Hi,
I have been tinkering with HUB over the last while with the view to have HUB manage Public access to my data and services, however along the way (early on) I have issues with the restrictions and process around the data access and extraction/download. So I have a question or observation - or several that I hope somebody can shed light onto and if possible give me direction on how I can use HUB whilst still reaching all my audience in an structured and intuitive fashion.
Currently we have on premise Enterprise and Portal manages the content etc., we have setup collaboration with AGOL from our Portal for content sharing with our HUB site, and all of this is very good, straight forward enough to create and maintain etc. However several key requirements of our public hub is that all data is accessible and ex-tractable in numerous projections and numerous formats, this is not achievable using HUB. HUB will delivery standard formats (shape, fgdb etc.) but we want more and we want the user to pick the projection required also - again something that not supported in HUB(supports wgs84 or native), in addition we need to include in the data download.zip several allied data components that are necessary namely metadata (as txt or xml), style file, license and allied information not contained in the metadata - without these the data is difficult for our users to use the data effectively. So far I've only mentioned vector data and a major component of our datasets are raster, and again unfortunately the HUB product does not deliver on the functionality required in this area. I have pre cooked .zip files with all the attachments I need for the entire dataset downloads however the datasets are National Datasets and require clipping and export to different projections and formats including rasters.
To close the gap we have Interop extension and server (FME) to potentially have several GP (clip and Ship etc) task's and maps that can be used to fulfill the requirements. So now I'm at the stage of trying to hook up HUB and the non hosted Download options (FME & Maps), and so far its proved impossible to do it smartly. There are things I'd like HUB to have that it doesn't or at least I haven't found them - On the Data Details page on HUB its not possible to remove the Download button,( to take the confusion for users out) as Ideally we would like to have a link to the interface that will support multiple projections, formats inc. raster, but the link will be capable of taking parameters from the page such as Dataset Name and extent and any filtering - but at the very least the dataset name would be good. An option is to add links on the Items Description whilst being able to disable the Download button, however I've been unable to create a button object or use and javascript in the Items Descriptions html editor to pass the extents etc off to my eternal app in an iframe - its strips out all the good stuff!.. Its all I can do on the Item Description element is to have and image (button) that redirects to my app for data extraction - I can add the active layer required by editing the link for the item but I cant capture the map extent or the filtering that the user has applied ... they have to do this again in the data download app which is counter productive. So there is a question here - is there a good way to achieve what I'm looking for here?
To be clear I'd like to continue using the HUB environment, I really like it and it delivers more that the data downloads for me as the collaboration and initiatives environment is the area we are heading for ... but it must be able to deliver the data a bit more effectively for us to be comfortable adoption the HUB approach.
There may be changes on the horizon that cover some of my requirements, if there are I'd love to hear about them. Likewise if my understanding and approach is incorrect I'd like to know this also before I proceed. Apologies for teh long winded post and thanks in advance for any guidance / advice.
P
