Opening S3/Other app images from fields

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02-23-2021 11:19 AM
BrendonJoyce1
Occasional Contributor

Hi all,

I have one more glaring obstacle before deploying Field Maps. I am on Portal and we currently host images (as builts) on Amazon S3. I have custom attribute fields to hyperlink to these images, which work well within the web apps (in the browser). This is because the user is signed into Portal on the browser and requesting access to Portal data, which S3 uses as permission to view images. These images can't be public, so this layer of security is necessary.

In Field Maps, the user is signed into the Portal as well (on the app). When clicking that same URL field as mentioned above to open the hyperlink to the image, Safari opens and access is denied. This is because the link is opened in Safari and the session of Safari is either not logged into Portal or S3 has no way of knowing the request is coming from Portal (I have tested with public images and they open instantly). So even though Field Maps is signed into Portal, there's no way to pass that info along to S3 it seems. We checked logs to see how the s3 requests look. The "referrer" field shows what map or URL the request came from. The normal web app users generate the map URLs they are requesting from whereas the Field Map users just generate "-".

I doubt there is anything I could do to fix this at this point, it would seem that Field Maps would have to use some internal web viewer or something, sort of like it's login page. Very well may be wishful thinking.

 

Another potential workaround which I also haven't been able to get:

We have an app installed on the users phones to access these S3 images outside of GIS (search/download/etc.). The app says it can "open itself" with a url prefix before the URL. These can calculated into fields just like the normal images discussed above. However, throwing this into Field Maps just shows up as plain text and I can't have it open the app and go to it's location, which would be a great workaround.

 

These are most likely shots in the dark, but wanted to bring it up here before esri support.

 

Thanks,
Brendon

 

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BrendonJoyce1
Occasional Contributor

Updating and solving the thread. Chris gave me a few more ideas, and using custom attribute displays worked for me. Using the iOS applink at the beginning in the arcade expression, in my case "filebrowserpro", and then creating a URL in the attribute display now opens up my images in the desired app.

fb pro cards.JPGfb custom att.JPG

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ChrisDunn1
Esri Contributor

Hi Brendon,

Can you share more about about the URL that you're generating to launch the photo viewer app and how it's configured in the popup? There may be some wiggle room to get that working as a clickable link.

Another option would be to use an MDM solution and configure per-app vpn access which would allow both Field Maps and Safari to connect to your internal resources, however that is a larger undertaking if your organization doesn't already use an MDM.

Chris

BrendonJoyce1
Occasional Contributor

Hi Chris, I have attached a few images below showing how the link fields are configured. The things removed are just my portal org specific things. Also included is the FileBrowser app link that if copied and pasted into Safari, will prompt to open in the FileBrowser app, sort of like how we'd want it to do from Field Maps. 

 

As for the MDM, I am planning on deploying with MDM to at least populate the Portal org URL to have easier sign in. I did actually read about the VPN settings with Safari and was also wondering if that could somehow play a role in authorization. Currently after our users "Sign in with Enterprise" they are redirected to our internal IT's single sign on. Not sure if this matters, but experimenting with MDM is possible!

 

Thanks for the reply.

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BrendonJoyce1
Occasional Contributor

Updating and solving the thread. Chris gave me a few more ideas, and using custom attribute displays worked for me. Using the iOS applink at the beginning in the arcade expression, in my case "filebrowserpro", and then creating a URL in the attribute display now opens up my images in the desired app.

fb pro cards.JPGfb custom att.JPG

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