Add new feature classes to hosted feature layers

[AlfredBaldenweck]

(Please feel free to edit the title of this post). Sister post to this. 

See this post for additional context.

I would like to be able to update hosted feature layers (group layers) by adding new feature classes to them.

As of now, the only way to do this is to export the hosted feature classes to a local GDB, then overwrite the old service with the local copy+ whatever you want to add. This is 1) time consuming and 2) prone to user-error.

[jcarlson]

I'd give this more kudos if I could! If we want to keep our web and field-based operations flexible, we need to have web-based ways to modify our layers at this level.

[RichSiko]

I agree that it is important to have a way to update Group layers within AGOL.

Attempting to use Pro as you suggest is indeed 1) time consuming and 2) prone to user-error and 3) technical issues when going back and forth between Pro and AGOL.

We migrated all of our data to version 1.0 of the Water Distribution System Data Management Solution about 18 months ago. I now see that several nice improvements have been made with the 1.3 release of this solution.

I'd like to add the new Backflow Point layer to my existing WatrerDistributionSystem hosted feature group layer as well as several nice inspection type tables that are now available.

esri  should think about providing an automated approach to add new features whenever new releases are made available. 

[AaronKoelker]

Adding additional endpoints/layers to a hosted feature service in ArcGIS Online would be very useful and help save time and cut down on clutter by combining data. Feature services often need to change as projects evolve.

[JimW]

Along these lines, how about the ability to update/overwrite a specific sublayer within a hosted feature layer that has multiple layers?  For example, my organization performs catch basin cleaning.  We have a catch basin layer and a cleaning layer in AGO.  The catch basin layer is a copy of our enterprise catch basin layer because there are fields that are needed for this workflow but they cannot be added to our enterprise layer.  When I first set this up, I created a relationship class between the catch basin layer and the cleaning layer all in one hosted feature service.  However, I found out that if I want to update the catch basin layer in AGO, the entire layer, including the related cleaning layer gets overwritten.  Ideally, I could just overwrite the catch basin layer only while keeping the cleaning layer untouched.  My work around is to keep the layers separate.  The cleaning layer data is populated in Survey123 and the xy coordinates of the catch basin are passed as the location of the survey point so all cleaning points are coincident with the catch basin.  When someone clicks on a catch basin, it gives the appearance in the popup of showing all cleaning data for that catch basin.  Its not great but it works.  I could create a view layer using the two layers but then I can't overwrite the catch basins without deleting the view and then recreating it.  And then fixing maps and dashboards that use that view.

[AaronKoelker]

@JimW  You can do this currently using the ArcGIS API for Python. That allows you to target a specific layer within a hosted feature layer collection when working with data updates, using things like truncate and edit_features to do an 'overwrite'. But it would be nice to have it available via the website UI, too, if it's feasible.