Can't change service properties on federated GIS Server even though I'm an admin

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11-08-2017 11:30 AM
CassandraFollett
New Contributor III

I get the following message in Manager,

"The service is owned by another user. The sharing properties can only be modified by the owner."

The GIS Server is federated with Portal, so I'm logging in to Manager using an account that has administrative access on Portal. Yet, I can't adjust any of the properties of the published services on the GIS server that are published by folks with the level of Publisher, but not properly shared with the organization. I want to adjust this on their behalf, but I get the "service is owned by another user" error.

Is there a way around this? With a federated server, is it possible to login to Manager with an account with elevated privilege to make such changes (Were it not federated, I know that an administrative account on the GIS Server would have those privileges).

Or, is this happening because administrative access through the web adaptor is disabled, so I would have to make this level of change on the host machine environment?

- Cassie

12 Replies
RebeccaStrauch__GISP
MVP Emeritus

dlaw-esristaff‌  do you have any input on this?

GISSupport3
Occasional Contributor III

What if you make the sharing changes to the federated items in Portal?

DerekLaw
Esri Esteemed Contributor

Hi Cassie,

What release of ArcGIS Server and Portal for ArcGIS are you using?

> ... but not properly shared with the organization

Not sure what this means, but I have to second GIS Support's suggestion; instead of logging into ArcGIS Server Manager to change properties - can you login to Portal (with a Portal admin account) and adjust the sharing settings?

Hope this helps,

CassandraFollett
New Contributor III

Derek, I may have missed some important details.

This is a new installation of 10.5, we're trying out Portal for the first time in the classroom. The instructor was used to publishing directly to the GIS Server, and instructed students to do this (publish directly to the rest services directory of the GIS Server. 

Once I caught that folks were doing this, I recommended that they instead publish to the Portal (This class in question using ArcMap). Nevertheless, many students had already published to the GIS Server in such a way that they had not "shared" the published services with Portal. I myself on the GIS Server was unable to edit these sharing properties or any other properties of the services, leaving me only with the option to delete the service. Obviously this was not the correct way for students to be publishing in this configuration, but I was confused about why I could nevertheless not edit the sharing properties of the services on the GIS Server side. 

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CassandraFollett
New Contributor III

My suspicion is it has to do with the web adaptor not allowing administrative access to the GIS Server so that although I am using a Portal account with administrative priveleges to access the GIS Server, it's neveretheless being "downgraded" to a normal account?

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DerekLaw
Esri Esteemed Contributor

Hi Cassie,

> ... instructed students to do this (publish directly to the rest services directory of the GIS Server. 

If the GIS Server was federated with Portal already, then the published web services in the GIS Server will automatically appear in Portal as new items. In which case, the students (or a Portal admin) could share them for others to access and use.

> My suspicion is it has to do with the web adaptor not allowing administrative access to the GIS Server

You can check this by going to the ArcGIS Web Adaptor configuration page - for the Web Adaptor configured with your GIS Server. E.g., https://<machinename>/<webadaptor_name>/webadaptor  and check if the "Enable administrative access ... " checkbox option was selected.


Hope this helps,

CassandraFollett
New Contributor III

Hello Derek, I figured it out, so I'll share a picture of what I was seeing and why it confused me at first. 

See the image below:

Let's call the services "top" and "bottom" for convenience. I've circled the "pencil" symbols. You'll notice that one of them (the top one) is hollowed out; this is a service that was shared by a student to the GIS Server rather than the portal. You can see by the single person on the righthand side (rather than the "multiple" symbol that it was not actually shared anywhere when published as the student was not connected to the portal. Now, I didn't think to click on the person symbol first, I just noticed that the pencil symbol was hollowed out (on the top service here). This service did not show up in Portal, only in manager/the rest services directory. When I did check on the bottom service I was able to get in to the editing mode as the "pencil" tool was selectable. However, the sharing settings aren't there (in the manager Editing service panel); so I thought this time of clicking on the "person" symbol. This gave me the "The service is owned by another user. The sharing properties can only be modified by the owner." issue that I noted in the first post. This led me to think that you can't adjust sharing properties at all through GIS Server unless you have an administrative account (possibly?). This led me to conclude that my only option was to delete the service and tell the student to re-publish with the correct sharing settings, or to elevate my privileges on the GIS Server (But before doing the latter, I wanted to understand more properly what was going on as disabling administrative control through the web adaptor is desirable).

However, what I didn't check at that time was that the bottom service actually *was* shared with Portal. Once I realized that, I went back to the top service and clicked on the sharing button. Once I do so, it says, "This default service has not been configured for sharing with Portal. Click "Update Sharing" to enable this." When I click "Update Sharing", the service is actually shareable with the portal, and I can edit properties. Then, after waiting some time, it gives the same "The service is owned by another user" message. But this doesn't matter as this now appears in Portal and can be edited there. 

(As mentioned, directly publishing to the GIS Server rather than the Portal is something I'm discouraging because of confusion like this)

It does seem strange to me that I can't change items from Manager due to them being "owned" , but since they are now correctly listed on the Portal and changeable there, this seems somewhat of a moot point, and I'm just writing up this explanation in case someone else comes across this conversation and had some similar confusion. 

GISSupport3
Occasional Contributor III

Hi cbfollettdepaul‌, dlaw-esristaff

We have the same issue ... I guess that once federated you can no longer share services via the ArcServer Manager.

The sharing icon should be removed from the ArcServer Manager and / or the error message changed to reflect sharing now needs to be made via Portal.

AlessandroValra
Occasional Contributor III

Hell yeah, couldn't agree more! Why is still like this??!!

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