How do you change the map in the Shortlist Story Map? I can do it in Map Series, but not in shortlist... there doesn't seem to be a function to do it.

[MaggieArdito]

I have put a lot of pictures in a shortlist. Now I need to change the map>  If I can't change the map, then I have to somehow capture the pictures to put on the new shortlist storymap.  

[RupertEssinger · Accepted solution]

Hi Maggie

Story Map app templates like Story Map Cascade, Story Map Journal and Story Map Series let you display any map or maps so when you author them, you can change maps inside those builders. You can also edit those maps from right inside the builders. 

Story Map Tour, Story Map Shortlist and Story Map Crowdsource are a bit different because they contain places, and they store these places inside a web map. This means that the Story Map app and the map it uses are tied together. For example if you delete or unshare the web map used in one of these place-based apps, the app won't load. For this reason you can't change which web map a particular Tour, Shortlist or Crowdsource app points at from within those builders. Inside those builders you can change the basemap used by the story but you can't make other edits to the map, such as adding additional supporting layers. 

If you want to edit the web map used by a place based story like Tour, Shortlist or Crowdsource, such as to add additional layers (like a study area boundary), first close the builder if you are currently editing the story (you don't want to edit the underlying map while you are also editing the app), then go find and open the map and open it to make edits. You can find the web map in the ArcGIS Content > My Content, but the easiest way to find the map used by a Story Map app is to look for your story in My Stories. My Stories will list out the content of any Story Map including the web map(s) it uses. If you edit the web map used in a Tour, Shortlist or Crowdsource, be very careful not to delete or remove the point layer in that map that stores the places in your story. Remember that those places live in the web map, not in the app itself. 

You can create a new Map Tour or Shortlist from a web map that has been used in another Tour or Shortlist. This enables you to re-use or rescue data. For example suppose you create a Shortlist and then accidentally deleted the Shortlist app item in ArcGIS Online (but read this blog post to see how to delete protect your work so this doesn't happen!), You could create a new Shortlist from that map. To do this for either Map Tour or Shortlist. first open that map, and use Save As to save a copy. This will ensure you are the owner of this map and that you aren't using something that another story is pointing at, Then create the Story Map from that map in the usual way (i.e. from the Create Web App menu in the map's item details page or via the Share dialog in the map. In the case of Shortlist, it will prompt you to see how you want to use the point data that is in that map. Choose the option to import the data, and when prompted choose the layer that contains your points, and then just accept all the defaults. This will make a new Shortlist from that existing data. You'll have to enter the names for your tabs in the Builder and make the other Shortlist settings. Another way to re-use or rescue Map Tour or Shortlist data from a web map is to export the layer containing the places from that map as a CSV file, and then use that CSV file as an input to recreate that app.

Hope that helps.

Rupert

[MaggieArdito]

Yes, that helps a lot with understanding.  I find story maps very confusing to work with.  If I had known everything you said before starting to work with them I would have saved a lot of time and frustration.  So guess I guess I have pretty simple requirements (if I understand the situation): 

- the underlying map will change frequently in ArcGIS pro which results in a new arcgis.com web map  

- I need multiple tabs that align with my layers

- I need to have images and text connected to the points on the layer so the image or the point can be clicked and bring up the other

- I need images and text associated with each point that can survive the changing of the map.  

Which story map template would you recommend I use?  If don't mind starting over as long as I don't lose all the effort of creating the information about each point.  (I tried the shortlist within series approach but that didn't bring in all the tabs data and also seemed way to complicated.   thanks so much for your explanations and any additional guidance.   

[RupertEssinger]

The first step is really to decide which of the Story Map app templates you will be using because that will determine how you assemble the data. Looking in the Story Maps Gallery is a good way to decide which template will work best for your project. Some of them results look quite similar but use different app templates. Use the filter and search in the Gallery to see if there are any examples that match your subject.

Story Map Series can display multiple tabs (or bullets or 'side accordions') each of which can display the same map or different maps. For example you could display the same map in each tab but with different layers turned on or different extents displayed. The maps will automatically update to show the latest content you've added to them. Your users can click on the features on your maps to get popups about those features and those popups can contain small photos.

Story Map Shortlist is more structured. It displays places organized into special tabs, organized, into themes that display photos and captions for places. This is a nicer experience than having your readers access info and pics via popups. You can easily author those places in the Story Map Shortlist Builder.  It is also possible to drive a Shortlist from the places defined in a specific layer in an existing web map, so that updating the data will be reflected in the Shortlist without you having to do any manual edits, but for this workflow your data has to be formatted using the schema that Shortlist expects (see this FAQ for more info on that). It sounds like that workflow would work for what you want to do. Practically though, the content that you show in a Story Map Shortlist or Story Map Tour tends to be different enough in format from what's in your underlying GIS data, that it may be simpler just to manually update your Shortlist or Tour to reflect changes to your dataset, instead of trying to automate it, especially if you've run into problems trying to automate it. It is also more fun to just edit your data in the builder for the Story Map template you are using. 

One thing, in your post above you said:
" - the underlying map will change frequently in ArcGIS pro which results in a new arcgis.com web map  "

If you are just updating the content in a map in ArcGIS pro and you want that to be reflected online, you wouldn't be creating a new ArcGIS web map each time. You really want to use the same ArcGIS web map and just update the data that appears on that map, so that apps like Story Maps that display that data automatically show the changes. You don't want updates to your data to have to result in new web maps being created because they you'd have to update apps like Story Map Series to point at the new map(s), and apps like Tour and Shortlist expect to work just with the same one map, as described above.

Hope that helps.

Rupert

[MaggieArdito]

Yes, that's exactly what I'd like to do - update the webmap that I shared from Pro - now that the mapset is stabilized..  But I don't know how to do it..    there must be a way to share layers - I'm guessing it's the Share web layer thing and has something to do with those mysterious WFL objects...    I am self-taught (small nonprofit)  and that interaction between pro and arcgis.com is not well explained (or at least I can't find it).  

[MaggieArdito]

OK so apparently I can add a layer to ArcGIS.com but only as a shapefile, not as a LYRX from Pro?  With a lot of layers, that's why it's easier to add a whole new webmap, but I'm starting to figure out the workflow.  but apparently even if I put in a new layer, delete the old one and rename the new to the old...  Shortlist still isn't going to take it?  I'm not getting how you are supposed to manage the master attributes here.   it's like Shortlist only works on completed and frozen maps and you'd better have named the attributes right before you share the webmap... it would be sorta nice if this was documented somewhere?