Sharing and Collaboration across ArcGIS Online Organizations

KellyGerrow · ‎05-21-2018

Check out this other new ArcGIS Blog about sharing with members across organizations. I find that this blog is particularly helpful to Geonet users as scenario 1 is a great way to provide specific users (like me, Karate_KElly) who you are working with on the forums access to your items without making them public. Check out the blog and let us know what you think in the comments below.

Once upon a UC, David Hansen, COO at Geo Jobe stated, “ArcGIS Online is the largest global repository of geospatial information in the history of the species.” And although the amount of data in ArcGIS Online is not the point of this blog, as of May 21^st, 2018 around 17 million items that exist in ArcGIS Online. That is 17 million layers, maps, scenes, apps and files that can be used for data collection, analysis, presentations and more. The items have a variety of sharing settings that enable the public or specific groups of users to access content. Twenty-three percent of ArcGIS Online content is public, meaning that anyone can access and find content that has been shared without requiring a username and password. Thirty-one percent of the items are shared with specific users through the group or organizational sharing setting.

AnthonyJonesRSK · ‎06-08-2018

Hi Kerry, thanks for this, it's good to know that we can share our data easily across organisations but can ESRI explain how we can share our data privately with those clients/sub-contractors who don't currently have an ESRI organisational account?

We have been in discussions with our vendors here in the UK who have suggested that for those clients who don't have an organisational account then we would need to set one up for them. We have been told that this organisation would need a minimum of 2 Level 2's and 8 Level 1 users and would cost £1550 per year (approx. $2000) to maintain. This is an awful lot to ask a client/subcontractor to pay in order for us to share a web application or story map with them and is particularly restrictive if we are working with smaller clients. For example if we are working with a client that only has 2/3 people working on the project, why do they need a separate organisational a account with 10 users? Things are also further complicated as we have been told that if we are working with multiple clients on one job then each client would need their own account further increasing the cost.

We had previously thought we could add clients to our organisation as users but have since been told this is in violation of the user agreement. It seems that this is a change in stance from ESRI as in this GeoNet post here AGOL Terms of Use - Shared access to subscription - Allowed/Prohibited? an ESRI staff member replies and says "You can invite users, such as contractors, to an organization without any issue." and also "If you purchase the Organization you can invite anyone you want".

Can you clarify ESRI's position on this please? I don't feel it is being made very clear to people that there are substantial costs involved in sharing data privately with others who are not already ESRI customers. For consultancy businesses like ourselves this is a major headache and makes AGOL more difficult to sell to senior staff as a legitimate project tool.

Kind Regards

Anthony

Anonymous User · ‎01-14-2019

Anthony Jones wrote:
Hi Kerry, thanks for this, it's good to know that we can share our data easily across organisations but can ESRI explain how we can share our data privately with those clients/sub-contractors who don't currently have an ESRI organisational account?

We have been in discussions with our vendors here in the UK who have suggested that for those clients who don't have an organisational account then we would need to set one up for them. We have been told that this organisation would need a minimum of 2 Level 2's and 8 Level 1 users and would cost £1550 per year (approx. $2000) to maintain. This is an awful lot to ask a client/subcontractor to pay in order for us to share a web application or story map with them and is particularly restrictive if we are working with smaller clients. For example if we are working with a client that only has 2/3 people working on the project, why do they need a separate organisational a account with 10 users? Things are also further complicated as we have been told that if we are working with multiple clients on one job then each client would need their own account further increasing the cost.

We had previously thought we could add clients to our organisation as users but have since been told this is in violation of the user agreement. It seems that this is a change in stance from ESRI as in this GeoNet post here AGOL Terms of Use - Shared access to subscription - Allowed/Prohibited? an ESRI staff member replies and says "You can invite users, such as contractors, to an organization without any issue." and also "If you purchase the Organization you can invite anyone you want".

Can you clarify ESRI's position on this please? I don't feel it is being made very clear to people that there are substantial costs involved in sharing data privately with others who are not already ESRI customers. For consultancy businesses like ourselves this is a major headache and makes AGOL more difficult to sell to senior staff as a legitimate project tool.

Kind Regards

Anthony

I would like an answer to this as well. How can we privately share web maps and/or apps with clients who do not belong to an ArcGIS Organization? Is there any way to share with non-organization ESRI accounts? Can we invite clients to join our groups without joining our organization? Are we allowed to let clients join our organization in order to share web maps with them?

KellyGerrow · ‎01-24-2019

Hi Sam,

In order to get access to secure sharing, a member must belong to an ArcGIS Online organization. They don't need to belong to your organization, but need to have at a minimum a viewer user type in order to have access to the sharing model. Public accounts and anonymous users (users without an account) cannot participate in private sharing. If you have questions about who can be invited to your organization, I suggest following up with your account manager to review your workflow and the best practices associated with your specific needs.

-Kelly

Anonymous User · ‎07-31-2019

Add your vote here https://community.esri.com/ideas/11655-client-facing-password-for-shared-apps

DavidColey · ‎11-01-2019

Hi Kelly - I haven't communicated with you in some time, but as you know we have really embraced collaborations as our tool for managing hosted layers, webmaps and apps in our 10.7.1 Enterprise and send them to our various workspaces in our AGOL org. It's been working really well after we ( well, you all ) got us past the size limitations and the earlier issue with layers-by-reference behaving as copies - and we all thank you for that.

However, a couple things have cropped up:

Our Custom Basemap collaboration sends a few of our basemap-webmaps and some of the esri basemap-webmaps to our org's custom basemap gallery.

But these maps will not load in Pro at 2.4.2 when selecting a basemap from the ribbon tool. For example,

I have found that the esri basemaps containing vector tiles will not load, such as World Streets, Human Geography, World Topo (Vector). For World Topo Vector, the 'World_Hillshade' layer will load, but the vector tile will not.

The maps do load from Portal's custom gallery (the collaboration source workspace) , but the Collaborated maps won't load from our org's custom basemap gallery.

I have also made a copy and customized the Light Gray Reference layer from living atlas for use in our localized custom hybrid basemap. This layer will not load into Pro 2.4.2 no matter where it's coming from. If you have any insight on this that would be great-

Thanks,

David

LeahSchwizer · ‎11-08-2019

Hi Kerry, after reading your blog article, I was wondering if you could expand on a 3rd scenario where you want to collaborate across Orgs in a way that allows any/all members to share multiple pieces of content with one another. Similar to an AGOL to Enterprise Portal collaboration (since you can't do AGOL to AGOL). It appears the 2 scenarios in the article limit this. If we established a Group and chose the Group setting "Who can contribute content to the group? Group members" would that satisfy the desire to contribute items to the Group ?(vs. just edit or view existing content from Host Org). I can see a lot of value in having the ability to contribute and share content from all group members to enable more collaboration. Is this possible? Can you expand more on that setting? Are there additional risks to the Host Org? Everything would still be limited to that Group, right? We'd like to learn more about the 'Contribute Content' settings. Thanks!

KellyGerrow · ‎12-30-2019

Hi Leah,

Sorry it took me so long to reply, (busy second half of the year).

To answer your questions,

If you choose to allow all members of the group to share content with the group then users from another organization can share content across the organization with you.

The risks to be aware of is really is who is a member of that group and who controls membership. If you share your item to a group that you don't own, just be sure that the right people are in the group.

Another thing to be mindful of is the editing capabilities on a feature layer. If you want the members of the group to edit your data, then this shouldn't be a concern, but if you don't want the data edited, make sure the editing setting is turned off on the item that you share with the group. If you only want users to be able to add new features to the layer, make sure that you have enabled the specific setting that only enables users to add new records. If you want to keep track of who is submitting edits, turn on editor tracking.

Were you able to get set up and start collaborating with another organization? It would be great to chat with you in more detail about your workflow.

-Kelly