Get Ready For OneDrive Integration
If you track the ArcGIS Pro Roadmap you'll see that OneDrive integration is coming. What's planned includes (but is not limited to) support for sharing file geodatabases. If you surf the ArcGIS Pro Ideas space for OneDrive you'll see a bunch more requests for OneDrive support.
One simple workflow - read-only data sharing to OneDrive - is already supported by ArcGIS Data Interoperability. Well, technically, if something doesn't work you can't call Esri support, but support is coming so let's be ready and try it out!
The workflow I'll highlight is sharing a snapshot of an ArcGIS Online hosted feature layer (with table sublayers having relationships with the parent layer) as a file geodatabase. This "backup" sharing scenario is easy as ArcGIS Online is set up to export file geodatabase format. If you add a format conversion step you might share mobile geodatabase, GeoParquet or anything you like to OneDrive - ArcGIS Data Interoperability does it all 😉. Of course, on the input side, the data you're pushing to OneDrive may not be coming from ArcGIS Online at all, it can be anything you can reach.
Here is my spatial ETL workspace:
I'll let you browse the workspace (in the blog download), but what it does is submit an Export job to ArcGIS Online, downloads the resultant zipped file geodatabase item, unzips, renames and then uploads the geodatabase to a folder in OneDrive. The workspace cleans up the export item as well. The secret ingredient is the OneDriveConnector transformer, one of a family of web-centric connectors in ArcGIS Data Interoperability.
Note when naming the geodatabase I include a timestamp down to second resolution in the name. Using a static name and an overwrite approach can result in duplicate file geodatabase component names, which can cause problems. Similarly, while you can delete a target geodatabase before uploading a new version, the synchronization behavior of OneDrive can create race conditions, so to be safe use a dynamic name.
After sharing to your desired audience (OneDrive can add a shortcut to Windows Explorer's "My Files", this must be dragged into Pro's Folders leaf in the Catalog pane, you cannot browse for it), the experience they will enjoy is like this, geodatabase features and behavior in ArcGIS Pro.
The OneDriveConnector requires a web service and connection be made, here is the workflow I used. If you're using a business account for OneDrive it's likely you'll need IT department assistance, and in my case I had some adventures with the authorization URL prompt parameter, which needed to be "select_account".
Have fun with OneDrive!
