Before you start
You can use any ArcGIS Online web maps in your Story Map Series℠. You can create new web maps, use your existing web maps, or use web maps that have been created and shared publicly by other users or organizations.
If you'll be creating one or more new web maps for use in your Story Map Series, you can either create them in ArcGIS Online before you start building your Map Series, or you can create them on-the-go within the Map Series Builder. From within the Builder, you can also edit web maps that you own. After you have created your Map Series, you can continue to work on your maps to refine their content, symbology, and popups.
If you want the maps in your Map Series to be synchronized so they all show the same geographic extent - such as a set of thematic maps about a particular city - you don't need to make the maps all have the same geographic extent when you create them in ArcGIS Online. By default, the Map Series will automatically synchronize the extents of the maps in your story to the extent of the first map it contains.
If you want the maps in your Map Series to show different locations, you'll turn the synchronize option off as described in the step below. When you select the maps for your Map Series, the geographic extent at which the maps were saved in ArcGIS Online will be used by default, but you can override that extent and specify a different extent as you author your story.
This tutorial doesn’t cover how to create web maps in ArcGIS Online, so we assume you know the basics. For help with authoring a web map, see Make your first map in the ArcGIS Online help.
Start the Story Map Series Builder. You can use a free, non-commercial ArcGIS public account or an ArcGIS subscription account.
Alternatively, you can start in the ArcGIS Online website, open one of the web maps you want to include in your Map Series, share it as a web application, and then choose Story Map Series from the application gallery. The Story Map Series Builder will launch.
In the dialog that appears when the Map Series Builder starts, choose the layout you would like to use and press Start. In this tutorial we'll use the Tabbed layout but the steps are very similar for the Side Accordion layout and the Bulleted layout.
Enter a title for your Map Series. You can also optionally take a quick tour of the Builder at this point.
A dialog appears that lets you add the first tab into your Map Series. In this dialog, you are first prompted for the content you want this tab to show. Choose between a Map, Image, Video or Web Page. For example the Web Page option lets you embed web content like another app into tab.
If you want to use a web map, which is the default option, click the Map dropdown and either select the map you want to use or choose the option to create a new map. If you create a new map, you'll be prompted to enter a name for the map and then a window will appear that lets you author your map. After you've selected or created a map, you will then be given the options, shown in the screenshot here, to customize how the map is displayed. You can choose to display a particular area of the map, turn layers on or off, display a particular feature's popup, or any combination of those. For example if you choose a custom location, the Builder will prompt you to interactively zoom to the area you want to use, and then you'll press a button to capture that extent. This lets you override the default extent of the web map.
The name of the web map you selected or created will be used as the name for the tab by default, but you can edit that name before going ahead and adding the tab.
Press Add in the dialog to add the tab.
The new tab appears in your Map Series, along with a panel into which you enter descriptive text about the map it contains. You can type or paste text directly into the built-in rich text editor. You can also embed graphics, images and videos in with the text.
If you don't want any of the tabs in your Map Series to have a description panel, click the Settings button at the top of the Builder and in the Layout Options tab uncheck the Description box and press Apply. None of the tabs in your Map Series will have a description panel. If you don't want this particular tab to have a description panel, but want to allow other tabs to have a panel, simply leave the panel empty for this tab.
To save your work so far, press the Save button in the top right hand corner of the Builder.
In Step 4, if you checked the Legend box, the map's legend will appear below the description panel. If you want the legends for the maps in your Map Series to appear as a dropdown control instead, click Settings, choose the Layout Options tab, choose the Dropdown option under Legend placement, and then press Apply.
Before you add another tab to your Map Series, now is a good time to decide if you want the maps to be synchronized to show the same geographic location, or if you want each map to show a different geographic location.
If you do want synchronization , this is the default, so you can simply continue by pressing the Add button to add the next tab. If you choose to add a web map for the next tab, you'll notice that the Location option says that the location is inherited from the first map, as shown in the screenshot here.
If you don't want synchronization, click Settings, choose the Map Options tab, uncheck the Synchronize map locations box, and press Apply. Now press the Add button to add the next tab.
In the Add dialog, specify the content you want for the next tab and press the Add button in that dialog to add the tab.
Continue using the Add button to add all your tabs.
If your tabs have a description panel, you can edit the text in any of those panels at any time.
To change the content displayed by a tab in your Map Series, first click the tab to select it, then click the Edit button.
To reorder or delete tabs, press the Organize button to open the dialog shown here.
Now you've defined all the tabs in your Map Series, you can optionally refine your story map's appearance by using the options in the Settings dialog.
The Settings dialog lets you change layout options, map options, choose a different color scheme (theme), and specify what will be in the header at the top of your Map Series.
Customize the logo that appears in your header in the Header tab. Using your own logo is important because it adds authority to your story and shows people who created it. Your organization's logo and color scheme may already be reflected in your story if they have been set as defaults by your ArcGIS account administrator (this option is only available if you are using an ArcGIS subscription account). Be sure to specify a URL that your readers will be taken to when they click your logo, so they can find out more about your organization.
If you want your Map Series to have a subtitle in its header as well as a title, uncheck the Use compact header box in the Header tab. After you press Apply in the Settings dialog, you'll see a subtitle field in the header which you can type into.
Once you are happy with the look of your Map Series, you are ready to share it.
First press the Save button in the top right hand corner of the Builder to ensure that all your work is saved. Now press the Share button at the top of the Builder. In the dialog that appears, you can share your Map Series publicly, or, if you're using an ArcGIS subscription account, you'll also see the option to share your story so it is accessible only within your organization. The dialog will warn you about any issues in your story content that would prevent it from working correctly for your audience. For example it will warn you if any of the data in a publicly shared story map isn't publicly accessible.
Congratulations, your Story Map Series is now operational!
To make further changes to your Map Series, you can launch it and click the Edit button you'll see in its header. (That button is only present when you are signed in to ArcGIS Online with your account: other people won't see it).
To manage your Map Series go to My Stories. My Stories lists all the story map apps you have created that are hosted in ArcGIS Online. It lets you edit your stories, review their content, check them for issues, upload thumbnails for them, etc. For example you can launch and edit the web maps used in your Map Series from My Stories to make modifications to them.
You can also access your Map Series and the web maps it uses from My Content in ArcGIS Online or your organization's ArcGIS portal.
