Best Practices for Administering ArcGIS in Education

[GeriMiller]

In a recent Ed Summit 2018 workshop on “Best Practices for Administering ArcGIS in Education” we shared a number of recommended workflows applicable to academic setting. Some of the key ideas are below:

• Web GIS is not just “more and better” GIS, rather a whole new way of doing GIS, which requires new ways of managing GIS.
• Build bridges with stakeholders within your institution who can facilitate these best practices – collaborate with experts in enterprise systems, identity management, information assurance, etc.
• Maximize access to ArcGIS and minimize time/cost spent managing ArcGIS - it takes more time to restrict access.
• Enable enterprise logins, commonly referred to as Single Sign On (SSO), and auto-provision new users for Role (Publisher), Credits, Esri Access, Entitlements, etc. This eliminates manual account creation and management when user status changes (student graduates, faculty retire, staff leave).
• Enable access for everyone – once SSO is implemented, new users can automatically join and leverage the technology. Consider ArcGIS to be enterprise-level system similar to email, LMS, file servers. 
• Enable Esri Access for any incoming user as part of auto-provisioning (possible after latest June 2018 ArcGIS Online release) – empowering users to help themselves by getting access to Esri Training, Learn ArcGIS, GeoNet.
• Enable access to everything – grant entitlements for all common apps (ArcGIS Pro, GeoPlanner, Insights for ArcGIS, Community Analyst, Business Analyst, etc.) for any incoming users (currently done via script). Ensure that any such scripting is enterprise-level – robust, scalable, secure, reliable.
• Set credit quota – high enough so that users can do their work, low enough to protect them from mistakes.
• Use a single ArcGIS Online organization, where possible, which avoids impeding collaboration and means reduced combined management workload.
• Disable offline licensing for ArcGIS Pro via Named User licensing, and instead provide Single-Use licenses for potential offline use cases. 
• Do nothing as a best practice (for now) – no need to delete accounts, delete content, etc. 
  • Rely on official institution sources to track when person’s status changes – students graduate, faculty retire, staff leave – configure SSO to deny access for ineligible users.
  • Do not delete content as there may be dependencies and others may be relying on this content.

We welcome any feedback on the above recommendations!

Peter Knoop (University of Michigan)

Geri Miller (Esri)