ArcGIS Dashboards- Overwrite publish from Pro breaks dashboard elements

[Amanda__Huber]

Hello, 

We've recently run into the issue where when we overwrite our service our ArcGIS Dashboard elements break. The layer in our service that's being changed has the exact same title and position in the REST (and no schema changes) therefore shouldn't be breaking the dashboard yet it is. This isn't the first time we've encountered this issue and would like to seek a resolution or learn if others are having this same issue. 

Same layer name, still connected but not displaying after republish: 

Please advise, thank you. 

Amanda Huber

[clt_cabq]

I'd be interested to know the answer to this too as I run into this occasionally, and I've wondered (but not checked) if overwriting the service actually changes its item ID which seems to be how everything is strung together in AGOL in general. I would question if there is another process you can use other than overwriting the service - for instance, would a delete/append type operation work in your workflow if you are updating data? If there are no schema changes, nothing structural about the service why are you overwriting it?

[Amanda__Huber]

Hi @clt_cabq, 

Good questions! I used AGOL Assistant to look at the underlying JSON and see if the IDs didn't get updated, but couldn't find anything that indicated that. Typically overwrites shouldn't break anything if it's an exact replacement, which it is.  

The reason we needed to do the overwrite was because we had to re-run the "spatial join" analysis for the data. I tested running this analysis directly on the service instead, but no luck just got a 9999 error.  Therefore I ran analysis on the existing data/feature layer in ArcGIS Pro and did the overwrite publish. 

One thing to note that I noticed, when overwriting data in Pro the layer is removed from the map. We added it back as the exact name and location in the REST, but not sure if that has something to do with it(?) 

The mystery continues...

Best, 

Amanda Huber

[BrianFausel]

One thing to check if you haven't already is to make sure the layer IDs in the Pro publishing document are consistent. In the Map Properties - General there is a setting to "Allow assignment of unique numeric IDs for sharing web layers".

With that checked on you can now manually control the IDs for each of the layers in their General Properties. Look for the "Layer ID" setting.

When published the IDs you set for the layers in Pro will appear to the right of the layer name in REST:

If you don't control this setting the layers will be ID-ed automatically by Pro. I would think each GP output would result in a different ID number.

I've overwritten many services and generally if you keep the layer IDs consistent they will work. Though I haven't done a ton of this with the dashboards so perhaps there is something odd with them.

In my experience an overwrite does not change the Service Item ID used within AGOL. As mentioned schema changes are another story!

[JasonHildrethCityofTacoma]

I ran into this problem last year. Overwriting the feature breaks the dashboard (current dashboard, not classic). 

I ended up using a python script to delete each row in the feature, and then appending the new data to the now empty dataset. See the link below on how to do that in model builder. You have to scroll way down to the "Add geoprocessing tools to the model" section. 

The only problem with this is that you generate a request for each row that is deleted or appended, so if there are 75k, records (my case) you are generating 150k requests, which is really bugging my system admin. But if you are using ArcGIS Online, or you have robust Enterprise Portal infrastructure, it shouldn't be a problem. 

https://learn.arcgis.com/en/projects/automate-updates-to-web-feature-layers-without-scripting/