'Update date' misleading

[ChrisMathers]

Our open data portal is set up to pull data from our server site live but a member of the public noticed that the 'About' block on the right side of a download page for a dataset shows the date I registered the service with AGOL in April. It looks like the data hasn't been updated in two months even though the data is as current as we see in our own office. Is there a way to fool it into updating often or drop it from the page entirely?

Dataset | Bay County, FL Open Data Portal

[DanielFenton1 · Accepted solution]

Hi Chris,

The best way to "fool" the system is by updating the ArcGIS Online Item that references your data. That will cause the date_updated to reflect your change. You don't really have to change anything about the item, just make sure you "touch" it by saving.

We're working on better workflows as we definitely understand your pain.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Daniel Fenton

Product Engineer | Open Data

[ChrisMathers]

OK thanks. This works for now, glad to know you folks are on it.

[MalcolmJ]

Hi

Has there been any update to this in the last few months?

I think I read somewhere that Open Data was going to use the editor tracking fields to work out when data has been updated. Is this something that's planned or has it been done already?

Thanks

[ChrisMathers]

That would be very helpful. I hadn't heard that but I hope they are implementing it.

[MalcolmJ]

I found where I had read this.

Server configuration details—ArcGIS Open Data | ArcGIS

"Enabling editor tracking on your data will create a new date field that will automatically be updated anytime the data is changed. This can be easily enabled in data hosted in ArcGIS Online as well as with your local data published to ArcGIS Server. When enabling editor tracking on your local data, use the default field name to ensure we can accurately report when the data was last updated and ensure your users are always receiving the most up-to-date data."

[CourtneyClaessens]

Hi Chris, Malcolm,

We do take the updated date from the editor tracking attribute if editor tracking is turned on. For hosted services, we take the last edited date on the hosted features. For services that are not hosted and do not have editor tracking, we default to the ArcGIS Online item's last updated date.

For services that have formal metadata attached and has a published date, we show both the last updated date and the published date.

Let us know if you have any other questions!

Courtney

[MalcolmJ]

Excellent! Thanks for confirming that Courtney.

[AparnaBokey]

Courtney - I have added the last updated date (under Citation->Dates->Revised Dates) in my layers ArcGIS format metadata, but the same is still not visible on the Open Data site. The Published date comes in correctly. Am I entering the last updated date in the correct location? Please advise.  http://geodata.dep.state.fl.us/datasets/2cc06364577648dbaf63b4b40b72d638_0http://geodata.dep.state.fl.us/datasets/2cc06364577648dbaf63b4b40b72d638_0

Thanks.

[CourtneyClaessens]

Hi Aparna,

We currently only harvest the published date from the ArcGIS format metadata. At this time, I would suggest to enable editor tracking on your services. This will add another attribute with the last edited date, which we will use as the last updated date on the dataset page. If you don't have editor tracking enabled, we use the last update date from the ArcGIS Online item (the last time the description was edited, etc).

We will be harvesting more values from the official metadata in the future.

Hope this helps,

Courtney