Shortlist Storymap has deleted most of my content

[PriscillaMollard]

I have been working for days on a story map. I have 3 tabs with 22 locations and their associated thumbnails and text descriptions. Suddenly 2 out of my 3 tabs were empty. The "My Story" page still listed all 22 and it still had the thumbnail titles and links for my images, all of which loaded the correct images when I clicked on them. I took a screenshot of that page and closed it. When I re-opened the story maps website and navigated back to "My Story" it showed that I had 8 locations. All the rest of my locations and associated content are now gone. At no point did I go into any other tab and delete content. When the deletions in tabs 2 and 3 occurred, I was working in tab 1.

[MarkCooney]

Hi Priscilla,

Sorry you are having issue with the Shortlist app.  This is something we have not seen or heard of before, but would like to get to the bottom of for you.  Can you share a link your Shortlist app for us to take a look at?  Feel free to PM me if you don't want to post here.  

In order to try and reproduce, what kind of machine are you on, and what browser were you using?  Do you remember performing any specific steps with the builder before saving, and subsequently losing the places for tabs 2 and 3?

Thanks,

Mark

[AlanRex1]

Hi Priscilla,

If you are still encountering this issue I would suggest logging a Tech Support case.  If there's a bug here we'd want to get that logged.  If you don't have a maintenance contract with us please feel free to PM your contact info and I'll try to get a case set up for you.

Regards,

Alan

[RosemaryHatch1]

I was also having this issue a few weeks ago (but I haven't worked on that particular storymap in a while). My first tab would save perfectly fine, but I had several more locations in my second tab and those kept getting deleted after I would save them. I was never able to figure out the issue, but would love to hear if you found anything that works.

Thanks!

[AlanRex1]

Hi Rosemary,

If you are still able to reproduce the issue feel free to place a call in to Tech Support to get a case logged.  From your email it looks like you're associated with a university and most universities should have access to support.  If not, feel free to PM me your contact info and I'll see if I can get a case set up for you.  

Thanks!

[ChristinePinkney]

I am having this identical issue. 

My Storymaps shortlist has had multiple entries disappear, especially on the 2nd and 3rd tab where all the entries disappeared. First the 3 photos with tags disappeared in my 2nd tab, so I replaced them and added more, and now they are all gone including all the ones on the 3rd tab as well. These were up for at least a day, as I saw them functioning after they were added. I just want to know how to avoid duplicating my work, so if I need to be on a certain browser or save a certain way I can, I just need to know where the glitch is originating.

To be clear, they are not appearing on the public facing side, nor when I login. 

[AlanRex1]

Hi Christine,

Let's get a tech support case started.  I'll PM you.

[Anonymous User]

I'm having this same problem in a Shortlist story map with one tab. I've lost two day's of work and am very reluctant to do it all over again because I assume my content will disappear once again. Half the locations in my 22-location Shortlist were populated with information today, I successfully saved and viewed the content. A few hours later when I checked on it, everything that had been added in the last day was gone. This already happened once before and I scrapped a separate Shortlist because there seemed to be problems with the Shortlist layer. Is there any way to recover what has been lost? Is there a way to prevent this from happening again?

[RupertEssinger]

Hi, sorry about the issue. 

I'm not sure what caused it but here are some thoughts:

- Can I check to make sure you are returning to the Story Map Shortlist Builder in order to view your content? When you view your Story Map Shortlist in the builder, it will show you all your content, whether or not your places all have images and are located on the map. When you view a Shortlist outside of the builder (in other words when you view it the same as your readers will), it automatically hides places that don't have images yet or that aren't located on the map yet. This can lead some authors to think that some of their places are missing. We hide incomplete places when Shortlists are being viewed so that readers only see finalized ones.

- Can I also check that you haven't copied your Story Map Shortlist (using ArcGIS Online Assistant). This isn't recommended because Shortlists (and Map Tours) store their places in an associated web map, and copying Shortlists or Tours can result in two apps using the same web map, which can result in places being overwritten if edits are being made in both apps.

- Also there's no auto-save in the Story Map builders, which can cause issues if you are more used to cloud-based apps not having a specific Save function.

Rupert

[Anonymous User · Accepted solution]

Rupert,

Thank you very much for your reply. I figured out what happened to my data.

I was using the web map which was the basis of the Shortlist story map as a reference while I was editing using the Shortlist builder. As any seasoned Esri user knows, save early and save often. I did this throughout the editing and previewed the results. They looked good.

The web map was concurrently open so I could gather information about nearby trails and rivers to use in the Shortlist story map. After I saved and closed the Shortlist builder, I saved the web map and closed it as well. This was the cause of my problems. The Shortlist layer that was generated by the builder to store the Shortlist story map information had not been refreshed with the edits I'd made using the Shortlist builder and the half-empty attribute table of the Shortlist layer overwrote all the edits I'd made. As usual, user error was the root of the problem. But I don't think this is an unusual use of AGO for story map authors. I don't know if this is a known issue, but I can recreate the circumstances and demonstrate my problem.

Thanks again,

Ian