topic Re: Esri Workspaces - Hub - what a mess in ArcGIS Hub Questions

Esri Workspaces - Hub - what a mess

MarkGiesbrecht2 — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:48:34 GMT

Wow, I cannot believe how obscured and poorly communicated the Esri Hub -> Workspaces transition has gone. I work with a small org that has used the previous version of Hub since 2021, having successfully transitioned our website to it. Fantastic at the time.

I managed to fumbled through the poor documentation on how to enable it and then begin migrating content to be managed in each workspace, but even as a 30 year veteran of webGIS it took me a while to do with a number of mistakes.

Since the Feb 25th upgrade, we're now informed that our Workspaces have been 'updated' and now we are unable to have multiple editors of a site; no clue on how to get around this, let alone it BEING COMMUNICATED AHEAD OF THE UPGRADE. Esri, you need to do better - telling your clients of what's changed AFTER is less effective than telling them AHEAD of time.

Are other Esri clients just gobsmacked at how poorly Workspaces has been rolled out? Let alone, it's not an improved pattern for managing content. In my view, one of the worst Esri implementations ever.

There is a question in all of this - how many other clients have faced challenges like we have? How do we enable multiple editors for a single Hub site/Workspace?

Re: Esri Workspaces - Hub - what a mess

BrianRollison — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 17:49:19 GMT

Hi @MarkGiesbrecht2 - thanks for providing your feedback.

The ability to have multiple ArcGIS users edit a site has not been removed and still functions today as it has in the past. If that is not the case for you or your colleagues, then please reach out to Esri Support Services to troubleshoot further.

There shouldn't be a need to migrate content to Workspaces to be able to edit them. We are offering an ability to upgrade site search catalogs to access long-requested functionality. You can read more about that functionality here, and other new functionality here.

The transition from our classic Edit Mode to the new Workspaces experience has been a multi-year endeavor, a brief review of key milestones:

Jun 2024: Workspaces became available as an "opt-in" open beta (open Community blog post)
Jun 2025: Workspaces became generally available as new default management experience, customers may "opt-out" as desired (open ArcGIS Blog post)
Feb 2026: classic Edit Mode's retirement is announced (open ArcGIS Blog post)
Jun 2026: classic Edit Mode is retired at the June 2026 Online release

We have included dismissible dialogs in the application throughout this time. That said, those can be easy to dismiss so we are always looking for improved ways to keep changes in front of our users.