possible to assign ownership before enabling editor tracking/ownership based control?

[ClaraDair]

I would like to enable ownership access with editor tracking on existing data, I edited a column to reflect the owner of each feature, then I enabled editor tracking from properties to manually select my edited column as the creator field, hoping that ownership would be honored when editing via a feature service.  Instead, as soon as I enabled editor tracking, the entire column of creator field was turned to <NULL>. Wiped out all 20,000 rows' ownership in the creatorfield column that I manually created..

Is there any way to assign ownership first on existing data and then enforce that ownership-based control with editor tracking, or is this feature only for features created *after* editor tracking is enabled?   Any hints appreciated - thanks!

[RussellBrennan]

Hi Clara,

Are you working with hosted feature services, either ArcGIS online or Portal for ArcGIS (with datastore)?

Russell

[ClaraDair]

Hello Russell, at this stage I'm still setting up the SDE specs.  I was still working in ArcCatalog and had not published the feature class yet.  When I do, it will be on premise ArcGIS Server.  It could potentially end up in Portal, but that would be our organizational Portal as well, not hosted.

Is there a way to have the edits that I made (edit existing data - owner in my own column) "stick" when enabling editor tracking and then have a service honor that declaration of ownership?  If yes, I would love to know what I did wrong.  Enabling editor tracking wiped out the owner (oracle user names) that I had edited.  Thanks!

[RussellBrennan · Accepted solution]

We should support the ability to enable editor tracking on columns that already have data in them. Can you tell me more about exactly what you had in the column before you attempted to enable editor tracking. I assume you are using a string/text field, can you confirm?

You mention that you used the properties page to enable editor tracking, can you please confirm this? Did you try with the enable editor tracking geoprocessing tool?

Can you let me know what version of Desktop, Geodatabase, and Oracle you are using?

Is your data registered as versioned?

I tried to replicate the issue you are describing and in my case everything worked as you desired.

[ClaraDair]

Good Morning, thanks for the ray of hope!

Your answer prompted me to try to enable editor tracking *before* registering as versioned - and it worked, thanks!

I created the columns I wanted to include in editor tracking (text for names and date for dates - Friday and today), edited the column that I wanted to manually use for creator/owner via nonversioned editing (today), then used pullright menu 'properties' and the 'enable editor tracking' tab (both Friday and today.  did not use the tool either time).  Data was registered as versioned on Fri, and not versioned today.  When I enabled editor tracking on today's data, it retained the oracle user names that I had edited into the existing data.

I'll get to the publish and edit via a service part and report back on that as soon as I can.  Thanks for your help!

[ClaraDair]

Hi Russell, I configured the service and we tested it this morning, by enabling editor tracking *before* registering as versioned, the named owners were retained, and by configuring and securing the service, users could only edit the features they created/owned.  Thanks for responding, I appreciate the help!

[RussellBrennan]

Hi Clara, I am glad to hear that you are on your way and things are working as expected. I tried a simple test on my end to try to reproduce this issue but was unsuccessful. Were you viewing the records in Oracle or in ArcGIS? If using Oracle tools to view the data you may not have seen the edits in the table because they would be stored in the delta tables.

I would like to track down the cause of this issue, are you able to send me the version of desktop and geodatabase that you are working with?

Thanks,

Russell

[ClaraDair]

Hey Russell, I was viewing the data in ArcMap pull-right Open Attribute Table in
the TOC and in ArcCatalog, not in an oracle tool. 

The versions are

ArcGIS Desktop 10.2.2.3552 and

Oracle 11.2.0.3.0

If it would help, I can zip the data as well.  Please feel free to let me
know if that would help.  (and I guess I need a reminder not to do the "reply from the email" bit, eh?

[RussellBrennan]

Hi Clara, I just sent you a message with my email address.