ArcGIS Online Update Planned for Tonight, September 18 

On September 18, we plan to update ArcGIS Online. Here are four capabilities you can look forward to:

• Measure Distributions and Detect Concentrations
  • Measure the distribution of a set of features using the new Summarize Center and Dispersion tool. The tool can be used to calculate characteristics such as the center or compactness and orientation of dispersion, track changes in distribution over time, and compare distributions of different features.
  • Detect areas where points or events are concentrated and where they are separated using the new Find Point Clusters tool. 
• Calculate Field Values using Arcade
  • Arcade can be used to calculate field values for hosted feature services. The functions, constants, and field values you currently use when building expressions for popups, labels, and visualizations can now be used to calculate field values.
• Visualize 2D and 3D with new Configurable App
  • Scene with Inset Map showcases 3D and 2D maps in a single configurable application. The primary map visualizes elevation and a 2D inset provides orientation and context.
• Search and Display 3D Features
  • Scenes can be configured so that when a feature is searched, Scene Viewer quickly finds and highlights the feature, and displays its pop-up.

Please note that all planned updates are subject to change. We will provide a comprehensive list of all implemented changes in our upcoming What’s New email and blog post.

Customized ArcGIS Online Agenda

The ArcGIS Online team prepared many technical workshops and demo theater presentations for the upcoming User Conference. To make it easy to see what is available and when, we’ve created a customized ArcGIS Online agenda. You can download it at the end of this article. The agenda includes six sections:

• Introductions: get started with capabilities like spatial analysis, and learn the benefits of Web GIS.
• Capabilities: dive deeper into capabilities like Smart Mapping, map styles, and 3D web scenes.
• Apps: see what you can create using configurable apps, app templates, and Web AppBuilder.
• Administration: learn best practices for configuring your organization, administering members, and using your own authentication system.
• Advanced Workflows: get best practices for setting up high demand layers, pop-ups, and publishing services, layers, and maps.
• What’s New & Coming: discover what’s been added and improved, and learn what’s planned for future updates.

Three technical workshops you don’t want to miss:

1. Best Practices for High Demand Layers: Web mapping applications provide spatial context for current events, news stories and public information, sometimes generating large amounts of web traffic. ArcGIS Online’s cloud infrastructure can scale to meet the needs of high demand apps, receiving hundreds of thousands of requests. This session reviews best practices of layer types, layer and web map configurations, and sharing settings that help popular (viral) apps take advantage of ArcGIS Online’s scalable architecture. See the schedule.
2. Steps for Success for your ArcGIS Organization: A Best Practices Approach: Your ArcGIS organization is an integral part of your GIS ecosystem, enabling you to reach a broad audience that includes GIS professionals, decision makers, knowledge workers, your mobile workforce, and the public. Using real world examples presented in a step-wise fashion, this fast-paced workshop offers guidance, tips, and details best practices that will enable you to create a successful and vibrant organization that meets your needs and goals. Whether you’ve already lifted your organization, or are just beginning to think about it, you’ll get ideas on how to configure it for the best experience and results, and how to engage users of all types successfully.  See the schedule. 
3. Explore Your Data with Smart Mapping: Learn about the exciting new enhancements behind our Smart Maps initiative for ArcGIS Online. See how we've re-envisioned mapping through data-driven workflows, intelligent defaults, coordinated styling, automated scale ranges, new thematic renderers, and streamlined interfaces. Smart Mapping allows experts and novices alike to work faster, with more confidence and less effort. See the schedule.

ArcGIS Online in the Expo

Stop by the ArcGIS Online Area in the Expo where you can:

• Get your questions answered
• Show us your work. We’d love to see the cool things you are doing with ArcGIS Online!
• See demos of the latest updates and features.
• Give us your ideas on how we can improve ArcGIS Online

Download the focused agenda to help you identify ArcGIS Online topics that interest you. We’ll see you in San Diego for an excellent week!

Do you constantly wish for better ways to organize ArcGIS content based on subject matter and descriptive qualities rather than just the item type and last modification date? Do you want to find your roads feature layer with 2012 data rather than looking for layers that were created in 2012?

The April 2018 update of ArcGIS Online*  introduced the ability to assign user-defined categories to items, creating thematic parameters that can be used as filters to refine search results and browsing experiences. Content categories enable administrators, group managers and users with the manage categories privilege to build a categorical schema for content that can then be used by members to categorize their items thematically.

Check out the rest of this article here and let us know how you will use content categories in the comments below.

Check out this sneak preview about updates to the organization page that are coming in the June Update of ArcGIS Online in this ArcGIS Blog:

The Organization Page has a New Look 

For all of you collaborators out there – announcing an update to the availability of distributed collaboration!

Collaboration has been released from the Early Adopter Community and is now available for all users with ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Enterprise 10.5.1 and up.

To enable collaboration in your ArcGIS Online organization, visit the licensing section of My Esri and select the radio button under ‘enable collaboration’ next to your ArcGIS Online subscription name and ID. 

Check out the rest of the article on the ArcGIS Blogs site.

A common question that we receive in Support and on GeoNet is “why can’t I see my group in the share dialog”. It’s happened to the best of us and maybe you can identify with the image below.

But I have good news, this is expected behavior when the group has the following setting enabled:

We intentionally don’t show these groups in the general share dialog because we want sharer’s to be aware of the elevated privileges in this group type. To do that we require a more intentional sharing workflow that is done from the item owner’s content page. This helps to ensure that the items are being used and updated by the correct organization members. 

So, if you don’t see your group in the share dialog don’t fret! Go to the content page, select the item and click share > access and update capabilities:

You’ll be met with a new share dialog that will display your group:

If you enabled this setting by mistake, and you don’t need all members to be able to update the items you share with that group, you’ll need to create a new group. This setting cannot be changed after the initial group creation is complete.

Learn more about when to use a group with update capabilities enabled in the following blogs:

Enable colleagues to update your maps and apps

Sharing and Collaboration across ArcGIS Online Organizations:

Check out this new ArcGIS Blog:

ArcGIS has a powerful sharing model that enables its members to easily share content items such as maps, apps, scenes and files with their desired audience.  Whether the audience is the entire 7.6 billion people in the world, or a few members of your company, ArcGIS Online has the infrastructure and security to get your mapping content to the right people quickly. The sharing settings of an item control both the findability and security of items in ArcGIS Online. This article will describe some common sharing scenarios and the security and findability impacts of each scenario.

Managing Security and Findability of Items with the ArcGIS Sharing Model 

The Esri development team is thrilled to announce that we have a new ArcGIS Blog website. It’s part of our overall initiative to improve your experience with ArcGIS. Although the site is new, the goal of the blog remains the same: give you deeper insight into how ArcGIS helps you get your work done.

Enhanced user experience

The new site has an enhanced design and a better experience for browsing and searching.

One of the first things you’ll notice is the new look. Articles include banners, bylines, and sticky social buttons that stay with you as you scroll. The articles can include embedded web apps including Story Maps. The site is responsive to different sized-screens and has similar branding to other Esri websites.

The site is organized around topics, each with a featured article and other articles related to that topic. Right now, a featured set of ArcGIS products makes up the topics list. Look for additional topics in the future.

You can also use the Browse All page or search with specific keywords. Search is available from all topic pages.

Redirects are in place

Our goal is to make this transition as seamless as possible for you. We’ve migrated about 2000 posts including all since 2015 and redirected old links and feeds to their new location. While redirects are in place, we suggest updating your bookmarks and feeds, especially if you had them set to specific categories or tags.

If you follow the blog using RSS, the feed for the entire blog is https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/feed/?post_type=blog. Feeds for specific products, categories, and tags are also enabled. Here’s an example of each:

https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/feed/?post_type=blog&product=arcgis-online

https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/feed/?post_type=blog&category=public-safety

https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/feed/?post_type=blog&tag=learn-arcgis

Expect the same great content

We will continue to share best practices, guidance, inspiration, and examples for using ArcGIS to accomplish your work. We will also continue to announce product updates and events, and let you know about any software patches or website maintenance. Please dive in, share these posts, and let us know your ideas.

Please note: currently the blog does not support comments. We plan to enable those soon!