Adding Online items shared with groups to Desktop

[KatyAppleton1]

I am an instructor working with students who are creating data in ArcGIS Online. We are all members of a group I set up for this purpose. The students have created polygons (Map Notes then Save As Layer) which they have then set to be shared with the group via the Item Details page.

I am using Desktop. I go to Add Data From ArcGIS Online > My Groups and select today's group. I can see the layer I have shared to the group, but not their layers. What settings do I need to check/alter to allow me to add their layers into Desktop?

If I go into the group in AGOL I can see all of the layers and add them to an AGOL map. Only in Desktop are they invisible. We are not using a very fast internet connection but the files are not complex or large.

The end aim is that I will use the polygons they have created with Tabulate Areas / Zonal Statistics and some raster layers to give them descriptive statistics about the areas they have defined. Any advice on alternative approaches to this would be welcome, but the above seemed simple - in theory!

-Katy

[KellyGerrow]

Hi Katy,

What Desktop Product and Version are you using? When you add the layers are you trying to add them as layer items or as part of a web map that you are loading?

-Kelly

[KatyAppleton1]

I am on Desktop Advanced 10.4. I am trying to find the items from my students as layers, through Add Data. It's the Item Details for the layer that we are using to set sharing. I'm not (knowingly) doing anything with web maps.

Thanks,

Katy

[KatyAppleton1 · Accepted solution]

Resolved - for anyone reading this in future, there was confusion between feature layers, hosted feature layers, and the fact that when a group-shared feature layer is published, the resulting hosted feature layer did not inherit the sharing properties. Once we checked that we had a hosted feature layer that was shared to the group, all was fine.

Two points of confusion were brought about by ArcGIS Online:

1) Feature Layers and Hosted Feature Layers have the same icon. It would be nice if e.g. the little red map marker was another colour for the hosted version, or the icon were some other way similar-but-different.

2) The Feature Layer and its published Hosted Feature Layer can have exactly the same name. This seems odd given that creating new feature layers requires the name to be unique not only in my content but across the whole organisation.

[KellyGerrow]

Thanks for following up Katie.

We'll look into clarifying this.

-Kelly