Will adding a field to a service break Field Maps offline areas?

[DeniseVachon]

If I add a field to an existing service that is used in field maps and has offline areas taken offline by staff, will this prevent staff from syncing their existing offline areas back?

This blog post says that replicas will fail to sync if the feature service schema changes while edits were being made offline. ArcGIS Field Maps: Offline Edits Fail to Sync - Le... - Esri Community  So I guess what I'm asking is: Does adding a field to a service qualify as a "schema change"?

[DeniseVachon]

I've just realized that there is a "Field Maps" questions area. I'll ask there instead. 🙂 
I am unable to delete this post for some reason, so I suppose it'll have to stay here.

[GlenShepherd · Accepted solution]

Hi @DeniseVachon ,

Yes, if you add a new field to a feature service that is already present in some existing offline map areas, then you will need to re-create the map areas in order for the new field to be present. This also means your field users will need to re-download the updated offline map areas to their devices as well.

You can read a bit more about it here: https://doc.arcgis.com/en/arcgis-online/manage-data/take-maps-offline.htm#ESRI_SECTION3_BF5D138B28C6...

[BillBean]

I was told after 11.1 ArcGIS Field Maps this is no longer required and it will not break the offline area.  Has there been an update about this after 11.1?

Thanks..

[GlenShepherd]

Hi Bill,

Documentation for this workflow is still up to date:  "The update action does not incorporate schema changes to the map area. For schema changes, re-create the offline map area."

You might not necessarily always experience sync failures if there is a schema mismatch between the offline edits in the replica and the parent service (depends on the edits and the schema changes), but it is certainly best practice to keep the offline map areas up to date to avoid failures.