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Portal for ArcGIS Implementation

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12-18-2018 01:32 AM
GavinJackson3
Occasional Contributor

Hi

Long time lurker, first time poster. Would be grateful for any responses to the below before the holiday break but will bump it early in the new year.

I work for a large state government agency in Australia and having just completed a large upgrade to 10.5.1 we now have Portal available.

My questions relate to the management and implementation of said Portal environment:

1) How do you easily migrate content (web maps, apps) between development, test and production environments? Our IT people want it to be scripted if at all possible.

2) Governance: In a large agency such as ours, our IT people want full Software Development Lifecycle governance over Portal. My question is how do other large agencies tackle this in regards to "development" (where we are not actually coding anything for the deployment of web apps and maps)?

3) Geoprocessing scripts on server: Where do you store your scripts (our IT people use Microsoft Team Foundation Server) for the management of said scripts, but I don't think ArcGIS server would map a script stored there... any ideas would be appreciated.

These are the main questions but any information that you have regarding the implementation of Portal in a large agency, challenges, and management of Portal would be appreciated.

Like I said earlier any information provided prior to Christmas would be greatly appreciated but happy for early in the new year as well.

Have a great Xmas break everyone!

Kind Regards

Gavin Jackson

5 Replies
JonathanQuinn
Esri Notable Contributor

I can comment on a few of these, not so much giving a direct answer:

1) How do you easily migrate content (web maps, apps) between development, test and production environments? Our IT people want it to be scripted if at all possible.

   There are a few approaches to doing this:

   1) Python API  - clone_portal_users_groups_and_content | ArcGIS for Developers 

   2) Distributed collaboration - About distributed collaboration—Portal for ArcGIS (10.6) | ArcGIS Enterprise 

   3) Using the sharing model, (share development items with a development group, test items with a test group, etc)

   4) Recreate manually

It sounds like your organization would go for option 1, but keep in mind service publishing would need to be automated which generates new item IDs.

2) Governance: In a large agency such as ours, our IT people want full Software Development Lifecycle governance over Portal. My question is how do other large agencies tackle this in regards to "development" (where we are not actually coding anything for the deployment of web apps and maps)?

   I'll defer to someone else, I don't have an answer for this.

3) Geoprocessing scripts on server: Where do you store your scripts (our IT people use Microsoft Team Foundation Server) for the management of said scripts, but I don't think ArcGIS server would map a script stored there... any ideas would be appreciated.

    Are you talking about ArcGIS Server geoprocessing services? The scripts themselves are copied to the Servers arcgisnput directory during publishing, so the Server won't access them from the same directory that they're published from. Not sure if that gives you an answer or not.

DerekLaw
Esri Esteemed Contributor

Hi Gavin,

> 2) Governance: In a large agency such as ours, our IT people want full Software Development Lifecycle governance over Portal. My question is how do other large agencies tackle this in regards to "development" (where we are not actually coding anything for the deployment of web apps and maps)?

Some resources to get you started - these presentations are older, but still applicable:

Hope this helps,

BillFox
MVP Frequent Contributor

Hi Gavin,

Short answers,

Step 1. Not easy

Step 2. If your IT shop is just getting into GIS, it is a monster to itself that will need lots of special care and feeding by folks with very particular sets of skills.

Step 3. Refer to step 2

Cheers,

-Bill

GavinJackson3
Occasional Contributor

Thank you all for the quick responses.

Bill - We are certainly not just starting in GIS, it has been in use in our organisation since the mid 1990's. We have now just got access to Portal, which is very different to our existing software model. 

Migrating content between dev, test and production environments - I'll have a look at the options provided. I like the idea of the Python API. Manual re-creation of maps and apps is not an option.

Geoprocessing scripts for arcgis server - yes this is what I'm talking about. I didn't realise that it actually copies the script to the server - I will investigate this in regards to our script management. 

I'm still interested in getting answers on how other large agencies tackle the governance issue: from my point of view we do need governance but a complete software development lifecycle framework is plain overkill for Portal. Any advice would be appreciated.

Cheers

Gavin 

GavinJackson3
Occasional Contributor

Just bumping this request up the list a bit - any one else have any ideas/suggestions/lessons learnt that they are willing to share?

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