ArcGIS Online Labels

[DonPritt]

So I'm looking through the gallery of arcgis online water utility maps from other organizations...
How do you do labeling like this for your maps to post online?
I would like to label my water mains, streets and whatever like this, can anyone give me a clue or where to look? I'm working with a file geodatabase and not a server if that make a difference.
It would be greatly appreciated...

[JustinRichardson]

To reduce credit consumption, you can create a tile package (renders the tiles on your desktop) and upload that to ArcGIS Online.

I just tried this method and while you can upload your tile package to AGOL you can't add the layer to your online map (unless I'm doing something wrong here).  You can only store the file in "my content" to share with other users.  I'm really frustrated with the lack of labeling in AGOL.  There has got to be another solution.  Does anyone have any other advise for adding lots of labels?  (road names, Water Main Diameters, Hydrants ID's, etc..)

[AlastairClinkscale]

I just tried this method and while you can upload your tile package to AGOL you can't add the layer to your online map (unless I'm doing something wrong here).  You can only store the file in "my content" to share with other users.  I'm really frustrated with the lack of labeling in AGOL.  There has got to be another solution.  Does anyone have any other advise for adding lots of labels?  (road names, Water Main Diameters, Hydrants ID's, etc..)

When you upload the .lpk file to My Content, ensure you leave ticked the option to "Publish this file as a Map Service" and it will then trigger the process of publishing the tiles within AGOL - it should take you to the Item Details screen from where you can see this process in action (see the Properties section of that screen > Tiles > Manage Tiles).

When the tile publication is finished, in My Content, you'll have both the Tile Package and Tiles. You should be able to add the Tiles to the AGOL map. You can actually add them to a map even whilst they're still being published - it will display those tiles that have finished being processed.

Agreed it's not a great labeling solution - AGOL really needs a built-in labeling facility.

[DonPritt]

Don,

when uploading your feature services with labels you also need to check Tiled Mapping. This will consume credits but you will have labels. I should have clarified that.

Tim

Thanks Tim, this works for now but definitely have to watch the credit consumption.

[MatthewBaker2]

Does anyone know if there are plans to implement labels in AGOL maps?

Thanks,

-m

[MikeMinami]

Yes, ArcGIS Online will provide support for dynamic labeling Feature Layers in the next update, in mid-July. Here's an excerpt of documentation on labeling...

To display labels for a layer,  select one or more attributes you want to show, for example, the name or type of feature. The map viewer automatically places labels on the map on or near the features they describe. You can control the text size, color, and style to help differentiate labels from different layers.

The map viewer places as many labels on the map as possible without overlapping them. Thus, in areas where features are tightly clustered, some features may not get labeled. As you zoom in to an area, more labels will dynamically appear. Labeling priority follows the layer order in your map from top to bottom. Layers at the top get labeled first and thus, will have the most labels. There is no guarantee that you�??ll get the labels you want positioned exactly where you want them. Thus, dynamic labeling is best suited for maps where you don�??t need precise control and only want to label a few layers.

Thanks,

Mike

[MatthewKing]

Mike,

I see that Labels are now an option on ArcGIS online...which is amazing.  Do you know if in the future there will be the ability to set a visibility range for the labels?

Thanks,

Matt

[MikeMinami]

Do you mean independent of the visibility range of the layer itself? I assume you want to restrict label drawing at the smaller scales of layer drawing? What are you trying to do?  At this time, we don't have plans to implement this idea, but it's interesting. Perhaps submit it to the community at ideas.arcgis.com.

Thanks,

Mike

[MatthewKing]

Mike,

Here's an example map http://bit.ly/1nClwZG‌

You can see (or at least it's what I think) that the labels are too busy. I want the markers themselves to be visible at full scale but the labels wouldn't appear till the user zooms in a bit.  I guess the work around would be to bring in or copy those layers again and make a really small marker that's basically not noticeable to the user, enable the labels and then set the visible scale to what I want....but that's kind of inefficient.

Thanks,

Matt

[AdamInglis]

You could duplicate that layers.  One set with labels, one without.  Then set the visibility of the non-labelled layers to turn off when zoomed into the level you want the labels to display at, and set the labelled layers to turn on.  I was going to demo on you test map, but I didn't have edit privileges.

[AdamInglis]

Opps, just like what Matt said.  Still getting used to this forum 🙂