Allow Admins to manage Offline Map Areas

2041
12
10-29-2019 12:45 PM
Status: Open
AaronKoelker
Occasional Contributor III

Our organization is large and has employee turnover, and often we need to transfer ArcGIS Online content from an employee who has left to somebody else. Also, with Enterprise accounts, we sometimes need to create a new account for someone due to email changes, and transfer over their existing content. When a web map is enabled for Collector and has Offline Map Areas created for it, admins are not able to transfer ownership of that web map (per ESRI documentation). They are also not able to view or manage those Offline Map Areas - including being able to delete them.

 

The only workaround we have found so far is to create a copy of the map and transfer ownership of that, but then the Offline Map Areas are lost, and the admin is not even able to recreate them for the new owner (though in many cases we wouldn't be able to regardless, since we are unable to see what those map areas even were to begin with).

 

Allowing admins to transfer web maps with Offline Map Areas would be ideal, but if that is impossible due to technical limitations, please consider allowing admins to at least manage the map areas of web maps they do not own (view/create/delete).

12 Comments
StephanieLeusink

Agreed. Not allowing the admin to change ownership of maps that have offline map areas, or to at least be able to update offline map areas, makes it very difficult to deal with employee turnover or even for short-term coverage of people who are sick or on vacation.

NinaRihn

Our agency also has this need...  we know we are able to use the member's Transfer Content option to move ALL content from a person to a folder in another person's content, however we often need to move just select items, especially in the case where the person who had the offline areas is not actually closing their account, but rather are just passing on a project or workflow to another staff member.      It would be helpful if the Change Owner dialog allowed us to change the owner of layers with offline areas, or at least if the Transfer Content option had the ability to pick which items to transfer.

Will
by

Please fix this!  Thanks and have a great day.

KAKS
by

Yes please! In our organization, offline areas are created by 2 different administrators preparing web maps for field crews. Not being able to edit (or even VIEW) the offline areas in each other's web maps is extremely problematic. Another awesome feature would be the ability to download the perimeters of map areas as a polygon layer so we can create a key for which map areas are on which web maps within our huge, remote district. We can't generate polygons in ArcGIS desktop or as a web map layer because the size and shape of the map area depends on how big of an area Field Maps will let us "grab" for a particular basemap (e.g., World Imagery).

BrianRobeson

I need this too.  Saving a copy of the map and creating a new map area is a low quality workaround.  It seems like the only real options are 1) don't use preplanned offline map areas or 2) always have the same person update the offline areas and hope they never retire, change jobs, or go on vacation.

tiztrain

Can anybody tested the new "Transfer Content" tool and does this resolve this problem?

tiztrain_0-1687843709391.png

 

NinaRihn

Transfer content does work, but only if you want to transfer ALL of the user's content.  Transfer content doesn't allow you to pick and choose what to transfer.   Often we just want to transfer a certain project to someone else; not all of their content.

tiztrain

Yep just did some test and confirmed it worked for 1882 items though you have to first:

  1. Make sure you are added into every group that your transferring items from
  2. Make sure that there are at least 2 people in your organization that are setup as admins for MFA

Agreed @NinaRihn . We also really need this functionality. I don't see in the documentation anywhere that it is expected behaviour so maybe this is a bug?

tiztrain

Ok so I have a work around. As a warning, this is not an official supported workflow and it could also break something else later down the line but it has worked for me with my initial test. This requires you to update the item's JSON and the easiest tools you can use are either, https://ago-assistant.esri.com/ or https://assistant.esri-ps.com/ , the later is an Esri tool that is still in Beta.

  • Open the Assistant and log in
  • Find your web map and click on 'View an item's JSON'
  • Navigate to edit the 'Description' window
  • Under the 'typeKeywords' section, delete the text, "Offline Map Areas",
  • Save the JSON
  • You will now be able to 'Change Owner' for the web map.
  • Once you have changed the owner, refresh the Assistant page and re-add the "Offline Map Areas", back into the same spot in the JSON file.

You will also have access to the original offline area which is great. Hope this helps.