Latest Contributions by PeterKnoop

Since this blog post was published, we have found it too difficult to accurately track views or the use of content over time in ArcGIS Online. As a result, at the University of Michigan we have updated the administrator's workflow listed above under "What happens to my Content if I do nothing?" (I think it remains very important to regularly communicate these guidelines to your users, and be clear that they are indeed guidelines, and that you are not explicitly guaranteeing their content will be preserved for any length of time after they leave the university.) The new workflow outlined below assumes your institution has configured ArcGIS Online to use enterprise or SAML logins. Also, when or how often you perform the last step depends on what sort of grace period you want to provide for restoring content that someone discovers is still needed. Generate a list of users who are no longer authorized to access ArcGIS Online under your license terms. This generally includes students who have graduated, faculty who have moved to another institution, or anyone else who has left your institution. Generating this list of unauthorized users is typically something you have to do outside of ArcGIS Online. For example, first you could export a list of all of the enterprise or SAML accounts in your ArcGIS Online organization. Second you would check that list against your campus' system-of-record, such as your enterprise directory, and remove users that are still eligible to use ArcGIS Online (e.g., active students, faculty, staff, or sponsored affiliates.) You will likely need to partner with your campus IT colleagues to complete this step. Check each unauthorized user, and if they do not own content nor groups, then delete the user. Check the last login date for each unauthorized user, and reduce the list to those that have not logged-in since a specific date. It is not uncommon for students to take a year or two off from an institution. We are currently using two-academic years ago as our cutoff (e.g., if we ran this today we would use a date of 1 September 2020.) Check the sharing status of the remaining users' content items, and delete any items that are not shared.  Check groups owned by the remaining users, and if a group has no content, then delete the group. Re-check the remaining users, and if they do not own content nor groups, then delete the user. Record the remaining users' items' sharing settings in their tags, then un-share the items. At this point the remaining users' content should just be items that are shared. After an item is unshared, then if someone contacts the ArcGIS Online administrators because the content is still needed, then you can use the tags to reconstitute the sharing for the item. At this point you should also re-assign the ownership of the item to an authorized user. The last step is dependent on you only performing this workflow once per whatever time you feel is appropriate for a grace period. (Because step #7 un-shares content, that content will get deleted the next time you run step #4.) At the moment we are going with a grace period of one academic year.  You are welcome to run the workflow more often, skipping step #7. Then, at the end of your designated grace period, complete the whole workflow, including step #7. ... View more

@FredericPoliart_EsriAU would you be able to provide more details on how one can use the <embed> widget with Experience Builder in ArcGIS Online to add Google Analytics? Pasting Google's JavaScript snippet for a tag into the code block for an Embed widget does not work for me.    ... View more

@OwenGeo glad to hear you're already on it 🙂 Sounds like the scenario to avoid -- as you will loose your Google Analytics settings -- is opening Story settings, changing anything (doesn't have to be the Google Analytics settings), and then saving the settings and publishing the story. No matter what setting you change, the Google Analytics settings are lost. Instead, for now, when editing a StoryMap, and first opening Story settings, one should immediately Cancel or Close Story settings, and then open it again to safely make any changes.   ... View more

This might help: # Get a list of all of your users (user objects, not just usernames.) all_users = gis.users.org_search() # Use list comprehension to reduce the list of users to those that do not # have a user type of Creator or Viewer. [u for u in all_users if( u['userLicenseTypeId'] not in ['Creator','Viewer'] )] # Or, if you just want a list of the users' usernames. [u['username'] for u in all_users if( u['userLicenseTypeId'] not in ['Creator','Viewer'] )]   ... View more

@FredericPoliart_EsriAU just to confirm then, if you happen to be using Experience Builder Developer Edition, then there is a workaround. You can place the google analytics script in its required location in <head>, as you are able to directly edit pages' html. There is no workaround for regular Experience Builder. ... View more

@FredericPoliart_EsriAU when I look at your app's source, I see that the Google Analytics script is in the <head> of the HTML page, not as part of a Experience Builder Embed widget, which would put it in an <iframe> in the <body>. Did I misunderstand your original suggestion, which I read as using the out-of-the-box Embed widget in Experience Builder? The suggested Idea here was also meant for the regular Experience Builder environment, not the developer edition. It looks like your site was built using the developer edition, which means it is easy to insert the Google Analytics script in the <head>. I don't believe you can do that in the regular edition, or is there something I am missing here? Thanks! ... View more

@OwenGeo Great to hear that the concept of soft limits is being considered not just here, but elsewhere. It could be a great approach to keeping things robust and reliable for the most common use cases, while enabling more edge cases, without overly complicating the user experience. ... View more

Perhaps the current limit could be maintained as a soft-limit, while the hard-limit could be increased to something like 256 or 280 characters? And, if one exceeded the soft limit, a warning could be displayed notifying the user that their title might be problematic for SEO and social metadata? An author, however, could choose to ignore the warning when they were planning to use their StoryMap for internal documentation, peer-sharing, limited-scope collaborations, etc., or other intended uses for which a long, informative title might be more important than sharing on social media. ... View more

@OwenGeo Tested out some of the content that originally brought the issue to light. It appears that it is behaving better in some cases, in that pasted content is no longer un-retrievably disappearing all the time. There are certain combinations, however, where text is still disappearing, and there are some minor oddities in the user experience for Previewing. If one Previews a story, right after pasting what seems like any text with multiple paragraphs from a Google Doc, then the text doesn't show up in the Preview. If you close the Preview, however, the text is still there, so at least it is not getting lost. If you immediately open Preview again, then the text shows just fine. And, if you Publish the story (with or without Previewing) the text is retained and appears as expected. If you specifically copy a bulleted list from a Google Doc, which has several bullet points, and paste it into the StoryMap, then it appears as expected. However, the text sometimes still disappears permanently when you Preview or Publish the story right after pasting the text. Not sure why in only happens in some cases... maybe tied to the number of bullet points, maybe the length of the text in the points? Pasting from Google Docs as plain text or without style continues to work correctly. ... View more

@fuxx0010, we are still on the hunt for the "perfect" solution. I will note that the Bad Elf Flex now has a base-rover configuration. And, like their GNSS receivers, it is very easy for new users to learn how to configure and use the receivers and radios in base-rover mode, on both iOS and Android. You pay more, but new users need little support to get going. If your users regularly use the same equipment, however, then it may be practical for them to learn how to use a less expensive, but more complicated set up. Subscription services, like with the Trimble Catalyst or Bad Elf Flex, are a nice option, if your equipment is going to spend a significant amount of the year un-used, or if you generally don't need cm-level accuracy. (And, of course, you are working in area where you can access the subscription.) It often seems to be the case that equipment purchased for individual projects sits on the shelf most of year. If you are able to share equipment across users and projects, and some work in areas where you need base-rover capabilities, then you are likely going to find it more cost-effective to skip the subscriptions. Instead, get a regular cm-level, base-rover configuration to start with, like Bad Elf Flex Extremes, Reach RS2s, or a more traditional Trimble setup. Post-processing solutions are great for many use cases as well, but don't work when you need to stake things out. And, while it is easy to price equipment, it is more challenging to assign a value to users' time or time spent supporting users, particularly as they often come from different budget sources in academia. I'm also a big fan of obtaining high-resolution imagery, perhaps created by drone mapping relying on access to cm-level accuracy at the start of project, or purchased from a vendor. Folks can then use that imagery in Field Maps on their devices for the remainder of project, and visually locate locate themselves with dm-level accuracy without any need for continued access to a high-accuracy receiver. Not sure how helpful all those comments are. Those are the kinds of things I think about, but needs can vary so much! ... View more

I'll add one more option: use the Embed widget in Experience Builder Developer Edition with a StoryMap or Collection URL, download the resulting experience, and host it on your own web server. Like the suggestions above, however, StoryMaps and Collections treated this way are not fully functional, so it still isn't a complete solution. This method does require installing the developer edition of Experience Builder. Once you have created an experience with an embedded StoryMap, however, you can re-use the experience for other StoryMaps simply by changing the URL for the story. In other words, once you've downloaded your experience as a zip file, then you can deploy it multiple times, changing the URL within to point to different stories or collections; the URL is set in .../<name of experience>/cdn/1/config.json. (Note that you cannot switch between URLs for StoryMaps and Collections in the same experience; you need to create one experience for StoryMaps and one for Collections.) Also note that using this method for stories or collections that are not publicly shared gets more complicated, but it is still doable. Some of things that don't work with this approach are similar to the above methods, such as built-in support for Google Analytics doesn't work, you are unable to copy URLs for story sections so you cannot direct a reader to a specific section within your story, and the social sharing links do not use your custom URL. ... View more

@FredericPoliart_EsriAU I tried your suggested workaround using an Embed widget however, it did not work for me. Does it matter where the Embed widget is placed on the page, relative to other content? Did you actually get this solution to work at some point, or was it just an idea to try? ... View more

A use case for which we would like to have vertical exaggeration is for displaying different excavation levels in an archaeological trench after it is has been fully excavated. The length/width of excavated areas is often on the order of a few meters, while the vertical may only be a few centimeters. Vertical exaggeration is necessary to visually separate the layers a usable distance. ... View more