ArcMap vs ArcPro services workflow

Question

We are running Enterprise in-house (currently 10.6, will be 10.9 shortly). We...

Create/test MXDs on development machine with relative paths

Copy finalized .mxd file to production machine. (Copies of) File GeoDBs and directory structure are identical to development site so links to data layers remain connected

Publish to the world/subsets thereof

Maintain/update/modify the mxd on production and republish as needed. (ArcMap is not installed on either server, it just has access)

Pro projects don't seem to be mobile like moving an mxd around. So far I haven't been able to find anything on how to change our workflow to work with Pro. It's all "hit publish in Pro and poof! It's magic and it works!" That's nifty, but doesn't give me anything helpful on how to actually administer our GIS (for example, am I supposed to install Pro on the server and create a multitude of projects on there? That can't be right)

Anyone have  good examples/links to documentation that's actually specific on creation/maintenance with Pro? We've been using mxds long enough that I'm having trouble getting my head around the new environment.
Thanks,

Tycho

TychoGranville · Answer

Thanks Matthew, that does help. Next up will be tricking it into looking at the correct version of the GeoDBs before export. I will post here when/if I get it figured out

MatthewCarey · Answer

I'm interested to hear what people contribute because I've found it to be not as intuitive or well documented as you might expect. Apologies if this is too basic, but we had an aha moment when we had a Pro project on our desktop PCs, then right-clicked Map in the table of contents and chose Save As Offline Service Definition. Then used the service definition to publish the service on the server via ArcGIS Server Manager. You have to be at a more recent version of Pro to have this functionality.

I know this probably won't get you all the way where you need to get to but it's a start I hope!