Scheduled updates

Preplanned offline maps support an additional synchronization workflow known as scheduled updates. Scheduled updates optimizes updating the data contents of an offline map to the latest contents of the source map area packaged with the web map.

How scheduled updates work

Preplanned offline maps are generated on a schedule (typically every day, or every week). When a web map has scheduled updates enabled, each time a preplanned offline map is upated, an update file of data changes (adds, updates, and deletes) will also be created and stored.

You opt in to scheduled updates when you download a preplanned offline map. This downloads the offline map as read-only. When you subsequently synchronize to update the offline map with the latest edits in the web map, a sequence of update files will be downloaded and applied in order. This updates the contents of your downloaded offline map to the current state of the web map.

There is a special variant of scheduled updates which supports uploading new features. In this mode, the offline map is not read-only, but adding new features is supported (you cannot edit existing features). Any new features that you create will be uploaded to the feature service as part of the synchronization process before the sequence of update files is downloaded and applied in order.

The number and size of update files that are downloaded depends on when the offline map was downloaded or last synchronized, the frequency of the preplanned packaging schedule, and whether any data updates have occurred. If the size of the combined update files required to make the offline map current is greater than the latest preplanned offline map available for download, then that latest preplanned offline map is downloaded instead and replaces the offline map already on your device.

Scheduled updates can greatly speed up synchronizing preplanned offline maps that cover large areas, are frequently updated, or support large numbers of mobile workers.