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"?

[GlenShepherd]

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...

[DeniseVachon]

Hi Glen. Thanks for responding. This isn't quite what I was getting at.

Just to clarify: we are not using managed offline areas (due to the limitations with 'shared update groups' https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-field-maps-questions/shared-update-groups-and-manage-offline-ma...). Our users create their own offline areas on-demand from Field Maps. I am aware that users will need to create new offline areas to see the new field.

What I'm trying to determine is this: will existing replicas that have local edits (taken offline by users in Field Maps on-demand) fail to sync back to the parent service if the parent has a new field?

Basically, do I need to have all of my field staff sync their edits in existing offline areas before adding a new field to a feature service in order to prevent orphaned replicas? Or will these replicas not be orphaned?

[GlenShepherd · Accepted solution]

Basically, do I need to have all of my field staff sync their edits in existing offline areas before adding a new field to a feature service in order to prevent orphaned replicas?

- Yes, if you want to play it safe.

This is the advised workflow. Any time we make schema updates, offline map areas need to be re-created (regardless of whether they were pre-packaged in ArcGIS Field Maps Designer, or packaged on demand in the field app).

You could try it, and it may work on some occasions. But more often than not, it's better to make sure the schema of the replica matches the online parent.