ArcGIS Online does not work with services correctly if they are updated

[Anonymous User]

If I change what layers are on or off, and re-order layers, the visibility settings on ArcGIS Online for the webmap become extremely discombobulated, as well as the order and popup configs. Many layers turn themselves on (which were off) seemingly arbitrarily with no pattern or reason.  We have Server 10.2.2. I spoke with tech support and they said they filed a bug and there may be older threads but I figured I'd post it here too given the level of importance of AGOL.  Anyone else seen this?

[AdrianWelsh]

Yes, unfortunately. When you republish a service, you can only do so much to that service before it gets really screwed up. I only re-publish the same service if I am just changing some geometry, attributes, or simple symbology.

If I change anything "bigger" than that (like re-ordering, field names, adding a field, etc), then I have to make a completely new service because it will not reflect well in AGOL.

[Anonymous User]

I just noticed AGOL also shredded my intricately-created groups of street layer and street annotations that come in and out at different draw scales. I will re-create them and that will work of course. Until I need to add or change another layer.  I will show the developers at the developer conference this issue if that would be helpful.

It also appears to have lost all my popups as 'enabled'. That took half an hour to enable each one individually. (sidenote: ESRI please put a 'turn popups for all layers' on or something to that effect).  The reason I use Esri AGOL popups is because in our viewers, rather than have an "Identify" button, we have found it's better to just turn popups for almost every single layer on. Because AGOL handles it and activates popups once layers are turned on and visible. Having popups just be on, I have found is more 'discoverable'.  And it works perfectly.  But AGOL is continuing to lose/alterthe MXD/service settings which hopefully will get fixed. A 'turn on popups for all layers' or perhaps on a Group for all layers in group would also be great to see.

I would presume as an enterprise cloud product this will be addressed - I need to be able to publish a layer, and make changes. We are about to build out across a vast array of departments built upon AGOL and WebApp Builder. It will be mission-critical to be able to change MXDs after releasing viewers, (as in, to update services, add/re-order layers etc based on user feedback in subsequent updates).

[MichaelVolz · Accepted solution]

If you are publishing your own services and using them in AGOL, then you would want to upgrade to v10.3.1 where you have immutable layer ids in the mapservices.  This will help with your layer ordering as you can re-order layers anywhere but the id (index) will stay fixed.  This is not available at v10.2.x and below.

[Anonymous User]

Whoa.  Really.  That's huge.  Layer IDs won't change? That will be super helpful, thank you Esri team.   That is a constant time-sink, having to adjust code after adjusting MXDs.  Thank you for mentioning this Michael.  Perhaps that is why this is happening?

However, we can't just upgrade. It may be until later this year we can update. We are hoping to jump from 10.2 to 10.4 at that time. But updating is a major, major deal we have dozens of departments connected to our production SDE 24/7 using viewers and dozens of editors editing data.  I hope the (only) answer to this will not be to upgrade to 10.3 -- I hope there is something they can do on the backend on AGOL?

It seems that just like we as devs often do, they perhaps hardwired AGOL configs to LayerIDs. That's like hardcoding geoprocessing models to ObjectIDs which ESRI always warns to not use as primary keys since they change. But perhaps they could wire AGOL to use layer NAMES instead? Or something. Some sort of global identifier. (which I guess is what layerIDs have become in Server 10.3.x and up).  Nevertheless I wonder if they can rig AGOL to let us revise MXDs for 10.2 and below.  <10.2 I imagine has a substantial share of customer base.

[MichaelVolz]

As an interim solution I would try to just upgrade your ArcGIS Server publishing environment to 10.3.x to get access to these immutable ids and leave desktop and your SDE database at 10.2.2.  Then I would upgrade all environments to 10.4.  You would still need to do some regression testing, but just a fraction of a full upgrade.  You will also need to upgrade your license manager to 10.3.x if you plan to make this interim move which allows your AGOL environment to be much more manageable.

This is what my organization did with our AGS environment for at least 6 months before we upgraded SDE and desktop.

[Anonymous User]

Our server can not be upgraded until later this year as it is in production use around the clock. Rest assured, as soon as we can at the end of the year we'll go to 10.4.x.

I still hope ESRI can fix this for 10.2 and below users, for which there will continue to be many. Perhaps make AGOL refer to layers by NAME rather than layerID if it senses the service is coming from a 10.2 or below server, for example?

Somewhat in this vein, it wo8ld be good to have a "turn popups for all layers on" at once, so as not to have to click popup enable on several hundred layers after each time we update the MXD.