ArcGIS Enterprise Sites 10.8.1: Problem with Layer Description in Feature Service

[Martin1]

Hello,

I have published a number of Feature Layers (hosted) and want to make them accessible to the web via ArcGIS Enterprise Sites. I published via ArcGIS Pro 2.5.2, the data originally comes out of a SDE database and has been copied to the Datastore during the process. 

Obviously, I want to add a nice description to every dataset that explains the data and also supports the search. 

While I have been able to get the description to work in the portal (automated with Python) (see below)...

.... this is not the same what I get as description in  ArcGIS Enterprise Sites (see below):

When I click on the Layer in Portal, I see the following:

Obviously Sites shows the description from the layer and not the one in Portal. Is this on purpose?

If yes, how is it possible to change the description? 

I have tried that programmatically as below.

search_result = gis.content.search(query=...)

for i in search_result:

   for f in i.layers:
   f.properties.description = i.description

This seems to work, but it does not get saved. I have also tried "updateDefinition" via REST, but it did not get saved either. Any idea what I can do to make it work?

Thanks,

Martin 

[Martin1 · Accepted solution]

After discussion with ESRI Support, this behavior has been identified being a bug and is now registered as #BUG-000134505: The item description is unable to be changed in the ArcGIS Enterprise site when the corresponding feature service sublayer already contains a description. 

Current Status: "In Product Plan", so it will hopefully be resolved with one of the next patches/updates

[Martin1]

Finally I also found a workaround:
When deleting the description on the CIM level of the layer, it works after being published to ArcGIS Enterprise.

cim_version = 'V2'
lyr_definition = layer.getDefinition(cim_version)
lyr_definition.description = ""
layer.setDefinition(lyr_definition)