Hopefully, the arrival of the school holidays and the temporary absence of colleagues will enable GIS teams to enjoy a well-deserved breather at work. If that’s the case for you, we suggest making the most of this time to tackle a task that’s important but often overlooked: iShare housekeeping. 

Why housekeeping is a good idea

Andy Smart, one of our Account Managers, shares a story about a local authority in South East England who reached out for a quote to increase their storage by 50GB after a capacity alarm was triggered. However, after working through tasks on our housekeeping checklist, they managed to clear enough space to completely avoid any extra cost. It wasn’t just a win for their budget, it was also a win for the planet. Storing 50GB of data is estimated to emit around 1.25 kg CO₂e per year (Digital Decarbonisation), so tidying up your data is a simple way to help your authority become more green.

Of course, there are more benefits to housekeeping than saving costs and reducing your carbon footprint, as Gavin in our Platform Team is keen to explain.

Why Gavin recommends housekeeping

Without regular iShare administrator maintenance by customers, iShare instances can accumulate clutter over time. Customers add layers, map sources, workflow jobs, and custom pages during projects, and these rarely get cleaned up. Over months and years, this builds up into dead weight — unused connections consuming resources, failing layers generating noise, and redundant base maps taking up storage.

Housekeeping improves performance and reliability. Fewer layers and map sources means less to load, less to monitor, and fewer things that can fail. Removing failing layers in particular reduces error noise in log files.

Housekeeping also reduces the customer’s support burden. Failing tasks, broken custom maps, and orphaned workflow jobs generate support tickets. A customer who has done housekeeping has a cleaner, more stable instance that needs less reactive support.

It also helps customers prepare for migrations. For customers heading towards iShare v6, a leaner instance is significantly easier to migrate. There’s less data to move, fewer edge cases to handle, and lower risk of post-migration issues. The fact that the housekeeping checklist is already referenced in the v6 migration scope document template reinforces this.

Finally, it shifts customers from reactive to proactive. Rather than waiting for a low-disk alarm or a failing layer to prompt action, regular housekeeping builds good habits. The checklist gives customers something concrete and actionable to work through on their own schedule.

So, here’s the list you’ve all been waiting for: our Housekeeping Checklist!

Housekeeping checklist

My Maps

Delete any map sources that are not needed (also consolidate into fewer map sources with fewer layer groups and layers, where possible)

Delete any layer groups and layers that are not needed

Fix any failing layers

Base Maps

Consider if any base maps can be replaced by online services from Astun, APGB, Getmapping etc

Delete any base maps that are not needed

Delete map sources from Studio and remove the source data

If you haven’t already, complete the migration to OS Maps APIs & delete OS Premium base maps

Data Share Connections

Delete any connections that are not needed

Workflow

Delete any jobs that are not needed

Delete any tasks that are not needed

Fix any failing tasks

Database

Delete any custom databases that are not needed

Delete any tables or views that are not needed

Delete any custom functions or triggers that are not needed

Custom maps and pages

Delete any Lite, Solo, ol-ishare maps that are not needed

Delete any custom pages (address search, local info etc.) that are not needed

Fix any custom maps and pages that are failing

Folders

Remove unwanted files and directories on the various hard drives (e.g. delete unwanted files from the downloads directory)

Check your log files are being managed properly and not growing in number or size (see iShare Help for more info)