Best Way to Self-Teach ArcGIS Online & It's Various Tools?

Question

Hey Everyone,

I recently graduated with a BS in Geographic Information Science. Sadly, we did not utilize ArcGIS online as much as I would have liked. I am proficient in ArcMap and have dabbled with ArcGIS Pro. I am trying to get my foot in the door anywhere to start my career, but I feel like experience with ArcGIS Online is a minimum requirement. I assume it cannot be that difficult to learn through self teaching?

1). Does anyone have any recommendations on a good route for this? Can I get by with the free version of ArcGIS online, it grants access to most things correct?

2). Specifically, I hope to gain experience with making maps in general, story maps, using the web app builder, collector, and 123 Survey.

Any guidance is greatly appreciated!

JA7 · Answer

For Survey123 @IsmaelChivite's Tricks of the Trade series is my go-to for Survey123. That is how I learned Survey123.

Just an FYI - Web AppBuilder is being retired so you might want to consider focusing on Experience Builder instead.

I also taught myself ArcGIS and my biggest recommendation is to just get in there and start playing. So much of my learning started off with a hair-brained thought of 'I wonder if I can....' and I just made it happen. Feel free to have fun with it, it doesn't have to be serious to be educational. I learned StoryMaps by creating a mystery escape room inside of a StoryMap. I've created an entire zombie response workflow to learn Survey123 and Experience Builder. The more you allow yourself to have fun with it, the more you will retain and the less it will feel like work.

BernSzukalski · Answer

There are a variety of resources that you can tap into. They are a bit dispersed, but here are some of my favorite locations to point users to for self-help.

Tutorials: Formerly Learn ArcGIS, this destinations covers the entire ArcGIS ecosystem at different levels (beginner to advanced). Use the filters on the left side to find topics of interest.

https://learn.arcgis.com/en/gallery/

This is a good one to get started with ArcGIS Online:

https://learn.arcgis.com/en/projects/get-started-with-arcgis-online/

Topics: Another great destination, look for the product you are interested in, then click to find additional resources.

https://doc.arcgis.com/en/

Product Help: Product help documentation includes getting started guides. For example, these are the search results for ArcGIS Online.

https://doc.arcgis.com/search/?q=get%20started%20arcgis%20online&p=0&language=en&product=arcgis-online&version=&n=15&collection=help

Esri Academy: A collection of resources included self-paced courses and videos to help you get started.

https://www.esri.com/training/

ArcGIS Blog: Blog articles and tutorials covering news, how-to documents, best practices, and more.

https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/overview/

As for the free, public ArcGIS Account, our education team is working on course materials for public account users that also underscore what you can do with a full account. These will be emerging with the next release of ArcGIS Online in June. In the meanwhile, there are certain things you cannot do with a public account but basic map authoring and app configuration is possible.