Copy content between ArcGIS Online Organisations

[Anonymous User]

We can currently copy content from one organisation to another using ago-assistant.esri.com.

This requires having a user account to both of the organisations involved in the transfer/copy.

An easier and more collaborative way would be to enable a user to "send" content to another user in another org, or maybe to invite a user from another org to download a series of items..?

[AnthonyRyanEQL]

Alex,

In a near future of AGOL this will be possible with AGOL-AGOL collabration where content can be copied from a particular portal group which is setup as the trusted source can copy into the trusted portal group destination. The transferred can be setup with a time schedule.

This feature is possible right now with an 'on premise' 10.5.1 Enterprise platform

[Anonymous User]

Alix Vezina In this scenario do you need to recipient to maintain access to the service in your org to make edits and such or do you just want to send them the data once and then they have their own copy?

[Anonymous User]

Hi Katie, thank you for your note!

In the best of all worlds, this would be an option that could be enabled/disabled: when setting up the transfer you can either create a Copy of the data or create a Reference to the data (this is when referring to Hosted Feature Layers in ArcGIS Online - things may work a bit differently in Enterprise).

Scenario example: A web map is being copied over from Org A to Org B.

Options when copying the web map: are the data layers (Hosted Feature Layers) contained in this web map to be referenced OR copied as new Hosted Feature layers onto Org B?

(If HFL are being copied to Org B, the copied web map will also need to point to these new layers rather than reference to the layers from Org A).

[Anneka_France]

Being able to copy or move content to another organisation account would enable us to focus our time and resources on developing new ideas and delivering greater impact, rather than re-doing something that's already been done. 

Moving or copying content between ArcGIS Online portals is becoming a more popular workflow, especially as we are collaborating more and more with other organisations to deliver projects and work on joint initiatives. It's also critical to our ArcGIS Online #training courses for professionals, teachers and students.

Although there are some partner applications that attempt to solve this issue, they don't provide suitable options in their workflows:

• Admin Tools for ArcGIS Online & Portal‌ is very expensive for small organisations and must be paid for on a monthly or annual subscription. It does not copy any content containing map tile or vector tile layers (just one tile layer will cause the cloning tool to fail for a whole map or web app). And there are no options to avoid cloning all hosted feature layers to the new account and simply reference the data at the original source instead (scenario described above).
• ArcGIS Online Assistant is free but doesn't copy items created in the next gen Esri products (including ArcGIS StoryMaps‌ and ArcGIS Dashboards‌).

[BenCoubrough]

Hi @Anonymous User,

There is now a workflow utilizing the ArcGIS Python API that will allow you to transfer ownership of content from one ArcGIS subscription to another.

How To: Transfer content from one ArcGIS Online organization to another - https://support.esri.com/en/technical-article/000022252

[ColeWhite]

I agree with this idea. This is a pain point at my organization, because members leaving the organization may have created content in ArcGIS Online that needs to be preserved (materials in support of a thesis, public-facing presentations, etc). Currently, ArcGIS Online Assistant or the Python API can be used to transfer content from users' organizational account to a public account or to another organization. This approach requires login information for both parties and an administrator to perform the transfer. The higher ed community would be very well served by functionality that allows a user to transfer ownership of content to an account outside the organization.

[PeterKnoop]

Some key things for our organization and our users regarding this Idea:

• In higher-education, ArcGIS Online content often needs to follow users from organization to organization when they graduate, accept a new position, etc. Also, there is a lot of and frequent turnover in such a user base, particular from students graduating and needing to take their content with them.
• A user should be able to copy content themselves between organizations, if they have accounts with appropriate privileges on both instances. Given the amount of turnover, the number of organizations involved overall, and the self-responsibility of users, it does not scale to have organization administrators handling these kinds of transfers.
• Copying an item that references data should also copy the referenced data, and swizzle the original item to use the new data. In other words, a user should be able to copy their content from their old organization to their new organization, delete it from the old organization, and everything should still work fine. The org part of contents' URL will have changed, breaking links provided to the original content, however, it would be the responsibility of the user to address this.