Excel/Tabular data in Story Maps

[KellieBlanchard]

Does anyone have any experience of using excel tables within a Story Map, particularly in a way that the table is able to update if the background data is refreshed. Is this even possible?. I realize it is possible to insert static images of a table, but we would like them to be dynamic. Any thoughts appreciated

[OwenGeo]

Hi Kellie -- here's a blog about using Google Sheets with Map Tour that shows you how to use a live, web-hosted spreadsheet in a web map/story map. There may be a similar process for using Excel/Office 365.

[LarsElmkær_Chwastek]

Hi Owen,

I'm not sure if that is what Kellie is asking... 🙂  She (and me too) want's to have an (interactive) excel table displayed in the Story Map instead of let's say an image or a web map.

Is it possible to have an Excel or Word document as the content in for instance the Story Map Series template? I can imagine that you might be able to do this with Google Sheets, and then reference that as a web site. However their might be some login issues and the google sheet would have to be shared publicly to be accesible for your end users, and thats not an option for us, since we would like to use it internally...

This functionality would be great, as you could also show a lot of statistics and so on via Excel..

Thanks,

Lars

[OwenGeo]

Lars -- If the table needs to be a live view of data it would need to be hosted on the web somewhere as a viewable table, so yes Google Sheets or Office 365 would work for that. But, as you pointed out, for the table to be displayed inside a story map it would need to be shared publicly. Story Maps don't support private embedded content because browsers block showing a login screen inside another page (that is, inside a story map) since it violates web security practices.

You could download the code for a story map app and customize it to provide a login experience for the site you want to use to host the private spreadsheets and host your customized version of the app on your own web server. The reader would be prompted to login before the story map loads and would pass the credentials to the site of the embedded content.

[LarsElmkær_Chwastek]

Hi Owen,

Thank you for your answer, that really cleared things up for me with regards to private/public content in a story map. Do you know if there is being done any work on adding functionality, to upload documents to a story map the same way that you can upload images?

I realize that it would probably cause some issues with for instance Office licenses and so on... But just a thought 🙂

[AlexP_]

Hi I have a similar question about this. What about publish mapservice from ArcMap live data to web map to story map tour or is it different story map?  Would these work? Please advise.

[OwenGeo]

Lars -- I'm not aware of any plans to add web-accessible office document storage to ArcGIS.

While I wouldn't call it an elegant solution, if you absolutely needed to show a live table in an internally shared story you could publish your spreadsheet as a hosted service and embed the "Data" tab of its item page in your story map. As long as you shared this service the same as the story map in which it appears others with whom you've shared the story (via a group or the org) would see it when they are logged in.

Here's an example of how that might look in a Cascade story...

...and how you'd link to the table item's Data page when adding Media in Cascade Builder.

[LarsElmkær_Chwastek]

Hi Owen,

I love me a great MacGyver solution, so that is actually perfect! 🙂

From your example I managed to get my excel document into a Story Map Series app, so I'm very pleased.

Thank you for your help and have a great weekend!

[KelsonKonowalchuk]

Hello there!

I was wondering if I could gain assistance with the "publish your spreadsheet as a hosted service and embed the "Data" tab of its item page in your story map" section. I am currently attempting something similar to this (wanting to insert an Excel table within a story map and have it so the organization can edit it within). But I'm having issues with making the excel table a hosted service. I can go through all the steps but once I attempt to "add item" it says an error occurred (and won't let me view the error) and it won't display the table. 

When adding the excel table i have the "locate feature by: none, add as tables" but nothing seems to show. Any idea how I can make this work?

Cheers

[LeandraGordon]

Hi Kelson - I am just about to try this so I don't know if it will work, but in this article (https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/ee16e37c2c2748a38c3d7196f895a585) it suggests creating a standalone chart in a dashboard and then embedding it in a story map