topic ArcGIS Online & Virtual Directory Access in ArcGIS Online Questions

ArcGIS Online & Virtual Directory Access

JeffDavis7 — Wed, 27 Feb 2019 19:09:42 GMT

Hello,

I am having some issues accessing information via my newly created Virtual Directory. I have created a Virtual Directory in IIS to allow access to videos and reports through ArcGIS Online via popup "More info".

I created and attached screen shots that illustrate the steps that I took to get to this point and am hoping someone may lend some wisdom on where I may have stumbled along the way.

VirtualDirectory1.jpg - screen shot depicting the information I supplied to initially create the virtual directory.

VirtualDirectory2.jpg - screen shot depicting the creation of the SanLinks virtual directory.

VirtualDirectory3.jpg - to test, I changed only one segments path. The red highlight indicates the record that was edited.

VirtualDirectory4.jpg - screen shot highlights "More info" added to this segment allowing the user to click for the info.

VirtualDirectory5.jpg - screen shot illustrating the result of the "More info" click event.

Thank you in advance for any assistance or advice that you can offer.

Jeff

Re: ArcGIS Online & Virtual Directory Access

GeoJosh — Tue, 05 Mar 2019 17:45:39 GMT

Hi Jeff! You shouldn't have to reference 'Sites' and 'Default Web Site' in the URL. Try https://gis-webserver/SanLinks/.....(rest of URL here).

Re: ArcGIS Online & Virtual Directory Access

JeffDavis7 — Wed, 06 Mar 2019 12:49:59 GMT

Hi Joshua!

Thank you so much for responding to my post. I really appreciate any assistance or insight on this topic.

Regarding my "SanLinks" virtual directory. In the Add Virtual Directory dialog box...do I need to drill all the way down to the actual directory that contains my videos and pdf's for the physical path?

I have other questions that will be dependent on this one...error messages and what not...but I will wait to pose those after I hear back from you.

Thank you again!

Jeff

Re: ArcGIS Online & Virtual Directory Access

GeoJosh — Wed, 06 Mar 2019 15:19:45 GMT

Jeff,

Nope, the physical path should be the top-level folder. For example, if my machine name is josh-machine and I had the image dog.jpg stored in the physical path C:\virtDir\images, I can add C:\virtDir as a Virtual Directory and the image will be available through the URL http://josh-machine/virtDir/images/dog.jpg.

Josh

Re: ArcGIS Online & Virtual Directory Access

JeffDavis7 — Wed, 06 Mar 2019 17:35:21 GMT

Josh,

I've added another screenshot to my posting entitled "Access Denied.jpg" that illustrates the error I received.

The red rectangle indicates my virtual directory path set at the top-level folder. I then modified the record within my attribute table to include https://, the machine, virDir, and then the rest of the path to arrive at my .mpg video.

The screenshot you are seeing is actually something that comes out of right clicking the virtual directory and choosing Manage Virtual Directory/Browse. The same error message, essentially, is produced after clicking "More info" within the popup window in ArcGIS Online.

I hope this makes sense. Can you provide any valuable insight going forward? I am stumped because I have all permissions access for this directory.

Thanks.

Jeff

Re: ArcGIS Online & Virtual Directory Access

GeoJosh — Wed, 06 Mar 2019 17:45:55 GMT

Jeff,

Hmm. We're getting toward the edge of my expertise, but a quick Google search returned this StackOverflow link, which points to a permissions issue on behalf of the local IIS account.

Hope this helps!

Thanks,

Josh

Re: ArcGIS Online & Virtual Directory Access

JeffDavis7 — Wed, 06 Mar 2019 17:58:50 GMT

Josh,

It does help. I notice one individual indicated going into the Default Web Site, accessing Authentication, and changing to the Application Pool Identity within Edit for Anonymous Authentication.

If I were to create a new website, instead of using Default Web Site, would there be any change in the URL since it would no longer be the Default Web Site but some other name?

Thanks.

Jeff

Re: ArcGIS Online & Virtual Directory Access

GeoJosh — Wed, 06 Mar 2019 19:36:56 GMT

Yes, you would have to access the non-default website from a port other than 80, since 80 is the port used by the default website. I've never attempted adding another site to my IIS but I would proceed with caution. There are many configurations that you need to make in order for it to work as expected.

iis - What, exactly, is "Default Website"? - Super User

Re: ArcGIS Online & Virtual Directory Access

JeffDavis7 — Wed, 06 Mar 2019 20:03:26 GMT

Thank you, Josh. I will be getting with my IT Director to discuss the link you forwarded. Very encouraging. Once I meet with him I will no doubt have additional follow-up questions. Thank you so much for staying in contact and assisting me in this venture. It's a lot to take in. Talk to you soon.

Jeff

Re: ArcGIS Online & Virtual Directory Access

JeffDavis7 — Thu, 07 Mar 2019 13:32:58 GMT

Josh,

We were able to achieve some degree of success on the IIS side. Within the popup window of my application I am receiving the "More info" for my video and when selected the media begins to load which is great news. There is still some things we need to work out for security but that is "on us". However, I am having problems bringing up a PDF. The same pipe segment has a PDF report link as well as the video which comes up fine as I previously indicated. As I said, I am seeing the "More info" for the video but the PDF still displays the https://URL that has not be changed to the "More info" select link. I checked in the corresponding publishing project file and the hyperlinks are working fine. Am I missing something? Any thoughts?

Thanks.

Jeff

Re: ArcGIS Online & Virtual Directory Access

GeoJosh — Thu, 07 Mar 2019 14:13:57 GMT

Jeff,

Hmm. I just tested linking a PDF hosted on my web server and "More Info" is showed in the pop-up. (Please correct me if I misunderstand the issue at hand)

What do your pop-up settings look like? Mine are currently set to display a list of field attributes.

Maybe try:

A different browser (e.g. Chrome, Firefox, etc.)
Clearing the browser cache.

-Josh

Re: ArcGIS Online & Virtual Directory Access

JeffDavis7 — Thu, 07 Mar 2019 14:26:05 GMT

Josh,

I've attached a screen capture of my popup that illustrates the issue called "PDF Popup Issue".

I have tried a different browser and different computer and get the same result.

What do you think?

Thanks.

Jeff

Re: ArcGIS Online & Virtual Directory Access

GeoJosh — Thu, 07 Mar 2019 15:03:11 GMT

Strange! I can't seem to reproduce this issue.

Maybe try including the fully qualified domain name of the web server machine? (http://<machineName>.<domain>.com/<restOfURL>)

Re: ArcGIS Online & Virtual Directory Access

JeffDavis7 — Thu, 07 Mar 2019 17:39:54 GMT

I will try that Josh. Thank you. I will be out of office the rest of the week but I will catch up with you next week and let you know how it turns out.

Thank you so much again for all your advice and assistance.

Jeff

Re: ArcGIS Online & Virtual Directory Access

GeoJosh — Thu, 07 Mar 2019 21:39:20 GMT

It's been my pleasure! Have a great weekend

Re: ArcGIS Online & Virtual Directory Access

JeffDavis7 — Mon, 11 Mar 2019 12:23:03 GMT

Morning Josh,

Hope you had a great weekend!

I tried your suggestion of including the domain. Unfortunately, that did not work as well.

However, I started examining the actual name of the pdf and how it was delineated. The pdf name included a space. After I removed the space the document auto-loaded in AGO and the "More info" designation was present.

The only thing remaining to solve now is the "Not secure" warning within my URL when the documents load. Have you ever ran into that issue in your travels?

Thanks.

Jeff

Re: ArcGIS Online & Virtual Directory Access

KellyGerrow — Mon, 11 Mar 2019 23:28:10 GMT

HI Jeff,

Sounds like you need to install a signed certificate on your webserver. Browsers, and the Internet in general is requiring https, so this would be recommended if you are going to reference documents on your webserver. If this is just for testing, try allowing mixed content in a browser like IE or chrome.

Does this data need to stay internally on your network? If not, I would suggest uploading the items to ArcGIS Online and referencing the data links. ArcGIS Online can host pdfs and has https enabled by default.

Thanks,

Kelly

Re: ArcGIS Online & Virtual Directory Access

JeffDavis7 — Tue, 12 Mar 2019 15:03:54 GMT

Hi Kelly,

Thank you for the insight. I really appreciate both yourself and Josh for examining and responding to my issues.

I had considered uploading the PDFs to AGO, but there are so many I thought it would really "jack up" the number of credits we are already using for storage. In addition, I will most likely be uploading images to AGO for an external facing site too.

What I have done in the mean time, to alleviate the "Not Secure" message, is to apply some modifications to the Settings in Google Chrome so that PDF's will download instead of run in the browser. That way it can be selected on the screen and initialize Adobe for viewing. I just need to clear this workflow with my IT department since they can get a little uncomfortable with automatic downloads...understandably.

Thanks.

Jeff

Re: ArcGIS Online & Virtual Directory Access

KellyGerrow — Tue, 12 Mar 2019 16:21:01 GMT

Thanks for the update Jeff.

It sounds like you have something working. If you do want to consider uploading images, here is some information about credit charges for tile and data storage. Uploading images to ArcGIS Online will be charged according to the file storage rates of 1.2 credits per 1 GB of storage per month. Generally file storage is an inexpensive way to store files.

ArcGIS Online Service Credits by Capability | Esri

-Kelly

Re: ArcGIS Online & Virtual Directory Access

JeffDavis7 — Tue, 12 Mar 2019 16:24:15 GMT

Thanks, Kelly. That will definitely come in handy!