topic Re: Thumbnail Bug in ArcGIS StoryMaps Questions

Thumbnail Bug

Melissa__Danielle_Pugh — Fri, 24 Jan 2020 16:37:34 GMT

Whenever I publish changes to my story, the item summary and thumbnail revert back to the original state. Is anyone else having this issue? The other page details appear to be unaffected.

What the intended information should have been before publishing edits:

After published edits:

Re: Thumbnail Bug

Melissa__Danielle_Pugh — Mon, 27 Jan 2020 16:53:52 GMT

Owen Evans‌ I tested this out with another story and saw the same behavior, thoughts?

Re: Thumbnail Bug

OwenGeo — Mon, 27 Jan 2020 17:34:05 GMT

Hi, this is expected. The item information is synced up with the current story title, subtitle, and cover image on every publish. At this time, if you want to use different item info you'll need to update those manually after publishing.

Re: Thumbnail Bug

Anonymous User — Fri, 30 Apr 2021 16:09:17 GMT

This is very annoying and should not be the expected behavior. Our organization has standard thumbnail formats and should be maintained through the life of a story map regardless of whether or not updates need to be published.

Re: Thumbnail Bug

OwenGeo — Fri, 17 Sep 2021 20:15:42 GMT

@Melissa__Danielle_Pugh / @Anonymous User -- Thanks for the feedback about this! We have some updates we are planning in this area, and it'd be great to know a little more information to help us better address your requests.

Is the primary request that you just want a way to pick your own thumbnail and have that image used everywhere the thumbnail appears (ArcGIS item page, when sharing the story on social media sites, in your list of stories on the StoryMaps website, etc.)?

Or is it that you want a different thumbnail to be used in the ArcGIS universe (item page, if the story is added to a gallery app, etc.) as opposed to the thumbnail that's used when the story is shared on social media sites.

Please let me know your thoughts!

Re: Thumbnail Bug

Anonymous User — Thu, 23 Sep 2021 15:52:43 GMT

I would prefer that metadata not be automatically replaced with a story map's title image and subtitle every time changes are published. If a user manually updates the thumbnail and item summary, it seems very likely they want that information to remain unchanged until they manually edit it again.

Re: Thumbnail Bug

awagner — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 15:46:13 GMT

@Anonymous User @OwenGeo I totally agree that this is very frustrating. I'm a part of NOAA where we have to have AGOL admins approve content to be published publicly, and our StoryMap makers are required to include a thumbnail, summary, and description before it is made public. After every update, people have to go in and change the item details page and it becomes cumbersome. Could there be a way to turn off this auto-update or not let StoryMaps revert back to the first line of the StoryMap?

Re: Thumbnail Bug

OwenGeo — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 17:01:17 GMT

The ability to choose whether the item data is updated on publish is planned for sometime in the first part of 2022.

Re: Thumbnail Bug

DavidNovak — Mon, 21 Feb 2022 10:39:00 GMT

Hello dear @OwenGeo ,
do I think right this behavior was already fixed?

I was not able to reproduce this issue anymore. 🙂

David

Re: Thumbnail Bug

OwenGeo — Mon, 21 Feb 2022 12:12:02 GMT

@DavidNovak -- Not yet. When a story is published, the ArcGIS item data is still updated.

However, we're rolling out an update this week that will allow you to disable that automatic update and customize what others see when they see a story shared on social media.

Re: Thumbnail Bug

Anonymous User — Thu, 03 Mar 2022 18:07:13 GMT

@OwenGeo, updated my first few story maps since this update rolled out and the thumbnail stayed in tact. This is great!

However, the item summary still updates to the story map subtitle. Not great... Please continue improvements in this area to maintain any manually updated item summaries when updates are published.

Thanks!

Re: Thumbnail Bug

OwenGeo — Thu, 03 Mar 2022 19:24:16 GMT

@Anonymous User I'm glad you're enjoying this feature!

In my testing I'm unable to reproduce the issue you described where the ArcGIS item summary gets updated with the story subtitle after the "Update ArcGIS item details when publishing" checkbox is disabled. Could you please provide the specific steps you are going through when you observe this problem?

Re: Thumbnail Bug

Anonymous User — Thu, 03 Mar 2022 19:36:11 GMT

My apologies, @OwenGeo! I didn't realize the update setting had to be configured in the story settings. I unchecked the box and the item summary remained in tact upon publishing.

The item thumbnail has remained in tact before I disabled the new update setting, so I didn't realize that option was now available. Glad to see the thumbnail update doesn't appear to be an option at all anymore.

One more note, the story settings dialog has space for title and description that would be used for automatic item detail updates when publishing. It appears the Description box updates the item summary in the item details. This is confusing because there is already a description section in the item details. I think it should be changed to Summary in the story settings dialog.

Thanks again, keep up the great work.

Re: Thumbnail Bug

OwenGeo — Thu, 03 Mar 2022 20:01:36 GMT

Great! I'm glad it is working as expected, and thanks for your additional feedback.

The primary purpose of those options are to configure the social media information. In that context, the secondary text field is always called a "description" by social media sites/SEO documentation, which is why we went with that name here.

A secondary role of this metadata is to auto-populate the ArcGIS item information, so that the item has useful information to represent it in ArcGIS, even if the author hasn't specifically edited the item details.

I don't think we're going to change the name of that field since it's appropriate for its primary role, but we can consider adding some additional help text in the future to help explain how this information maps to the ArcGIS item info fields.

Re: Thumbnail Bug

OwenGeo — Thu, 03 Mar 2022 20:03:58 GMT

@Melissa__Danielle_Pugh FYI, this feature was rolled out in Feb 2022.

What’s new in ArcGIS StoryMaps (February 2022) (esri.com)