Use of CSV files vs Adding Points from Scratch

[Yavapai-ApacheNation]

Hi.  I've just graduated from making a Story Map Tour and Story Map Journey.  My final destination is a Tabbed Series.  What is the preferred way of building… with a CSV file or adding points from scratch?  There seem to be several things to consider. 

• In the pop-up window for the point the display is significantly different
• This one does not seem to allow the same editing as when you add a point
• Cannot see how to change the symbol of an individual point, only for the entire layer

Also with the CSV file system what happens if you want to update.  If you bring in a new CSV file does it copy over the old one or create a duplicate layer? I see this as a long term project where new material will be continuously added to each time… but over time, not all at once.

So far my CSV file has the following columns:

OBJECTID; LONGITUDE; LATITUDE; DESCRIPTION; YAVAPAI NAME; YAVA_LITERAL; APACHE;IMAGE_URLNAME; APA_LITERAL; THUMBNAIL_URL

Does this seem appropriate? Made correctly? Too many questions?

Thanks, Judie

[OwenGeo · Accepted solution]

Hi Judie,

That's great to hear that you are making your way through all the Story Map apps!

The Map Tour app is different from the Journal and Series apps in that you can easily create your map inside the Map Tour app by adding your photos/points whereas Map Series and Map Journal are apps that allow you to bring in web maps from ArcGIS Online. These maps can be yours or they can be from Esri's Living Atlas or any other public web map that you find share by the community. So for these apps you would create and save your map on arcgis.com and then bring it into Series or Journal.

The best way to add data to your web map depends on a few things like how often you want to do updates and what data you have available. If you drag a second CSV onto the map it will create a second layer, but you can simply delete the original layer if you want the update to replace the original one.

I'm not sure if you've found these already, but all of the Story Map apps have tutorials on the Story Maps website. Here's the tutorial for Map Journal. You can get to the others by clicking on Apps, then Learn More next to any one of the app listings, then the Tutorial tab.

Owen