Playing story maps from local drives

[JohnShepard]

Hi there,

I produce multimedia educational kiosks and would like to be able to play Story Maps off of local drives as there are settings where we place kiosks that have no internet. Is this possible? 

Thanks,

John Shepard

[OwenGeo · Accepted solution]

Hi John -- Unfortunately, there's currently no way to package a story map for use offline.

We are thinking about this, but it's currently a research project for us as a long term goal. There are a lot of technical challenges and/or limitations with packaging a story map for offline use since stories can contain so many different types of embedded content from the web, much of which can't be downloaded/saved.

For now, if you have access to ArcGIS Enterprise software, you could load that on a laptop and build your story map on the laptop and bring that laptop to your kiosk location.

[AdrianWelsh]

Owen,

Couldn't you essentially use Localhost on your local machine and direct all links back to this said host where all the data would be stored? I'm thinking it would take a lot of customization and tweaking of links, but would that not be possible (or least for some of the story map - or maybe craft the map in a way that could potentially only use local content)?

[OwenGeo]

Adrian -- Story Map apps require connecting to ArcGIS Online or an ArcGIS Enterprise portal to obtain the story configuration. It is technically possible to customize one of the apps to do what you say, but yes it would take a significant amount of work.

[JSturm]

Is it still the case that we cannot use StoryMaps offline? We want to present one to a client in a remote area and cannot be guaranteed to have internet access.

[OwenGeo]

Taking a story offline is not currently possible. It's a very challenging problem with all the connected data and media sources that stories can contain. We are researching it, but it's not something we have a date to announce yet.

The best solution would be to take a screencast/video of the story and use that as the offline source. You can play forward and backward through the video and pause it to simulate browsing through the story.