We just upgraded from Enterprise 10.9.1 to 11.3 but cannot get Damage Assessment Solutions for 11.1

[ArcGISDev]

With Enterprise 10.9.1 we deployed Damage Assessment 3.0.  After a year or so we noted a new 3.1 version for Enterprise 11.1 but just upgraded from 10.9.1 to the latest Enterprise 11.3.  When I open ArcGIS Solutions on our new 11.3 Enterprise I no longer see Damage Assessment at all.   How do I get the 3.1 version that was released in Enterprise 11.1?  Surely I don't need to downgrade to get this.  Also I do see the 3.0 version that was initially installed with our Enterprise 10.9.1 in my "My Solutions" as I would expect after upgrading from 10.9.1 to 11.3.

Does this mean if we want to get a particular version of an Enterprise Solution we cannot skip that Enterprise version that it was released in?  We initially planned on only upgrading to the major Enterprise versions ie 11.odd number.

I realize that ArcGIS Online has the latest versions but we are specifically deploying the Solutions in our Enterprise base deployment.

So this leads to the last question.  If Damage Assessment 4.0 has plans of being added to an Enterprise version how do I get what version it will be included in?   With FEMA adding more features like Digital Damage Surveys 3.2.9 how can I keep up with this while using Enterprise and how can I give everyone else that uses this solution a timeline when these new features will be available?

[RyanUthoff]

This doesn't directly answer your question, but I went to the Damage Assessment help page here (Introduction to Damage Assessment) and it does not provide help documentation for ArcGIS Enterprise 11.2+. If you click the "Other versions" dropdown, 11.2 and 11.3 are greyed out, which typically means that feature or functionality is deprecated or retired at that version.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find any official documentation regarding deprecation/retirement for the Damage Assessment solution. What's strange is that version 4.0 was released for AGOL, but not Enterprise, so I'm not sure what's going on with that.

On a side note, I am running 11.2 and I also cannot find the Damage Assessment solution. I'm assuming that Esri removed that solution from Enterprise at 11.2+

[LindsayThomas]

Hi @ArcGISDev, 

We too have been finding it challenging to stay up to date with FEMA. FEMA actually just updated the Digital Damage Surveys again in June this year.

As for the question about staying up to date with Damage Assessment solution, and the aligned FEMA schema in Enterprise. Our team has been trying to balance the alignment in Enterprise as well, we found that users don't upgrade Enterprise frequently (which is expected). What this means when we are shipping Damage Assessment (leveraging the FEMA schema) on Enterprise, by the time users upgraded the Enterprise environment the FEMA schema is already out of date.  Because of this challenge we decided to continue to support Damage Assessment on ArcGIS Online only, to ensure we could frequently update and stay in sync with FEMA. 

There isn't straightforward away to get the version of Damage Assessment 3.1 (Available on Enterprise 11.1) onto Enterprise 11.3.  

In saying that, we welcome feedback on changing the approach we are taking. Should we change our approach and ship the Solution on Enterprise whether the FEMA schema is out of date or not? 

-Lindsay

[Joshua-Young]

This is a great example of why solutions should be decoupled from ArcGIS Enterprise (AGE) releases. It would be great if new solutions or updated solutions were made available outside of AGE releases. That way changes like this could be pushed to older AGE versions. Then have the something similar to the cloud version of Solutions that blocks the install if functionality is missing in AGE.

Even better would be to design solutions that are also designed so that any solution can be deployed, deploy only the compatible components, and have a list of components that will not be installed and explain why. Exceptions to this could be solutions like the Watch Center solution where the core purpose of the solution is not possible without the missing components and deployments of those apps could be blocked (still explain why it is blocked in the UI).

[RyanUthoff]

This is the real answer right here. Decoupling ArcGIS Solutions from ArcGIS Enterprise. Just like how Esri decoupled the Living Atlas content starting at 11.3.

[LindsayThomas]

This is an interesting idea. Unfortunately, the current architecture doesn't allow for decoupling. Without getting too deep into the technology, we have dependencies on product versions, and associated Enterprise versions which makes this approach not feasible at this time.

In saying that, this is something to think about, making solutions a bit more portable across Enterprise and ArcGIS Online. 

Thanks for sharing @RyanUthoff  @Joshua-Young