Map Tour options in Enterprise

[TimLohnes1]

Hi, 

I have a Story Maps map tour that I am trying to recreate in Enterprise 10.9.1.

There seem to be a few settings missing for Map Tours

Media Tab (missing completely)

1. No crop/fill setting
2. No attribution
3. No Alternative text

Filter & Sort 

1. Maximum places capped at 100 (not 200)

When should we expect these settings from regular Story Maps to filter down.

In addition, when can we put more fields worth of text. Should be able to add as many fields as we want so we can show all the details for a location.

Thanks,

Tim

[OwenGeo · Accepted solution]

@TimLohnes1 -- There's information about what features are available in ArcGIS StoryMaps in each version of ArcGIS Enterprise in our doc:

• What's new in ArcGIS StoryMaps on ArcGIS Enterprise—ArcGIS StoryMaps | Documentation
• ArcGIS StoryMaps on ArcGIS Enterprise feature comparison—ArcGIS StoryMaps | Documentation

Once something is available in ArcGIS Online, it's likely that it will show up in an Enterprise release 6-8 months later. You can review when features were added to the Online version in the release notes. 

> In addition, when can we put more fields worth of text. Should be able to add as many fields as we want so we can show all the details for a location.

You can already easily do this by adding a new field to your feature layer and using Arcade to populate the field with whatever concatenation of information (including HTML) that you might need. Then use that new field for your tour place descriptions.

[TimLohnes1]

Thanks, @OwenGeo .

I do see those extra settings are in the more recent Enterprise releases.

And I understand your Arcade workaround. But that really feels like a workaround. Should able to pick what fields to show below the photo of a point. If you can add two fields, just allow more. Let user pick all the fields they want to show data for. Will use the Arcade solution for now.

Thanks,
Tim

[OwenGeo]

@TimLohnes1 - Thanks for the additional information! Our current thinking is that authors who have made the decision to store their tour place information in a feature layer are generally comfortable making updates to data in ArcGIS Online, and ArcGIS Online already has a very good experience for working with Arcade to calculate field values.

We've mostly heard from authors who want to be able to have a full editing environment to concatenate information in various ways with field placeholders interspersed with written text and manual HTML formatting. All this is already available in the Arcade editor, and would be a significant level of effort for us to recreate in the story builder. For these reasons, we haven't prioritized building another way to do this in ArcGIS StoryMaps. However, it would be interesting to hear more about how you envision this feature working...

You mentioned just adding more fields...are you saying you are looking for something simpler than what I described above where you just want a way to specify more than one field, but the information in each field would simply be added below the previous field (in a new text block)? That would be a drastically simpler dev effort and we might consider something like that in the future if we also heard from others who think that would be helpful.

I would suggest adding an idea with a good amount of detail to our ideas board so others can weigh in and vote.

So something like this...

[place description]

[address]

[phone number]

Would result in something like this...

This is a place where I like to go for lunch. It opened in 1978, and closed for a few years in the 90s. When it reopened, it was...

100 Main St, San Diego, CA

999-123-4567

[TimLohnes1]

Thanks, @OwenGeo 
I have a few thoughts

1. Concatenating Data in the database to suit final presentation: This is generally not the way I think about data vs presentation. Taking presentation and formatting level decisions and putting them in the database really seems a bit odd to me. There is a database and there is a front end presenting the database. When creating the front end to present your data is where I would format and style the data. What if you have one data layer for all projects in development in the city. This could be used for an Economic Development app to market what is being built in the city. It could be used for Planning to create maps and dashboard showing how much and what type of developments are being built. It can be used by Housing to highlight the status of affordable housing. I don't want a whole series of fields in the data representing different final app presentation formatting.

2. Do you have any examples of fully stylized fields with HTML. If you can make it really impressive visually I might be swayed. But I wish you could put it in the builder. Other products already have it (Dashboard Lists).

3. I wasn't originally talking about fully html stylized info. I just want more fields like you show at the end of your comments (description, new line, address, new line, phone number). 

See attachment 1 for our OLD story map of public art. We want to show the details. Very simple. In the new story, just let people add as many as they want. I think that should be simple enough. And ideally add a label (so you pick field Year, write Year: as a label, then insert data from field) See attachment 2 for another example. This is our current development layer in a marketing app. Each project presents all the attributes (if available). It lists the details, the description, and the photos. This is from the jsapi though. But was easy to do. Take the data and present it.

Thanks,
Tim

[OwenGeo]

Thanks for the additional detail, @TimLohnes1.

We think there can be big benefits to storing presentation information in the database!!

You (or anyone in your organization) can present the information in the same way across many different products without any extra work. For example, if you have a feature service that you need to use in multiple StoryMaps you could do that easily without having to re-create the presentation configuration in each story. If the configuration needs to be updated, it would only need to be updated in a single place to be immediately available across all stories where it is used.

The same database field can also populate a web map pop-up, so the information could be presented in the same way across any other ArcGIS apps. And, since the presentation information is standard HTML you could even utilize it in 3rd party or custom apps. The need to re-use a data source is only sometimes identified at the beginning of its life, so storing this in the database, even though there may not be current a need for it, could end up paying off later.

We are working on adding support for HTML list and line break elements, which will allow you to create the impressive examples you're seeking. This is currently in development and scheduled for release in a few weeks. I'll post some examples as we start our testing on this so you can see the results. You should have no trouble configuring a description that looks exactly like your examples.

[TimLohnes1]

Ok. Thanks, Owen. Looking forward to seeing the updates.

I certainly understand some of the usefulness in what you note and will certainly keep it in mind. 

[OwenGeo]

@TimLohnes1 - Earlier this month we released an update the included support for many more HTML tags. Check out the what's new blog for more information.

What’s new in ArcGIS StoryMaps (June 2023) (esri.com)