My Maps basemap won't appear in Story Tour

[KateSedor]

Hello! I'm new to ArcGIS and I'm trying to create a Story Map Tour using a georeferenced scan that I've uploaded to My Maps. (I followed all the steps in this tutorial to georeference the image.) When I go to build the Tour and select my custom basemap in Map Options, however, the map I select doesn't actually show up in the Tour builder. I just get a blank, completely gray background for my first tour point. Any advice is appreciated!

[HeatherSmith]

Hello @KateSedor , I have not tried this method myself, so I can't offer very concrete advice, but one thing I would check for is the scale. Does the image appear when you zoom in or out? If you made a wider range of Levels of detail (see step 5) it might help.

You could also try reposting your question on the StoryMaps page: https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-storymaps-questions/bd-p/arcgis-storymaps-questions 

[PeterKnoop · Accepted solution]

Hi @KateSedor, it is an issue with Express Map initially displaying your custom basemap at the wrong location and scale when you first select it. For some reason it is defaulting to full zoom and 10N, 0E as the center of the map, whereas a custom basemap created following the steps in the tutorial should be located with its upper-left corner at 0N, 0E, and has an extent that does not expand much beyond that location.

A workaround for this is manually place a tour point at 0N, 0E, prior to switching to your custom basemap. Then, when you switch to your custom basemap, you can then use that tour point as a guide to pan and zoom to bring your custom basemap into view.

As custom basemaps like this work as expected in other map sections in StoryMaps, I suspect this is a bug specific to the Explorer type of Map Tour, which is still in Beta. It seems to be incorrectly determining the extent and scale of custom basemaps when they have such a small extent.

Hope that helps.

[KateSedor]

That worked like a charm! Thanks so much.

[OwenGeo]

While this is not a bug (the tour builder currently always shows a world extent until an author starts adding tour points), I can see how in the case of using your own georeferenced basemap this experience is unexpected.

The most common use cases we see are where an author is using their own web map that has a basemap with world coverage but that has reference layers the author wants to include in the tour and/or a worldwide basemap that isn't one of the ones offered in the gallery. In these cases the worldwide basemap provides context for how to navigate to a particular location. In the case where a georeferenced basemap replaces a worldwide basemap that context is lost and it's difficult to find a location, as as been described above.

Thanks for reporting this. We can look into ways to try to improve this experience in the future.

[OwenGeo]

@KateSedor @PeterKnoop -- A few weeks ago we addressed this issue for map tour. Now, when you use your own web map as a basemap, the builder uses the extent of your web map to keep you focused on your area of interest.

We intend to apply this same logic when you use your own web map as a basemap for an express map in the coming weeks.