The Ability to Restrict Hub "Site" Creation for Creator User Types?

[Amanda__Huber]

Hi ArcGIS Online‌ and ArcGIS Hub‌ teams, 

We noticed that with the most recent upgrade to AGOL all Creator User Types can now create Hub Sites (according to this documentation) 

Who can create sites?

Anyone who has an ArcGIS Online organizational account and has at least the following General Privileges assigned to their user role can create a site:

• Content—Create, update, and delete
• Groups—Create, update, and delete, View groups shared with the organization
• Sharing—Share with groups, and optionally, Share with organization and Share with public.

We would like to restrict the creation of Hub sites to just specific individuals in our organization instead of all Creators User types. 

Is there a setting somewhere that we can restrict Site creation further?

Thank you, 

Amanda

[Anonymous User]

Hi Amanda - this was done to improve the application's usability. As the app is included with essential apps, this change brings it into alignment with how other essential apps work (like StoryMaps, Ops Dashbard, and Web App Builder). Can you help us understand the reason behind the ask? What specifically about Hub Sites make you want to restrict this specific app for creators? Is there a feature or two that you feel needs tighter control?

[WillIsaacs]

Graham, because not all members of an organization should be able to publicly post hub sites for an organization. If there is no way to control this we will have rogue sites we cannot manage. Give us back control of our Organizations!

[Anonymous User]

Hi Will - you can restrict who can share publicly. It's a user privilege to "Share to Public" that can be customized in "Member Roles" in ArcGIS Online Settings.

[WillIsaacs]

Graham, that would be appropriate if those users also did not also need to make other kinds of content public. There is a big difference between a web map app or dashboard and a hub site which is perceived as a website and may need to conform to an organizations branding and public information office policy that these users may not be aware of and yet we do not have the ability to stop them from making these sites. 

[WillIsaacs]

It also seems a bit lazy on the development side of things to say we are not going to add a specific permission to this new item type and rely on a matrix of permissions that when aligned correctly grant or disallow a user the ability to do something, which could have unintended consequences... like giving users the ability to publish websites for an organization.

[Anonymous User]

ArcGIS Online as a whole is considering this idea (app specific user privs). We are trying to balance usability (number of user privileges and how complex having a new priv-per-item-type would be) against the flexibility such a privilege scheme can bring. 

I promise this was carefully considered when this rule changed. What would really help me understand the core of your frustration is the specific features that make it transition from a website-dashboard or website-map to a "website for an organization". Is it the header customization options? The themeing? something else? If administrators could lock down certain features (like the theme) would that help? How does your organization handle StoryMaps which also are websites? 

Happy to also have a call with you if you'd like - my email is ghudgins@esri.com if you're interested. I'm definitely interested in hearing more!

[Amanda__Huber]

I can add in my two cents here since Will's concerns were the same as ours when initially publishing this post.

ArcGIS Hub as been branded as, and understood by GIS admins, as an "authoritative" platform and has a lot of power behind it, more than just the one off apps. The concern is, if a user makes a public multifaceted Hub site it will be seen as an authoritative publication from that organization, which may not be the intention. In the general public's eye, these Hub sites appear like websites, and websites have an innate power to them. As admins, we would like to restrict the creations of these Hub sites (as the settings used to be prior to these updates) to mitigate any risks for a AGOL User to go rogue and publish authoritative appearing content like this. Let me know if you have further questions, and I apologize for my delay from your prior reply. 

[WillIsaacs]

Anyone with ESRI who can speak on this, can you give us an update? I tried to catch back up with Graham but his email returned undeliverable