Absolutely everything!
In this blog series, we’ve talked about data, services, and the portal as a content management system. Those are all important topics for GIS administrators to understand, but when you deploy GIS at enterprise scale, the overwhelming majority of users won’t actually engage with those systems directly.
One way to think about ArcGIS Enterprise is that it’s the infrastructure that makes it possible for everybody in your organization to work with geospatial data. It’s like the global network system that makes the internet possible. Travis and I use the internet every single day, and we could not tell you exactly how it works.
“You know what a BGP node is Travis? Yeah, me neither. I’m busy with other stuff.”
That’s exactly how most users feel about the details of data, services, and content management in ArcGIS Enterprise. If you want people to use the system you worked so hard to set up and maintain, you need to give them tools that are specific to their needs. Just like how the people who understand the internet gave us web browsers.
In ArcGIS Enterprise, apps are those tools. There are four main categories of apps:
ArcGIS Pro
ArcGIS Pro is powerful desktop software for advanced mapping, analytics, and data management. It integrates with the data, services, and content management system of ArcGIS Enterprise so that people can make use of those resources to perform sophisticated GIS workflows.
ArcGIS Pro is probably too complex for most users in your organization. Instead, you can leverage ArcGIS Enterprise’s services-oriented architecture to power web and mobile apps that are much easier to use for people who aren’t GIS experts.
ArcGIS Enterprise apps
For many capabilities of ArcGIS Enterprise, Esri has created dedicated web and mobile apps. The ArcGIS Enterprise portal’s Home app is a web app designed to make it easier to access the content management capabilities of ArcGIS Enterprise. Map Viewer is a web app for interacting with web maps that is integrated into the Home app of the portal. There are dozens of other apps, from ArcGIS Business Analyst to ArcGIS Workflow Manager. Each app is tailored to a particular workflow, instead of being a general-purpose app like ArcGIS Pro.
“Yeah Travis, Esri’s apps are great, but what if they aren’t exactly what my users need?”
Apps created with app builders
If your users have special requirements that aren’t met by an existing app, you need to create your own app designed with those requirements in mind. ArcGIS Experience Builder, ArcGIS Dashboards, ArcGIS Instant Apps, and ArcGIS StoryMaps are web apps that help you build other web apps. They are all no-code or low-code solutions that provide a structure for quickly developing apps tailored to users’ needs.
Custom apps
For a small number of cases, the structure of the app builders may be too limiting. Custom apps built with one of the ArcGIS Maps SDKs give you full creative freedom to create web, mobile, or desktop apps.
Custom apps require a software developer, and they are a significant investment in time and resources compared to using the app builders. You need to carefully consider whether the benefit of a custom app justifies that level of effort.
Choosing the right app
The most important thing about an app is that it is aligned with a user’s work. Give ArcGIS Pro to geospatial experts. Give Field Maps to crews collecting data in the field. If you need to build your own app, resist the temptation to make an “everything app” that incorporates workflows for different types of users. That flexibility comes at the cost of making the user experience more difficult.
Remember:
- Apps are how users interact with the ArcGIS Enterprise system you’ve built.
- It’s easiest for users to learn to use apps that are focused on their familiar workflows.
- You may need to create new apps for your users if there aren’t any existing ones that meet their needs.
