Integrate maps, apps, and scenes to tell a story

The company you work for, Box Store Inc., is coming up on its annual planning period. You and your colleagues in the Sales department have been tasked with creating recommendations for strengthening sales in underperforming branches. So far, you've developed the following analyses that can help your team determine these recommendations:

• A chart comparing 2024 and 2025 sales for each store location
• An interactive dashboard showing the lowest-performing stores, sales per square foot of retail space, and more

Your last task to prepare for the meeting is to combine all of these resources into a presentation to discuss with your team. For this presentation, you'll use ArcGIS StoryMaps Briefings, which will allow you to embed interactive ArcGIS apps, maps, and scenes.

This tutorial is part of the series Integrate maps, apps, and scenes to tell a story.

This tutorial was last tested on August 6, 2026.

View final result

Requirements

• ArcGIS organizational account with a Publisher, Facilitator, or Administrator role (see options for software access)

Integrate maps, apps, and scenes to tell a story

Gather resources to draw conclusions

First, you'll review all the data and visuals you've created to support your team's exploratory analysis.

1. Download the Box Store Presentation folder. Unzip the folder to a location on your computer you can easily access.
2. In the Box Store Presentation folder, open the 2024 and 2025 Sales chart.

   Note:

   If you completed the Create a chart tutorial, you can instead browse to your Downloads folder and open your copy of the chart.

   

   This chart is a bar chart in which each pair of bars represents 2025 and 2024 sales at a store location. From the chart, you can tell that most locations increased their sales between 2024 and 2025. Only six locations appear to have experienced some decrease in sales, most of which have earnings clustered in the low $20,000,000 range.

3. Open the Box Store Louisiana Sales Performance dashboard.

   

   Note:

   If you completed the Configure a dashboard from a template tutorial, you can instead browse to My Content and open your copy of the dashboard.

   The dashboard is configured to show sales trends, both by market and by individual store.

4. On the map, click the Legend button to expand it.

   

   The map is styled to show each Box Store location's year-over-year growth, or the percentage above or below the previous years' sales they grew. Arrows pointing up show stores that sold more, and arrows pointing down show stores that sold less. The size of the arrow corresponds to the percent change. Based on the surrounding elements, the New Orleans market has the highest cumulative sales and the Monroe location is the lowest-performing store in terms of annual sales.

5. On the Box Store Louisiana Sales Performance dashboard, in the Bottom 5 by sales list, click the Monroe – Sterlington location.

   

   The map zooms to that store and the dashboard updates to show data specific to it. While the store's 2025 sales were low compared to other locations, it did grow by 16 percent from the previous year. The Average annual sales chart shows that the location has consistently grown since 2022.

   The details element next to the map shows more information about the location. This particular store opened in 2018, so its low sales might mean it needs to become better established in the community or that it has a lot of competitors in the area.

6. Click the store record in the list again to zoom back out to the entire state.

   The other data that might supplement your presentation is spending data. You'll use a layer from ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World that a colleague previously built into a 3D scene.

7. Open the Box Store locations scene. Click the point that is visible on the map to open an informational pop-up.

   

   This scene has been configured to show a closer view of some of the lower-performing stores. The scene opens to show a street view of the Metairie – Veterans Memorial store. There are three slides saved to this scene. Slides are like bookmarks that store the location and state of a scene.

8. At the bottom of the scene, click the Lake Charles slide.

   

   The scene navigates to the saved location of the Lake Charles – McNeese store.

Create a briefing

For your team presentation, you'll build a briefing with the ArcGIS StoryMaps Briefings app. Briefings are a slide-based presentation tool that allow you to combine ArcGIS apps and maps with other content and text. Apps and other embedded content are interactive, so your team can work with the dashboard and scene without leaving the briefing.

1. On the ribbon, click Sign in. Sign in to your ArcGIS organizational account.

   Note:

   If you don't have an organizational account, see options for software access.

2. On the ribbon, click the menu button and choose Content.

   

   The My content page appears.

3. On the ribbon, click the app launcher and choose StoryMaps.

   

4. On the ArcGIS StoryMaps page, click Create and choose Briefing.

   

   The Briefing builder opens to a title slide.

5. In the builder, change the Briefing title value to Box Store Sales Planning.
6. For the subtitle, type FY2026.

   You can also add a cover image to this slide. You'll return to this after adding all the data. The first slide you want to focus on is the dashboard, since it contains a summary of how the Box Store's locations are performing.

7. In the slide panel, click the add button and choose Media only.

   

8. On the slide, click Add media and choose ArcGIS app.

   

9. In the Add ArcGIS app window, under Filters, for View items in, select Public Content. Search for the Box Store Louisiana Sales Performance dashboard and select it.

   Note:

   Alternatively, you can select your own Box Store Louisiana Sales Performance dashboard if available.

   The dashboard is added to your presentation. Next, you'll add the chart and some talking points to guide the team's discussion.

10. Click the add button and add a Flexible without title slide.

    

11. In one of the two media columns, click Add media and choose Image or video.
12. In the Add an image or video window, click Browse your files.

    

13. Go to the Box Store Presentation folder you downloaded in the first part of this tutorial, select the 2024 and 2025 Sales.png file, and click Add.
14. In the blank column, click the text box and type or copy the following text:
    • 70% (14 of 20 branches) experienced positive year over year growth between 2014 and 2015.
    • The two of the lowest-earning stores, Lake Charles, and Bossier City, opened in the past 3 years.
    • The Houma location had the lowest year over year growth at –10% between 2024 and 2025.

    Finally, you'll add the web scene to the briefing.

15. In the slide panel, click the add button and choose Flexible without title.
16. In one of the two media columns, click Add media and choose Map.
17. In the Add a map window, for Filters, choose Public Content. Search for the item ID: bfb4f133dfbf47648cdfd7112e93e647.

    

    This is the item ID for the Box Store Locations scene you opened earlier.

18. Click the scene to select it.

    The Adjust map appearance window appears. In this window, you can customize how the map appears in your briefing, including which slide or other view is shown, whether the legend and search tools are available, and more. The scene is already set to show the location of the Metairie branch, so you'll leave this as is.

19. Click the Options tab. In the Map configuration section, turn on the Keep pop-up open toggle button.

    

20. On the map, click the store point for the Metairie – Veterans Memorial store to open a pop-up.
21. Click Save.

    The scene is added to the briefing.

22. In the blank column, click the text box, and type or copy the following text:

    Just two stores experienced a decline in sales and were in the bottom 5 earning locations:

    • Bossier City - Viking *opened in 2024
    • Metairie - Veterans Memorial

Style a briefing

Now that the slides have been assembled, you'll focus on their appearance. There are several ways to style a briefing, such as adding a theme, customizing slides, and adding images. In this case, you'll choose a theme that coordinates with the gray colors used in the basemaps. This will help the red and blue colors identifying store performance stand out. You also could customize the theme and slides to match your company's branding and logo.

1. On the slide manager, click the first slide.

   Earlier when you created this slide, you just added a title and subtitle. Now, you'll pick a theme and add a cover image.

2. At the top of the page, click Design.

   

   The Design panel appears.

3. For Theme, choose Slate.

   

   The text and background of the slides update to the new theme.

4. Close the Design panel.
5. On the title slide, click Add cover image or video. Browse to the Box Store Presentation folder you downloaded earlier and choose coverphoto.png.
6. In the slide manager, click the third slide.

   The slide with the bar chart opens. Since this chart is oriented to have a larger width, it's been resized to be smaller to fit in the half-slide spot. You can change the size of the media columns to better fit the content they hold.

7. At the side of the bar chart, click the Panel actions button and choose Expand left panel.

   

   The chart column resizes to take up approximately three-fourths of the slide.

8. Adjust the fourth slide to your satisfaction.
9. When you're happy with your changes, on the ribbon, click Publish.
10. On the Publish options page, for Set sharing level, choose Organization and click Publish.

    

    Setting the sharing to Organization will ensure that your colleagues can view and continue working with the briefing after your presentation.

In this tutorial, you created a briefing that combines dashboards, scenes, and images to share sales data with your colleagues. This can be used in an upcoming meeting to help you and your colleagues in the Sales department create recommendations for strengthening sales in underperforming branches.

Briefings, as with other ArcGIS StoryMaps products, allow you to create interactive presentations and data-driven stories.

This tutorial is part of the series Integrate maps, apps, and scenes to tell a story.

You can find more tutorials in the tutorial gallery.

Acknowledgements

• Human Geography Map sources: Esri, TomTom, Garmin, FAO, NOAA, USGS, OpenStreetMap contributors, and the GIS User Community