add Create Locator to ArcGIS Online

[Anonymous User]

I would like to be able to create a Locator on ArcGIS Online.  I want to reference data stored on ArcGIS Online (address points, in my case) and also host the locator itself in AGOL so that it is entirely on the cloud. This will offload resources from our on-premise server. It will generate credit revenue from data storage. This is something I would be happy to use credits for.

[ShanaBritt]

Part of your request exists in ArcGIS Pro. It is currently possible to create a local locator with the Create Locator tool that references data stored on ArcGIS Online or Enterprise portal. 

[RyanPaquette3]

@ShanaBritt The locator needs to be able to be shared to AGOL (or synced via Distributed Collaboration) and not reliant on or connected to the source Portal/GIS server infrastructure.

[ShanaBritt]

@RyanPaquette3 When a locator is built with the Create Locator tool with local data or feature service a snapshot of the data is indexed and stored with the locator. This means that the locator is not connected to the source data. If the source data changed after the locator was created, the existing locator wouldn't be updated with the new data automatically.

I believe I misunderstood your initial post, but hosting locators that are not services added to AGOL as items is not supported. You will have to publish the locator to ArcGIS Server or Portal and add it as an item to AGOL or as a utility service.

[RyanPaquette3]

As you know, Add it as an item to AGOL will still reference the underlying GIS service. This is the issue which these AGOL Hosted Organization Sourced Locator ideas are on here for.

How would an organization with it's domain intentionally locked and  leveraging AGOL to public or secured off premise content OR an enterprise without on premise infrastructure host their own Geocoding service leveraging their own data?

Locator Package tool whose logic would be used in a Share Locator to AGOL GP tool at face value seems like an option. Any means of packaging up the Reference Data Tables, and Locator(s) themselves is what the request/idea is.

[ShanaBritt]

@RyanPaquette3  The only current option I can think of is to build the locator in ArcGIS Pro, then go to the History pane and right-click the executed Create Locator tool and select Share As > Geoprocessing Package. This will create a package that includes the reference data to build the locator, plus the history of the tool that includes the field mapping and parameters used to build the locator. This package can be shared to AGOL as a file. When the geoprocessing package is added to the ArcGIS Pro project, the reference data is added to the project/Contents pane and the previously executed tool will show up in the History. From there, you can rerun the tool to create the locator. With any package you can attach files to the package, so you could theoretically attach the locator files (.loz, .loc) to the geoprocessing package if you don't want the end user with the geoprocessing package to have to run the tool to create the locator.