Deploying a solution more than once behavior?

[Joshua-Young]

We are on ArcGIS Enterprise 11.5. I am noticing that when I try to deploy a solution a second time instead of creating a new folder with all new items what happens instead is a new folder is created with a new solution item but the only other items in the new folder are apps, maps, or services that were not in the original solution or I deleted from the original solution. Is that the expected behavior?

For example, two years ago I deployed version 1.0 of the GIS Request Management solution to test but my boss cancelled the deployment for something else. I never deleted that deployed solution. Now I have an opportunity to deploy it again. We are now on 11.5 and have access to version 1.1 of the GIS Request Management solution. I deployed version 1.1 and all that was added to a new folder was a solution item, the site item, the site page item, and the GIS_Activities_surveys view (I don't remember why but I had to delete and recreate that view in version 1.0).

I was hoping that it would create a whole new copy of the solution and not link to the old deployment in any way.

[ChrisFox · Accepted solution]

Hi @Joshua-Young, what you are describing is intended behavior. When you deploy an updated version it will reuse items from the previous version that are unchanged and only give you the new/updated items. If you want a fresh new version you can deploy it 2x. The first time it will reuse the items from the previous deployment. The second time you will get all new items.

We are working on an enhancement for a future release that will give you more control over this when you deploy and allow you to explicitly decide whether you want to deploy all new items, or reuse items from a previous deployment. 

[JessicaBlackwell1]

Hi @ChrisFox, I recently had this happen except when I deployed the updated version of Parks and Grounds Solution it added new asset and facilities layers, rather than pointing the new maps, apps, dashboards etc to the existing data layers... now I am at a loss as to how to get the updated solution configs to point to the current data rather than the new shell... any recommendations?  I have attempted this again and it did it to both data layers this time... how do I go back to deploying the updated version of the solution and have it recognize that I already have the asset and facilities hosted feature layers with the data?

Any insight is greatly appreciated! 🙂

[ChrisFox]

Hi @JessicaBlackwell1, within the ArcGIS Solutions app, if you go to the Deployments page, do you see your previous deployed version of the Parks and Grounds Management solution? If you open it does it say its version 1.0. Do you have multiple deployments of this solution in your content? This will only work if you have version 1.0 deployed, but have not deployed 1.1 already.

[JessicaBlackwell1]

Hi @ChrisFox  It happened while trying to redo a deployment of the newest version... since the field maps map of the prior deployed version (from June) had issues that couldn't be undone, so we thought if we could redeploy the solution and grab that field maps map for mobile data collection as the only missing piece... but it keeps creating new data layers instead of recognizing that we already have the data layers and just needed that one map... how do we fix this in the deployed solution where now I have two deployed solutions, one with the actual data and one with the field maps map we need, but we need the new field map app to point to the other data layers not the newly created data layers... I don't see any way to tell the new deployed maps/apps to just point to the other data sources without it breaking everything; or to not create the new data layers in the new deployment, only the maps/apps that is needed.... I am not sure what to do at this point other than try to do a local backup copy of the data layers, delete both the deployed solutions and then deploy yet another version to start over yet again... any advice?

[JessicaBlackwell1]

@ChrisFox I am at a loss here and desperate for your help... I needed to redeploy the solution, but need the new solution to recognize the existing feature layers rather than create new feature layer shells ... any way to do this or am I going to have to throw 2 years worth of work out the trash and start over with these new ones?! 

[ChrisFox]

@JessicaBlackwell1, Could you share some more details on the multiple deployments you have, I can try to help you achieve this result. From the Deployments page, it sounds like you have 2 deployments of Parks and Grounds Management.

Could you tell me what version they are? You can see this by opening each deployment and looking at the version info. Which deployed version has the existing feature layers with data that you want to deploy the new items on top of?

[JessicaBlackwell1]

I had a previous one that was Version 1.0 and now I have two that are both Version 1.1; I had tried to redeploy to fix the issue of the new deployment not finding both the existing data layers, and so now I have two and they each only have one with the original data layers. I need to somehow merge them, or get one of them to recognize the existing Parks and Ground hosted feature layers. I have tried moving them into the solution folder, however that didn't get the solution to recognize it in the diagram. I have also tried opening the maps and pointing them to the original layers, and that also didn't work. I have tried to append the orig data to the new deployments templates, but that didn't work either since I have customized the schema in the orig layers with new attribute fields.  I  tried uploading from ArcPro to overwrite the hosted feature layers... nothing is working.  Not sure what to try next... any ideas would be greatly appreciated. 

[ChrisFox]

@JessicaBlackwell1, so the logic in the app when you deploy is it will look for all the deployed versions of a given solution. If it finds that the same version being deployed has already been deployed in your content, it will not reuse any of the previous layers, instead it will deploy all new items. 

If instead when you deploy a solution and there is only a previous version that has been deployed, it will reuse layers from the previous version as long as the layers were not modified in the new version. This is the case for Parks and Grounds Management when going from 1.0 -> 1.1.

So if I understand you have 2 deployments of version 1.1 and 1 deployment of version 1.0. If you want to deploy a new copy of version 1.1 on top of the layers in your 1.0 version you have 2 options. Delete the 2 deployments of version 1.1 or transfer the 2 deployments of version 1.1 to another user. In both of these approaches the app will only see version 1.0 in your content and as a result reuse the layers from it when you deploy a new version of 1.1.