Similar to: https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-field-maps-questions/field-maps-replicas-and-enabling-disabling....
I am a GIS Support Specialist and provide troubleshooting and guidance on ESRIs out of the box mobile app solutions for 1500+ users that have access to create and collect data offline in the field. Specifically, Field Maps.
We are experiencing sync error/user confusion issues when folks download offline map areas (from device or pre-packaged) for several days which contain reference-only hosted feature layers that have automated updates requiring sync to be turned off momentarily to overwrite the data source.
Turning sync off on these reference only layers to overwrite the data removes all offline replicas and results in user-side sync errors in Field Maps specific to an illegal state error, due to the replica being removed.
While this doesn't affect the editable data sync outcome, it causes much confusion amongst app creators and field users implying the sync process was unsuccessful and the editable data collected by them is not being updated. Most with the inability to check online to confirm sync actually occurred.
Ultimately, a great solution to this would be the reference only data being taken offline be set to NOT have a sync back to the replica created - perhaps just one direction and released once the offline area is removed.
We have explored several scenarios/ideas regarding changing sync direction for feature layers to download only, using vector layers or even changing the feature layer sync settings but have ran into walls. We also do not want to duplicate data. Thank you!!
