StoryMap tracked changed and revisions

[LeighW08]

I’ve been working quite a bit using StoryMaps for project deliverables and have noticed some functionality that isn’t available but could be a worthwhile development for the solution. More recently it was even flagged by our project team and the possibility of such improvements. They have requested that we flag this to Esri as the client has used StoryMaps on several different infrastructure projects and will continue to do so going forward too.

For a bit of background, the issue is around review processes of these digital tools and in particular tracking the changes made within a StoryMap. E.g allowing a user to see what has been changed, compare a previous revision, timestamp of publishing (not just date) etc. Future possibilities could be allowing viewers to leave comments to be addressed too. In addition the date of publish is useful but a time stamp would also be helpful when there are several revisions happening throughout one single day. 

[ReinaCMurray]

Improved versioning control and track changes would be huge -- I manage an educational institution's ArcGIS Online org, and often have groups working on a StoryMap together for a class project or presentation. As simultaneous editing is currently not possible with StoryMaps, having a time stamp as well as version comments or track changes would be beneficial for groups working on a StoryMap together to review changes.

We currently encourage groups using StoryMaps to make use of external tools like google docs or microsoft onedrive to 1) manage who works on the StoryMap at what time and 2) to keep a copy of written content, so that edits to text can be tracked and managed there. This is a tedious workaround. 

[OwenGeo]

@ReinaCMurray - Thanks for adding some information about how this feature would be useful. We appreciate you providing this feedback as it will help us in future planning sessions. I can say that, at this time, this feature is not in our plans for at least the rest this year (2022).

A better way to approach a group project might be to simply have each student work on their own story and add each of the stories to a collection. The collection is a single link that will contain all the student's work, but each student gets to work on their own story item. Stories can be added to the collection when they are completed or they can be added while in progress and published changed will be visible within the collection whenever a story is updated.

I believe this would greatly simplify the workflow. Students would not need to work on the same story, so there's no need to manage who is working on the story at which time or use an external tool to draft content that later needs to be copy/pasted into the StoryMap. Additionally, the element of creating a shared update group to provide editing permissions to each group member is not needed either.

Here's an article explaining more about collections: Start your first ArcGIS StoryMaps collection (esri.com)

[ReinaCMurray]

Hi @OwenGeo, thanks for your comments and suggestion. We do also use collections, and you're right, it's a good approach for group project. One snag: there's a limit of I believe 60 ish items in a collection, and we've had professors teaching large survey courses of 150 students or so wanting to use StoryMaps. So not every individual can have their StoryMap in the collection. This is where groupwork comes in -- students working in groups of 10 or so may work together on a StoryMap to add to the final class collection. From what you're saying, we could encourage the students to use a collection for their group work as well. Can you have nested collections (ie, a collection as part of a collection)? Thanks!

[OwenGeo]

there's a limit of I believe 60 ish items in a collection, and we've had professors teaching large survey courses of 150 students or so wanting to use StoryMaps. So not every individual can have their StoryMap in the collection

I'm not sure a collection is the best tool for this use case since there is such a large number of items. How about just using an ArcGIS group? The link to the group can be shared, and the group page has good tools to browse, search, and open items in the group. It also has different view options like grid, list, and table. For example, here's a link to a group page...Esri Maps and Data - Content (arcgis.com).

Nesting collections is a possibility. I wouldn't recommend it for a project you plan to share to a diverse audience because the multiple levels of navigation is a bit confusing, but if it's for a specific situation with a specific audience (like a summary of classwork) it could be worth exploring.

[ReinaCMurray]

Thanks @OwenGeo! We do encourage the use of groups, and I'll make sure to point out the different view options. We've also had success with faculty exploring using Hub sites to showcase classwork.