Custom locator published on Portal, shared publicly, and added as a locator to AGOL org not available in AGOL apps when not signed in

Question

I have a custom locator that I published on our Portal and set sharing to 'Everyone.' It also has been added under out AGOL org's Geocoders (under org settings->Utilities). I notice how in the documentation, it is phrased that here is where you can add locators for which 'members of your organization will have access to...', so I'm not sure if actually possible, but I'd really like any public facing apps hosted on our AGOL org to default to using our custom locator that lives on our Portal ArcGIS Server. This includes the maps within Survey123 Surveys, maps in ArcGIS Field Apps, and anything built with Experience Builder or Instant apps. Currently apps trying to use that custom locator still prompt the user to sign in to our Portal, even though it is a publicly shared locator.

Any advice or clarification?

Town_ofCBS_GIS · Answer

I've had a similar issue, and I believe the 'members of your organization' is important here. It seems like the locator is only available to people logged in. As a municipality, it would be a lot better if we could have the public also use our locator, since we update road names more frequently then ESRI's Default locator.

GeoDataGeoData · Answer

Hi,

Just want to share my experience with a locator, this might help you or others searching for solutions.

ESRI UK provide free locators specific for accessing UK locations, for example we use the British National Grid which they have provided freely as a locator.

I added this locator to our organisation via the AGOL settings > Utility services > Geocoding. Everything worked as expected.

Until...

A colleague created a web map which he wished to share publicly to a client. The map and data were fine but we noticed the search box showed none of the locators.

Turns out after much faffing we had to turn on Security > Policies > Allow anonymous access.

This allowed the search box to populate with locators on public maps. It also opens up our organisational home page to the public to show only the publicly shared layers/apps.

IngridMans · Answer

Hi Ann,

I had added our (publicly accessible) Portal-published custom locator as one of the locators to make available to all users in our AGOL org (as an admin under Organization->Settings->Utility Services) and added that rest url under the Geocoding section. That seemed to be what made the locator available in field maps; however I don't know much more about changing which locators to use in Field Maps other than how you set up the web map itself in the web map settings. My issue is that Field Maps still wants users to sign in to the Portal account to use that custom geocoder, even though that service is publicly shared from our Portal.

Does this answer your question?