The new Arc GIS Online update has eliminated data within geometric networks from being published, what do small water utilities do?

[SarahJStrack]

Hi everyone. It recently came to my attention when trying to do a routine update of a client's online data from their water network that the newest Arc GIS Online update no longer supports uploading geometrically networked data.

For us this represents a huge problem. We work for multiple small water utilities for which Enterprise has never been feasible, and we rely on Field Maps to give field workers the ability to edit and improve data in the field, which is then updates in our network through coding. I've looked into Utility Networks as a solution, but it is also not able to publish out to Arc GIS Online, eliminating the ability to maintain our network locally for modeling, while updating online data for our field workers.

ESRI suggested switching to Trace networks, which have none of the functionality we need. (Indeed ESRI's own documentation online suggests that utilities should NOT use Trace networks).  Right now I feel stuck in a limbo where my best option appears to be continuously creating copies of my networked data in a separate GDB for publishing out to online.

I wanted to see if others were running into this same issue, as I'm unsure how to plan for the future when none of the options ESRI has supplied work for us. Are there any plans from ESRI to allow for publishing Utility Networks to Arc GIS Online?

I don't want to put 6 months worth of work into a Utility Network with data that field workers can't utilize, and that cannot be easily updated from online collection.

Update!!

ESRI just confirmed that this is indeed a bug produced by the latest Arc GIS Online update. I will be escalating my case in hopes that this is resolved soon.

[AW_Grove]

We would also like to see an option for publishing UN data to ArcGIS Online. 

[Daniel_Schmidt]

Hello,

BUG-000150632 is in our product plan and will be addressed in a future release of ArcGIS Online.  Thanks for your patience with this one!

[RobHerr]

Overall, I was disappointed with publishing online. It sounded more streamlined and automated than it was and I found it a rather clunky process. I had to perform multiple work-arounds to get symbols to look right, etc.

As far as the network, your solution is what I did, creating copies and publishing those. Esri's decision to discontinue the geonetwork was a bad one.

I thought of another solution but have not tried it yet. Setting up scripts and running some automated processes to package and publish the data. Like I said, I haven't looked into the feasibility and whether or not this would really work.

[SarahJStrack]

I've thought about figuring out a way to script it, though to be honest I'm not sure how much time it would save me in the end, if I come up with anything I'll update!

[Daniel_Schmidt]

Hello Rob,

BUG-000150632 is in our product plan and will be addressed in a future release of ArcGIS Online.  Thanks for your patience with this one!

[Joshua-Young]

Keep in mind Esri is going to have to implement branch versioning, archiving, replicas, attribute rules, and database sequences for hosted feature services before Utility Networks can be added to ArcGIS Online.

Also, from Esri's blog on the June 2022 release of Field Apps "Caution: Editing utility network features is not recommended or supported at this time.". So even if you were able to migrate to an ArcGIS Enterprise Utility Network you would still only be able to edit it in ArcGIS Pro.

Have you looked at the Water Distribution Data Management solution? It has none of the advanced functionality of geometric networks or utility networks, but it works with ArcGIS Online.

[SarahJStrack]

Thanks @Joshua-Young, all good points! To be honest, I'm not even expecting the ability to edit UNs from online, I can code around that. I just really need to be able to publish data that exists in a utility network out. (Similar to how Geometric Networks functioned before, where the network functionality wasn't available online, but the feature classes were.)

I'll do some digging into Water Distribution Data Management, though for the clients who depend on their networks for leak tracing and modeling it sounds like it may not work sadly.

[Daniel_Schmidt]

Hi Sarah,

BUG-000150632 is in our product plan and will be addressed in a future release of ArcGIS Online.  Thanks for your patience with this one!

[Daniel_Schmidt]

BUG-000150632 is in our product plan and will be addressed in a future release of ArcGIS Online.  Thanks for your patience with this one!