ArcGIS Online, Why do I need it?

[TonyCollins]

Hi,

I've been developing against ArcGIS Server for about 4-5 years now so feel pretty comfortable with the APIs and ArcGIS Server (up to 10.2).

Having on premise ArcGIS Servers and some good in-house developers my question is really to find out how we might benefit by migrating Online?

[TimWitt2]

The good thing is, since you already own licenses there won't be any extra cost to you with using AGOL.

ESRI keeps creating apps (i.e. story map ) which makes it easy to connect to customers/citizens. Most of their AGOL apps are also optimized for different devices (tablets/mobile phone), which can be very time consuming if you do it yourself.

In your case I would see AGOL as a time saving benefit. If you are not satisfied with the apps that ESRI provides, you can always download them and customize them to fit your need.

Also check out the new WebBuilder, that might be something to use in conjunction with AGOL.

Hope this helps!

Tim

[JoeFlannery]

Tony:

Besides the wonderful tools and functionality out-of-the-box in AGOL and the ease of use for our clients, this Esri article describes why we are big fans of AGOL.

http://blogs.esri.com/esri/esri-insider/2014/12/19/creating-a-sustainable-gis/

I particularly like this statement in the article:

"The old 80-20 rule was that if you had a COTS app that accomplished 80% of your workflow, you customized the other 20% to meet your workflow needs.  The new 80-20 rule states that now you change the 20% of your workflow to meet the functionality of the COTS app, because even though it can cause a temporary disruption, doing so is much less costly in the long run than coding and maintaining the customization."

[TonyCollins]

Thanks Tim/Joe,

I have seen the templates but our client requirements never really fit them. I completely agree they could be a big time saver if that 80-20 rule is true, but then isn't it kind of difficult going out of sync with the original template as it's bug fixed etc?

If I needed to sell this to my Manager, I am struggling to see any blatant benefits to document that would be worth the effort of re-developing our applications, other than perhaps securing external services/applications to specific organisations.

I am not anti-ArcGIS online, I would really like to start using it to make our management easier, but at this point it would seem to create more overhead managing our web infrastructure in two places.

Feel a bit clueless still on what actually is ArcGIS online!?

[TimWitt2]

Tony,

you are right with, ArcGIS Server and good developers you don't "need" AGOL.

You should really check out the WebAppbuilder, it gives you an infrastructure to build on. Kinda imagine it as a house, which already has some rooms furnished (Widgets ESRI has created), but there are still rooms which you can furnish to fit your customers (custom widgets). Whenever ESRI adds features or fixes bugs, you can just move over your widgets and themes.

I know this example might sound silly, but there shouldn't be too much out of sync happening. It is just nice if ESRI can do some work for you

Tim

[TonyCollins]

So could we download a template as a base to modify, upload it back to AGO then use it as our own template multiple times?

[TimWitt2]

Tony, you won't be able to upload it to AGO, you would need to host it.

[TonyCollins]

Thanks for your help Tim,

So we can only upload mapping data to AGS online, not applications/our own templates?

Basically, if we are unable to find a template that suits our needs exactly it will always need to be hosted on our own ArcGIS Servers potentially using resource from AGO?

[Reynaldde_Castro]

Tim is correct and your statements are true.  I would also like to add the ability to embed your webmap to an existing website.  AGO makes it so easy to add functional maps to an existing site with several lines of code that AGO provides.

[AlistairFox]

Access to Collector app to carry out easily configurable (no coding) tablet data collection is one good benefit. And as previously stated here it wont cost you anything as you have all the in-house tools. Thats the only reson we are using it in anger at the moment as all roads lead through AGOL to get to Collector or Explorer app.