021 17:10:43 GMT

Thank you! We have been investigating this but the behavior is far from consistent in our efforts to reproduce it. Your feedback is helpful.

Regards,

Colin

Re: Replica not removed if Offline Area removed while Offline

DougBrowning — Wed, 03 Aug 2022 19:13:56 GMT

Any update yet? Over the last year now it has been causing us issues. We have 450+ replicas in just one service. I created a script for a report and we have many replicas that are months old. Other teams here have been seeing this also.

It got the point one of our services starting having issues. We could not export at all for one. Also random offline errors. I created another script to unregister anything not touched before June 1. As soon as I did our export starting working again.

The group with the most issues use iOS but other groups have a mix.

For anyone that needs it here - it is the very simple and not buffed out code.

Get a list

import arcpy from arcgis.gis import GIS import arcgis from arcgis.features import FeatureLayerCollection gis = GIS('pro') itemID = "417ebcae" item = gis.content.get(itemID) flc = FeatureLayerCollection.fromitem(item) replicas = flc.replicas.get_list() print ("ReplicaOwner,ReplicaName,ReplicaID,CreateDate,LastSyncDate") for r in replicas: replica = flc.replicas.get(r['replicaID']) create_date = datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(replica['creationDate'] / 1000) last_sync_date = 'n/a' # don't trust this to always be populated if type(replica['lastSyncDate']) is int: last_sync_date = datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(replica['lastSyncDate'] / 1000) print(replica['replicaOwner'] + "," + replica['replicaName'] + "," + replica['replicaID'] + "," + str(create_date) + "," + str(last_sync_date))

Remove - cool trick to use the token from Pro is way easier. Input is just a text list of replicaIDs.

import requests, arcpy # read in the list of replcias to remove from file replicaFile = r"C:\ReplicaList.txt" replicaRead = open(replicaFile,"r") replicaList = replicaRead.read().splitlines() replicaRead.close() # base URL to the HFS serviceURL = 'https://services1.arcgis.com/Hp6G80QvQ/arcgis/rest/services/My_Service/FeatureServer/unRegisterReplica?replicaID=' token = arcpy.GetSigninToken() for replica in replicaList: urlResponse = requests.post(serviceURL + "{" + replica + "}&token=" + token['token'])

Thank you.

Looks like other seeing this also. https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-field-maps-questions/how-to-delete-offline-sync-version-created-by/m-p/1190334#M4039

Re: Replica not removed if Offline Area removed while Offline

DougBrowning — Fri, 17 Feb 2023 15:39:14 GMT

Any update? @ColinLawrence We are still seeing it and it seems to be causing issues with being able to download to GDB. We are now having 500+ replicas.

thanks a lot

Re: Replica not removed if Offline Area removed while Offline

ColinLawrence — Fri, 24 Feb 2023 00:01:18 GMT

Hey @DougBrowning , unfortunately this one has stalled out as it is elusive to reproduce in house. Do you have any additional details about your or your field workers general workflow when removing offline areas? Obviously its happening pretty frequently for you so maybe there is something we are missing.

The only way I could fairly consistently get this problem to happen was if I was disconnected, removed the offline area from Field Maps, then force closed the app shortly after. In this case it seems to happen because the app is closed before it can save the info needed to unregister the replica the next time the device gains connectivity.

A note on the "expected" behavior from what I know: Replicas are only attempted to be unregistered at the time of removal, and if unsuccessful, on subsequent sign ins when a portal loads.

Re: Replica not removed if Offline Area removed while Offline

DougBrowning — Wed, 26 Jul 2023 18:42:48 GMT

At UC I asked this in a Demo theater and at least 4 people around me said they have the same issue. So it does seem wide spread.

Our users are contactrors so we are a bit isolated from them to track it down more. But in my testing I can see it fail in the log.

thanks a lot

Re: Replica not removed if Offline Area removed while Offline

Jeremy_Z — Wed, 25 Oct 2023 21:01:32 GMT

This came up in a discussion today during a meeting with about 60 people in it, and many were discussing the same problem. Doug sent me this link and I thought I'd try to help bump it and see if there was anything new here. Maybe bringing @KoryKramer in to see if he had thoughts on it.

Users on the call were mentioning versions containing these replicas could only be properly deleted in ArcMap, but not in Pro. We just upgraded to ArcGIS Pro 3.1.3 and are going to be having very limited use of ArcMap at the end of February.

Is there a fix on the way for this, or is a new tool needed to allow removal of these versions in Pro? I'm not doing much versioning and such these days, but thought I'd try to help get this looked at again.

Re: Replica not removed if Offline Area removed while Offline

ColinLawrence — Thu, 26 Oct 2023 20:27:18 GMT

Hi @Jeremy_Z @DougBrowning ,

We still have an internal issue in where we have investigated this in the past and it remains open due to our inability to consistently reproduce the problem. For this reason unfortunately nothing has changed but we did realize we did not have a support bug to link to our internal issue, which will allow us to track the impact and different user cases where this may happen. Anyone on this thread should contact support and attach your account to the this bug: BUG-000153451

We will take another fresh look at this issue as well.

From the replica removal perspective, I do not believe anything has changed. You can remove them via a script or directly in REST. I am not familiar with using desktop to accomplish this workflow.

Re: Replica not removed if Offline Area removed while Offline

ODWC_GIS — Thu, 15 Aug 2024 00:48:24 GMT

Hey there! Fancy seeing you again.

I'm using ArcPro 3.2 and have just run headfirst into this issue.

Re: Replica not removed if Offline Area removed while Offline

DougBrowning — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 17:34:54 GMT

Bump on this. Been almost 4 years and we are still getting these all the time. In Portal its even more brutal to remove all of these.
Any updates? @ColinLawrence thanks a lot
https://support.esri.com/en-us/bug/the-replica-on-the-arcgis-rest-services-directory-is-no-bug-000153451

Re: Replica not removed if Offline Area removed while Offline

ColinLawrence — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 18:11:02 GMT

@DougBrowning I havent been able to reproduce this problem in our upcoming Field Maps update on the new Maps SDK. I just double checked right now and still not running into it. Have you had an opportunity to test on the public beta for this Field Maps release? If not, could you give it a shot and see if you can reproduce the problem still? https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/field-maps/field-mobility/arcgis-field-maps-beta-is-here

I dont want to rush into saying its fixed when im not sure if there is some wrinkle in your workflow that I am not accounting for. FYI we hope to be shipping this as a full release within the next few months.

Re: Replica not removed if Offline Area removed while Offline

DougBrowning — Mon, 18 May 2026 22:27:17 GMT

We are still seeing this all the time in AGOL. Has become an extra workload.

This year we moved to Portal and there were are seeing replicas are never getting removed regardless of Field Maps offline or online status. When I turn on Verbose logging and remove an offline area I see nothing at all happen in the log. Like it does not even try. It just keeps creating more and more Feature Service replicas every time I create an area. Check in with some users and its widespread and they are adding up "50 users, 60 versions, and 1358 replicas".

@ColinLawrence Any idea what is up here? We have thousands of users so this gets out of hand pretty quick. Is something up in the new version?

Thanks a lot

Re: Replica not removed if Offline Area removed while Offline

ColinLawrence — Wed, 20 May 2026 18:08:40 GMT

Hey @DougBrowning . I took a look on a 12.0 Portal, downloaded a few areas (both preplanned and on demand), and then removed them. I noticed one instance where our logging shows the unregister failed but I was simultaneously capturing the network traffic and that showed `success=true`. I checked at REST and confirmed that replica had been removed as well. From then on whenever I restarted Field Maps, or change connectivity, it tries to unregister that same replica which shows a new failure in the logs and a failure in the network traffic as the replica with that ID does not exist. I am not sure if this scenario is contributing to what you are seeing or not but it seems like something we need to investigate regardless.

Just to note, you do not need verbose logging on to capture the [UNREGISTER] category in the logs.

I am testing this more to see if I can get an actual failure resulting in an orphaned replica. I think it would help if you reach out to me directly via DM so we can coordinate via email. There are likely workflow/environment details that can help me reproduce what you are seeing. Thanks

Re: Replica not removed if Offline Area removed while Offline

DougBrowning — Wed, 20 May 2026 18:47:33 GMT

Great thanks for looking into it. We got a ton of people out for the holiday so it may be next week before I get back to you with more.

We are at Portal 11.5.

I did have verbose on but will test again next week. Thanks a lot!