Summary and description are being overwritten on item content page

[RyanDavis1]

Hi -

We just discovered that there's a setting to overwrite the item description when publishing a StoryMap.  It appears that this checkbox is enabled by default.  Unfortunately, it's set up in the Story settings and nowhere near the publish button.

We require our users to provide some fairly detailed supporting information in the description before we will publish, but only now discovered this setting.  So now we have to go back and edit those items again.

It would make more sense to (1) have this checkbox under the publishing dropdown and/or (2) to not have it enabled by default.

Thanks,

Ryan

[OwenGeo · Accepted solution]

@RyanDavis1 -- Thanks for the feedback! You'll be happy to learn that our design team is already in the process of looking at how we can surface many of the story settings into the publish workflow. That is something we are looking to release sometime in the second half of this year.

Our previous research shows that most authors benefit from having the item details automatically kept in sync with the story details. We currently view the desire to unhook that connection as something a relatively small number of power users like to do in certain situations, so that's why it's on by default. We can revisit that to see if our research still supports that conclusion when we work on implementing the publish enhancements mentioned above.

[RyanDavis1]

I appreciate the follow up @OwenGeo 

[MackenzieFox1]

Hi @OwenGeo, is there any update on having the overwrite setting not checked by default, or be more clearly defined when users go to publish StoryMaps? We have had several users in our organization not see this setting and have their item details page overwritten repeatedly. 

[OwenGeo]

@MackenzieFox1 - Yes, in October 2022 ArcGIS StoryMaps added a full-page publishing experience that shows the social metadata settings every time you publish a story. This makes it easy to remember to adjust these settings before you publish. In January 2023 this was added to the collections builder. Once you change this setting your choice persists and it does not have to be changed again.

For more detail and a video of the current publishing experience, see What's New in ArcGIS StoryMaps (October 2022) (esri.com).