Migration path from Classic StoryMaps

1958
13
03-16-2021 01:11 PM
SteveBeste
New Contributor II

I see that eventually I will have to migrate my Classic StoryMaps story to the new ArcGis StoryMaps. By then I suppose that Esri will have implemented all the old features I use into the new product. Come the day, I'll check, but I expect no problems. What DOES worry me is the URL.

At this point, I have thousands of people who have bookmarked the URL of my story. Those bookmarks are the most valuable things I have. The story itself I could always recreate if necessary. But if the URL changes, then years of my work publicizing the site and getting people to link to it will be lost. So:

-->Will Esri provide a migration path that will preserve the URL of my story? Please, please yes.

-Steve Beste

 

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13 Replies
OwenGeo
Esri Notable Contributor

@SteveBeste -- It is not possible for us to provide redirects from individual classic story maps to updated stories created with ArcGIS StoryMaps. However, your classic story will continue to work for several years.

When and if you choose to recreate the story with the latest ArcGIS StoryMaps, you can easily provide a note on your classic story that will link your readers to the updated version.

Owen Evans
Lead Product Engineer | StoryMaps
SteveBeste
New Contributor II

Owen,

While I appreciate the quick reply, I think your proposed solution will still cost me most of my customers. Consider:

  1. You expect the user to DO something - change their bookmark or a link on their website.
  2. While at the same time you remove most of their incentive to do so. After all, as long as the classic story is up, why would they bother linking through to some other version of the same information? They'll get their answer from the classic site and procrastinate on doing anything else. Wouldn't you? And then one day it'll be gone.

Technically, I'm sure you can do redirects if enough of your customers want it. As a developer, you're in love with the new thing and want to be shut of the old. As a developer myself, I understand that. But please understand that you're proposing to destroy  a chunk of Esri's value to your customers. Putting my business manager's hat on, that seems unwise. Please consider adding redirects to your development list.

Thanks,

Steve

JayJohnsonWashoeCounty
Occasional Contributor III

This issue of managing URLs is a real pain point.  Aside from the use case being discussed here (migration from one generation of app to the next), the ability to easily "swap out" one version of a StoryMap, Dashboard, WAB app, etc. for another updated/re-designed one without inconveniencing the end-user is something we struggle with.  Users are going to bookmark our content and then expect it to be there FOREVER.  At a high level, we need some workable strategy for managing URLs that can handle re-direction.  It doesn't even have to necessarily be an ESRI-built solution, but it is a real issue that we all face.

I've used the "put a note on the old app" approach, but that is not an elegant solution.

Jay
Washoe County GIS
SteveBeste
New Contributor II

Jay,

I'm gld to hear that someone else has this problem. I think that at the end of the day, Esri will have to get involved. I tried to solve this by setting up my own website, NoVaDogParks.com, which does nothing but redirect to the StoryMap on Esri. It's a shell. I then publicized my URL, the idea being that I could keep it constant even if the Esri URL changed. It hasn't worked, though. People bookmark what they see and like, which is the Esri URL. Indeed, since my site immediately redirects, people can't bookmark it. So that kind of shell website is not the solution. 

Regards, Steve

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EllenNodwell_IntegraShare
Occasional Contributor

Just an innocent question here:  would ArcGIS Online Assistant help in this case or no?  I haven't tested this, but it does have some of that functionality...  I may try it and see what happens...  In the past I had used it to lift and shift content from one Portal (dev) to another (prod).  It's one of those "rare find" tools that someone told me about and I have used it quite a bit for managing content between sites.  I will update this post once I see if that might work...

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SteveBeste
New Contributor II

Ellen,

I'm not familiar with ArcGIS Online Assistant. I look forward to hearing the results of your experiment.

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EllenNodwell_IntegraShare
Occasional Contributor

Hi @SteveBeste - if you want to experiment here is the link:  ArcGIS Online Assistant (esri.com)  It's pretty straightforward to understand.  You must have admin rights on the sites that you want to move content from A to B.  There are some other utilities, as well.  Check it out.  It was suggested to me by some people years ago, and it still seems to function OK.  I signed in yesterday to check to see if I could still use it.  Let us know what you figure out, whether it works for you in your situation.

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SteveBeste
New Contributor II

Ellen,

I'm still not clear that what you're doing will solve my problem. That is, I hava a StoryMap with a URL of XXX. When I migrate to the new StoryMap version, I want the new one to also have the same URL of XXX. My problem isn't the migration itself, but the preservation of the URL since that's what my customers have bookmarked. Are you saying that your migration method will preserve the URL?

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EllenNodwell_IntegraShare
Occasional Contributor

Probably best for you to look at the tool and the utilities to see if it will work for you.  If you go to that link I posted for AGOL Assistant, and sign into your portal(s) (AGOL or Enterprise Portals) you can see if any of the utilities/functions do what you need for them to do.  Before you even log in read the landing page of AGOL Assistant.  Anyhow, good luck and hope it works for you.

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