Apply Portal edits to geodatabase

Question

I have been testing different setups with our new Portal instance and am a little confused on the best way to set up for editing.  I have created featureclasses in our SDE geodatabase with versioning. I have added the FCs as layers into ArcDesktop and then published as a hosted featurelayer to Portal. I can now add shapes.  The problem is that if I go back to the original ArcDesktop document, the map and geodatabase are not being updated.

I originally tried publishing as a ArcServer featurelayer but could not find documentation on how I could add this layer to Portal and allow editing. All documentation that I found discussed editing the settings for a "hosted" featurelayer. How do I get my edits into my geodatabase?  Any tips on the best way to set up editing?

mody_buchbinder · Answer

Hi

When you edit from portal the database see just one user. This is the owner of the ArcSOC.exe process (set in server installation) if you use windows authentication or the Database user you published with if you use database authentication. This user must have write access. If you edit from portal the access should be controlled by portal.

The edit application you create must be opened only to portal users that need to edit.

You can create a second application without editing and open it for other people.

LisaT · Answer

Thank you for the description, Ryan.  So, it is weird that when I search "edit feature layer in Portal" I get a lot of documents describing how to make a hosted feature layer, but not a feature layer.  I already have my data registered with ArcGIS Server.  Before trying the "hosted" route, I had published my FL through Server and set it up for editing. I ran into issues when one of my users tried to edit the FL in Portal. So, I started trying to do searches to find what I did wrong and it seemed that it needed to be set up as "hosted".

With that, I am hoping I can get some answers on how to set FLs up correctly via this blog, as documentation is sparse:

From what Bill Fox said above, it seems that I need to go into the GDB separately and create read/write permissions on each user.  Now, do I need to do this using the tools in ArcCatalog (Manage Roles and Users), or can I just create an Active directory group and administer permissions on each database using MS SQL Management Studio?  I know Arc products can be picky and I don't want anything to get messed up.

Also, it seems that permissions get set at the database level, not the featureclass level, so everything stored in the database will be able to be edited by the user?? When I right-click on a featureclass and go to "Privileges" only the "sde" user is listed for me to add/remove privileges.

Once I set the FL up, is there any way to limit the Edit permissions to certain users, or will every user who has access to view it also be able to edit it?

As a hypothetical, say I have Mary, Todd, and Moe users and FC1 and FC2 featureclasses in the same GDB. Say I want Mary to be able to edit FC1 and Todd and Moe to only read it and Todd to be able to edit FC2 and Mary and Moe to only read it. Is there any way to manage that?

Thanks for your help. If anyone knows of any documentation related to managing editing on un-hosted featurelayers in Portal, that would be great!

ryanuthoff · Answer

A hosted feature service basically just copies your data (in this case the data in your ArcMap document) to the ArcGIS Data Store. Any changes you make to it will not be reflected in the original source location (your EGDB).

You'll need to register your data source with your ArcGIS Server if you want any changes made in Portal to be reflected back in your EGDB. When you register your data source with server and then publish, you will see the feature layer as a "Feature Layer" and not "Feature Layer (hosted)" in Portal.

Also, when publishing in ArcMap, you will need to make an ArcGIS Server connection, and not a hosted services connection. Once you make an ArcGIS Server connection, select that connection when you go to publish your map document. Then when you go to analyze before clicking the "Publish" button, you will see a message about the data source not being registered with the server. You can right click the message and register your data that way.

This link might be helpful. About registering your data with ArcGIS Server—Documentation | ArcGIS Enterprise