I wish there was a "highlight feature" option for the Actions! Similar to how ArcGIS Dashboards work - where if you clicked on the action, it also highlighted the portion of the map you wanted to zoom too.
@SaraJL - Thanks for posting this idea! Could you also please share a link or screenshot of an example dashboard where this is configured and/or a link to the documentation that explains this capability? (I searched the dashboard doc for "highlight feature" and I didn't find anything specifically called that, so I'm not quite sure what functionality or widget you're referring to, sorry!)
If you could also provide information and perhaps some examples about how this feature would enhance your storytelling that would be helpful for us to better understand how you'd use this and what value it would bring to your audience.
@OwenGeo Sure thing and I can do that! I think in relation to the dashboard, similar to the flash action is probably more what I'm thinking of.
Here is an example - this data is a bit outdated, but this is a dashboard I created that shows protest data (provided by the Carnegie Global Protest Tracker) compared with a freedom index (provided by Freedom House).
There is a list on the top left of Protests and Marches from 2016 - 2020. Clicking on the different options will flash the location on the map and show a pop-up. I'm not necessarily thinking the full functionality of pop-ups and flashes - but just some way to highlight (or flash) the feature to make it easier for the reader to pinpoint.
For an example scenario of functionality in Story Maps, my brain was dreaming up something like this:
In this example Story Map that I have > in the "Side Car: PFT Projects" section
Different countries are highlighted to showcase particular sets of data
Currently if you click on the buttons, it will zoom to the country > Example Argentina > if you click on the Argentina button, it zooms to the country
The button would zoom to and highlight the country
I suspect this is probably more involved than I think it is! From how I understand the functionality in Dashboards, to create the actions there is an option to select a target dataset in the configurations. But currently as it stands in Story Maps, I don't think it has a way to select a specific dataset in Map Actions (it more or less just saves a view, rather than anything object specific).
But it would definitely be really cool if we could do this with Map Actions in Story Maps! It could be helpful for readers if it's a map with many features and layers, and potentially a nice accessibility option to improve visibility.
