topic Re: Offline - save basemap to sd-card? in ArcGIS Field Maps Questions

Offline - save basemap to sd-card?

Sveinung_Bertnes_Råheim — Wed, 10 Mar 2021 08:05:45 GMT

Is it possible to save basemaps to the SD-card on android devices? This was possible in collector. Especially when side-loading big tpk's, using the internal memory could fill the memory up.

Another question:

The migration guide from collector to field maps, is that from collector classic or the "new" collector?
https://www.esri.com/content/dam/esrisites/en-us/media/pdf/implementation-guides/field-maps-migration-guide.pdf

Regards

Sveinung Bertnes Råheim
Bodø, Norway

Re: Offline - save basemap to sd-card?

MervynLotter — Wed, 10 Mar 2021 09:46:29 GMT

Dear Sveinung

I can only reply to the question about basemaps as I have done in Field Maps. The latest releases of Android make it more difficult for Esri to utilise folders outside of those created when the app is installed so you now need to place your basemaps in "Galaxy A70\Card\Android\data\com.esri.fieldmaps\files\basemaps" (in may case but it should not be different to yours).

Regards

Mervyn

Re: Offline - save basemap to sd-card?

Sveinung_Bertnes_Råheim — Wed, 10 Mar 2021 10:34:37 GMT

Thanks for quick reply. That explains why SD-card is removed as an option. It is a pity that android has made this solution impossible. For Android-users, the sd-card option made it possible to save quite big tpk's on their devices.

Re: Offline - save basemap to sd-card?

MervynLotter — Wed, 10 Mar 2021 11:14:21 GMT

I don't think I made myself clear, sorry about that. You can still add your TPK files to your SD card (and I have a 1.3 GB tpk available to me as a basemap on my SD card), you just need to access the correct folder with a little more effort. So browse to the following folder on your SD card, and then copy your basemap into this folder. "SD Card\Android\data\com.esri.fieldmaps\files\basemaps".

The unfortunate part of this workflow is that each app (i.e. ArcGIS Collector, ArcGIS Field Map, etc), will require their own basemaps and the apps can't share a common basemap.

Re: Offline - save basemap to sd-card?

DougMorgenthaler — Thu, 11 Mar 2021 16:16:22 GMT

This is correct, supporting direct download of basemaps to the SD card was available in Collector Classic, but recent changes with Android have made this more challenging.

As @MervynLotter mentions, you can still sideload TPKs, VTPKs, etc. onto the SD card to minimize the impact on the internal device storage as outlined in this doc topic. You will also need to define this as part of the map's offline properties if this is the default basemap that should be used when downloading the map.

One benefit of ArcGIS Field Maps is that you won't have to have separate TPKs in each app directory as you did for Collector, Explorer, etc.

Re: Offline - save basemap to sd-card?

Anonymous User — Wed, 05 Jan 2022 19:14:30 GMT

Previously we could move the TPKs from the SD card to the data folder for use in the application. But with Android change, we no longer can access the data folder directly on the device to move it. We'd have to connect to the computer to be able to move the TPKs. Due to this restriction, field workers have to prepare ahead of time, which they might not have the ability to do before having to go into the field.

It would be nice to be able to have a secondary location to check for basemaps so that we could designate the SD card as another directory instead of having to move the basemaps to the specific folder in the data directory.

Re: Offline - save basemap to sd-card?

Anonymous User — Thu, 23 Jun 2022 01:38:40 GMT

I can't get Field Maps to find the TPK basemaps on my microSD card. I filed them in Android\data\com.esri.fieldmaps\files\basemaps. But Field Maps doesn't see them there. When I file them in my phone's internal memory in the same folder they do work.