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Prepare your content

Using the following best practices, you can improve the display of your content on a site and in search results by editing individual items in Enterprise.

Metadata quality

Improve the clarity and usability of your content by ensuring that it has complete metadata. To edit metadata for an item, click the edit button edit on an item's full details page or access the item in Enterprise.

  • Title—For individual layers, change the title in your portal to be clear and informative. For layers in map or feature services, change the title locally, and publish the service with clean titles.
    Note:

    Underscores are removed from the title.

  • Thumbnail—The thumbnail image is visible on the item's card in a gallery and on its full details page.
    Note:
  • Description—An item's description is visible in search results and should be clear and informative.
    Note:

    Layers in map or feature services will take the description of the entire service. If you do not enter a description, ArcGIS Enterprise Sites will automatically state Description not provided.

  • Field aliases—For tabular data, change complex GIS data field names to a more user-friendly description of the content of the field. The table on an item's preview page will supply the field name, but not the field alias.
  • License—You can add a license in the Terms of Use section of the item in the portal.
  • Tags—Tags help users discover your datasets through searches. For individual items, add tags in Enterprise. All layers in map and feature services will have the same tags as those set for the entire service in the Enterprise
Note:

Downloads will change the data schema so that all values will be within the signed range of integer values that can be stored in 32 bits. This means that field lengths, field precision, and scale may be altered in the download. The data itself will not change.

Caution:

Only the following HTML tags will be respected in the Description and License fields in ArcGIS Enterprise. Text in other tags will appear inline: h3, h4, h5, h6, img, blockquote, p, a, ul, ol, nl, li, b, i, strong, em, strike, code, hr, br, div, table, thead, caption, tbody, tr, th, td, pre.

Embedded apps

All sites have an Embedded Apps setting that controls how applications open when a someone clicks on a configured gallery card, application card, or search result. Enable this setting if you want the application to open within the context of your site's header and global navigation bar. The information side panel is also available. If disabled, the application will open externally.

Embedded links

Similar to the Embedded Apps setting, the Embedded links setting controls how content registered as a document link opens. Enable this setting if you want the application to open within the context of your site's header and global navigation bar. The information side panel also becomes available. If disabled, the application will open externally.

Dates

A content view can show three potential dates for all datasets (/data item types): Info Updated, Data Updated, and Published Date. For all remaining content families, Data Updated and Published Date are shown.

Info Updated

The Info Updated section show viewers when the metadata was last updated relative to its underlying data.

Caution:

If editor tracking is enabled, any changes made to the underlying data will not impact the date for the Info Updated section.

  • If frequency is set for the item and a custom date is set in the metadata editor, the frequency appears with the date that metadata was last edited
  • If a frequency is set for the item, but no custom date is available, the frequency is shown
  • If neither frequency or custom date is available, the date that the metadata was last modified is shown

Data Updated

The Data Updated section uses the revision date for an item which refers to the date the item was lasted modified if editor tracking is enabled. Revision dates are also changed in the item's metadata editor in Enterprise by setting a custom date.

  • If neither of these configurations are applied to the item, the content view displays the date for the last time the item was modified
  • If a dataset has a designated frequency and a revision date, frequency is shown
  • If a custom date is set in the metadata (Metadata Date), that date is shown
  • If no dates are set in the item's metadata, the date that the item was last modified is shown

Published date

The Published Date references the date that the item was created if no custom publication date is provided in the item's metadata.

  • The last time the item was edited or opened in Enterprise
  • The last time an update was made to the service (if editor tracking is enabled)