Enable automatic updates to data in Esri Maps for Office

1194
3
12-27-2013 10:12 AM
Status: Open
RachelWeeden1
New Contributor III

Esri Maps for Office is a great tool for map-enabling spreadsheet data. And, the fact that the map and data remain dynamic, so that as the data cells change the map changes is great. A nice addition to this would be to enable the automatic updating of the shared layer in ArcGIS Online - maybe a scheduler that could be managed in Excel, for exmaple. It is a common workflow for non-GIS users to update info in Excel on a regular basis, and having that automatically populate the shared layer would be a time-saver.

3 Comments
ScottPrindle
When promoting this idea, could you please provide your user story and the need for this behavior? We would like to see how this behavior would benefit individuals if it were adopted.
BarbaraSchwendtner
@sprindle.support:
Most companies I am working with have a lot of spreadsheets in use. Those spreadsheets are getting updated frequently - by adding or removing lines (f.ex. customers) or by simply changing content. In case of the latter, the option of "update layer" can be used manualy. Nonetheless, especially non-GIS users don't have the time and patience to update or re-geocode their Excel sheet every time they make changes in order to have updated information on ArcGIS Online. Because of that, a lot of users stop using both Esri Maps for Office and ArcGIS Online all together, which is a pity. Some understood, that both systems are seamlessly "talking" with each other, ie. that information updated in ArcGIS Online will be automatically updated in Excel and vice versa.
So an automatic scheduled update of Excel sheets is definitely something users want and need!
ScottPrindle

Hey Barbara,

Thank you for this information! Could you expand on the types of workflows these non-GIS users would be doing? Are some of these users only pushing edits from Excel to ArcGIS Online, some only pulling edits, or expecting edits to be going both ways? 

Thanks,

Scott