Test ArcGIS Online Updates before rolling them out

[RichardHowe]

Literally every time ESRI pushes out an ArcGIS Online update does it cost us a day of work while they fix whatever issues the latest update has introduced. It's beyond a joke now and is incredibly hard to defend to colleagues and clients. The stress testing of these updates needs to be properly done before pushing it out instead of beta testing them on paying customers

[SaraJL]

I just reached out to Tech Support - our whole organization site is down and I can't log in to either our site or arcgis.com.

When our site does load, all the menus are gone......

[HastingsCountyGIS]

100% agree.  We're loosing confidence with our end users each time this happens, and all we're doing is responding to frustrated users.

[AnthonyJonesRSK]

If anyone from Esri is reading this, is there any potential for you to roll out the update to everyone as a separate login option and then give users the option to work on the old or the new version for a few weeks? Give time for issues to be worked out and then launch the update proper? I'm aware that we can sign up for the early adopter beta but this probably only attracts a few hardcore who have the capacity to provide feedback. It would be great to be able to test out the new functionality after an update but have the option to revert back if things go wrong in the same way you can maintain an old version in Survey123. I'm sure I'm oversimplifying this of course but additional options to avoid these kind of issues would be much appreciated. Thanks

[AdamGaudet]

Jumping in on here as we have been affected by this as well. Thinking about other options from an organizational standpoint. If wanting to stick with Esri, then Enterprise for everything internal and AGOL for anything public facing? So if then issues with AGOL updates it does not affect our internal day-to-day? Any one here have thoughts or ideas on the matter? (We've discussed open source possibilities but we are so ingrained with Esri products and apps as an organization it would be a massive undertaking to switch.)

[LindseyGreidanus]

It seems to happen every year like clockwork... it would nice to at least have a heads up what day the update is happening so we can plan around it and warn our customers that our services will be down. 

[DeniseVachon]

Strongly agree. Our whole site is down. Field staff can't access field apps. Every time this happens it gets harder to convince leadership that we should stick with Esri.

[ZachBodenner]

@AdamGaudet this is exactly what we do. Having control over our update schedule is worth lagging behind the newest features a bit.

[GIS_Guy_USA]

CTRL + Z, ESRI.  We can't work.

[MichaelMorisette]

...and this is all before we discover all the application breaking bugs (and occasional "intended behavior").  We'll then call technical support who will give us the runaround and have us spend days of work doing arbitrary troubleshooting steps having nothing to do with the issue at hand.  We close more than half of our support cases out of frustration and/or when we find a workaround the hot buggy mess that has become the norm for most Esri products.

Honestly, we're starting to move more and more workflows off the Esri framework and into our other enterprise applications wherever possible.  As web applications become increasingly mission critical to our everyday operations, we need stability above all else.  Esri tools are very powerful when they do work as intended and we'd love to continue using them.  There was a time when I swore by Esri products.  Please get it together and turn things back around, Esri.

[HollyTorpey_LSA]

I agree. We have staff who got up early and drove for hours to get to their project sites and now can't use Field Maps. None of our desktop users can sign into Pro. Client-facing web apps are down. I just had to send out an embarrassing email to my whole organization letting them know that Esri released a bad update and all I can do is monitor the situation and keep them posted.

I second @MichaelMorisette's request for stability above all else.