Sharing & Publishing Maps
DRA 2020 has two features that help you share your work with others.
When you select a map from the list of maps, a command bar becomes visible which includes a Share command (to the right of the Edit pencil) and Publish command (to the left of the Delete trash can).
Note: You can also Share a map when you’re editing it.
Publish — Sharing Maps Inside DRA
To share a map that you’ve created inside DRA 2020 with everyone with an account, you Publish it. It will then show up in everyone’s Published Maps collection in List View, along with all the other maps that everyone else has published. You will also see it in your My Published Maps collection.
Published maps are read-only for everyone except the owner.
To publish a map, selected it in List View and choose the Publish Selected Map command. You’ll see this popup.
Make sure your map has a good name description that helps other people find your map and understand how and why you built it — there are a lot of maps!
To unpublish a map that you have previously published, simply select it and choose the Publish command again.
It is also good practice to Lock a map once you publish it to help prevent unintended changes once you have decided it has reached a publishable state. Locked maps can be easily unlocked if you need to make further changes.
Share — Sharing Maps Outside DRA
To share a map that you’ve created to everyone outside DRA 2020 — whether or not they have an account — you use the Share command.
To share a map, selected it in List View and choose the Share Selected Map command. You’ll see this popup.
Leave the Allow Editing box unchecked and press Copy to copy the sharing link to the clipboard, and then click Dismiss to close the dialogue.
Anyone with this link can view the map, even if they don’t have an account or aren’t logged into DRA 2020. A user who is logged into DRA and viewing a map with a sharing link like this can temporarily change view properties on their own version of the map but those changes are not saved.
If you paste the clipboard contents into social media — e.g., Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn — it includes the map thumbnail and description. For example:
To make a map private again, press Revoke Sharing instead.
Note: You can also use the Share command to get the sharing link for a map that you are viewing but don’t own.
Press Share Frozen Version if you want to share the current version of the map but not share any further edits you might make to the map. This shares the current revision of the map but will not include any further edits you make to the map. This is a good way to share a map at a specific point in time during its construction.
Note: The History command also allows you to share all previous frozen revisions of a map, not just the current revision.
Share Again — Collaborating On Maps
To collaborate with others on a map — like you might work together with others on a Google Doc — you use the Share command again, except this time you check the Allow Editing box and then Copy.
Anyone who you send that link to will not only be able to look at your map, they’ll be able to edit it when they are logged into DRA 2020. In other words, when you Allow Editing when you share a map, you give others read-write privileges to it.
Each user has their own display properties to control visual aspects of the map, but all data characteristics and district assignments are shared.
As above, to make a map private again, press Revoke Sharing instead. The Revoke action will revoke all links you have shared, including those with Allow Editing, Share Frozen Version or simply View Only.
Shared With Me
When you open a map through a sharing link or through the published or official list, it will show up in the “shared with me” list to make it easy to find again. You can remove it from this list by using the “delete” command. It is good practice to clean up this list occasionally.
Putting It All Together
You can work with others to develop a map using Share with Allow Editing, and when you’re ready you can share it with everyone in DRA using Publish and others outside DRA in a blog post or on social media using Share with Allow Editing off or by using Share Frozen Version.
