Our goal: publish our data by reference from a registered file geodatabase in Portal. When this data needs to be external, we would like to collaborate with (via distributed collaboration) as a copy (to become a hosted feature layer) to AGOL.
This synced copy would then leverage the cloud capabilities for public facing request levels. However when going through the process of setting up the collaboration and reading the online documentation, it was not clear that this set-up was possible. For example: when setting up the collaboration workspace, we have the choice between (screenshot ) sending "Feature layers [...] in my portal [...] as References or as Copies (If possible). When selecting "Copies (if possible)", a message appears mentioning only "hosted feature layers" for which you need to "checked 'Enable Sync'". The conditionality ("if possible") combined by the fact that feature layers by reference (hanging off a map image layer) do not have the "Enable sync" option available, it seems to me that it means that to have a synchronized copy in AGOL collaborated via Portal, it needs to have been published as a hosted feature layer during the initial publishing to Portal (?) If so, that would mean that by reference feature layers in Portal could only be collaborated to AGOL as references, hence the "If possible" (inferring that it is not possible for layers initially by reference) ? Testing it out with layers by reference, the URLs were always pointing to the original Map image layer (by reference) on the Portal REST.
Only when published as hosted initially (and synced) did the URL change to a cloud-like URL. However an ESRI staff explained that this setup was possible yesterday. I wanted to find confirmation that this was either not possible or indeed possible in a way we hadn't figured out yet.
Thank you,
Adrien