Create a Story Map Tour using an existing online map?

[deleted-user-sYHsW3p_gN5o]

I'm trying to create a Story Map Tour using an existing online map. In the FAQ, it says: 

Can I assemble content in my GIS and then publish it as a Map Tour?

Yes. You can create a layer that uses the set of fields that the Map Tour expects, add it to a web map, open that web map, and then share it by creating a Story Map Tour app. The Map Tour Builder will recognize your layer and use it to define the Tour.

But there's no description of which fields the Map Tour expects, and I wasn't able to find a blog post or GeoNet post explaining it. Thanks in advance for any help anyone gives!

[OwenGeo · Accepted solution]

Hi Andrew -- you just needed to read one more sentence in that FAQ to get the answer... 😉

Yes. You can create a layer that uses the set of fields that the Map Tour expects, add it to a web map, open that web map, and then share it by creating a Story Map Tour app. The Map Tour Builder will recognize your layer and use it to define the Tour. You can download a CSV file containing the Map Tour field template from the Advanced Options in the Map Tour Builder Welcome dialog. 

[deleted-user-sYHsW3p_gN5o]

Well I feel silly now for missing that  But thanks for helping out!

[Anonymous User]

Hi Evan, 

I would like to use a feature layer with photos already attached to create a story map tour. The photos are already stored in AGOL, so I don't want to upload them again.....but how would I get the URL so fit into the fields required for the story map tour?

-Kerrie

PS I would like to automate this by the way....it is a lot of photos...

[RupertEssinger]

Hi Kerrie

It is possible to create a Map Tour from a feature service that you author rather than uploading your images into the Map Tour Builder. Normally to create a Map Tour and host your images in ArcGIS, you would simply upload your images into the Map Tour Builder and it will automatically create a feature service behind the scenes for you in which it stores your images, without you having to set anything up. However there may be advanced workflows where you want to author or use an existing feature service and use it in a Map Tour.  Your feature service should use the same schema as the CSV template that the Map Tour Builder lets you download. If you use a feature service you have authored in a Map Tour take care that when you add it to a web map as a layer that your layer does not have a scale visibility setting specified in the web map: it needs to be visible at all zoom levels otherwise Map Tour won't read it correctly. 

The Map Tour can also read images that are attached to a feature service (i.e. feature attachments), in which case your feature service doesn't need to have the PIC_URL or THUMB_URL fields referencing images via URLs that the schema normally requires. The Map Tour expects each feature to have two images attached: the first one is used as the main image and the second one is used as the thumbnail. However we don't recommend this workflow and may deprecate it in future releases of the Map Tour. There's no optimization of the images (like there is if you upload them into the Builder) so you may get a very slow performing Map Tour because the images are really big. It isn't easy to assemble those images in the correct order and the performance is not as good as referencing images via URLs via those two fields.

Rupert