How can I securely share an ArcGIS.com online map or web app with clients?

[BenChaney]

Hello,

Our organization is just getting started with ArcGIS.com for sharing interactive online maps and web apps.  We'd love to use the service to share information with our clients, be we can't have the map shared with "everyone" and searchable for the whole arcgis.com community.  We also don't want to require clients to log in using one of our arcgis.com organizational accounts, and the clients don't have their own arcgis.com organizational accounts either

I can't seem to figure out how to securely share the web maps with our clients.  Is there any way we can create a map using arcgis.com that's accessible ONLY from a link we distribute? We're currently using google maps and would love to move away from that, but without this basic feature it's impossible. I'm aware that one way to approach this would be to run our own arcgis server / portal, but currently that's not an option for us.

Any advice or assistance would be greatly appreciated.

[KathyKaufman]

Mike Minami‌. Thanks. That's helpful albeit very disappointing in my case. That brings me full circle back to my question in this thread on Jan. 29 --  before I rushed head long into adopting ArcGIS Pro:  Which, if any, Esri product offers secure sharing of web maps outside of one's organization? Since I work on a pro bono basis for very small, informal community groups I'm guessing that I'm going to have to start from scratch looking elsewhere, but given my time investment with ArcGIS I'd like to confirm the options. Thanks again for making yourself available here. It's much appreciated. 

[MichaelLohr]

Kathy, We have been using the ArcGIS Online maps since before it was a subscription based service, and we have come across your sharing situation many times. As others have noted in this thread, the current business model for AGOL does not include sharing "private" maps to anyone without an authenticated named user organizational account. I.E., unlicensed users cannot be shared to private groups. There is quite a lot of benefit that can be realized with a pure public account, but the sharing you want to do is not part of the current functionality.

When we come across this need to share with people who only have public accounts, we try to help them uncover whether there are any ESRI ArcGIS licenses held in their organization. If they have 1 seat of ArcGIS Desktop, for example, I have been told they have 1 named user license to use in ArcGIS Online, but they may not be aware they have that license, if that is still the case. A lot of small organizations do not have any ESRI software in house, though.

We have even helped others obtain their own license seats from ESRI and helped them to set up and administer their AGOL Organization, in order to get the sharing set up properly. The smallest package you can get for the AGOL services is I think a 5 seat package for about $2500. That makes it out of the question for a lot of organizations. You might shave some off that total by just buying a single seat, low  level ArcGIS Desktop and paying the annual maintenance fee.

I am sure you have considered making your maps totally public as a way around the licensing issue, but often that is not a viable option due to data sensitivity for a lot of organizations.  Not sure there is an easy answer to your need.

[KathyKaufman]

I appreciate your thoughts, Michael. Unfortunately it looks like the volunteer license for ArcGIS Pro isn't at all the solution I was hoping for when I adopted it a few weeks ago as a platform for hosting shareable maps for community organizations. Data privacy isn't always a factor, but it's essential in enough cases that I think I'm going to have to back out of this license. This is really disappointing given the number of hours I've spent getting up to speed -- particularly since I both contacted Sales and worked through the forums to confirm the availability of secure hosting before I made this decision. 

Before I go, I'd still like to thank Dan_Patterson‌ for being so patient while I worked through my learning curve last week. Dan Patterson -- you went above and beyond, and I did end up creating a very cool map. Just wish I could share it with the group I intended to!

[DanPatterson_Retired]

you are welcome

[SamBrown2]

Single seats are now avail but they still need to purchase a "creator" licence and setup and administer a new organisation.

We have our own organisation and supply private property data to landowners - would love to be able to supply online via apps etc to these landowners (farmers mostly) but they are not going to want to set up an organisation.

Ideal option would be if we could register new viewer, editor and/or field worker users against our organisation and assign to our clients although we need to recoup this cost which then counts as reselling and a breach of Esri's licence.

Anyone have any ideas on a workable solution or is this still not fitting in Esri's current model?

[KellyGerrow]

Hi Sam,

I'd suggest getting in contact with your account manager or partner manager for more information on how to approach this from a licensing perspective. 

-Kelly

[SamBrown2]

Thanks Kelly - am in discussions with them but sounding like it's not really a model they support. That's why I came here for advice on what others are doing.

My previous work got permission to resell seats but they were a huge multinational with prob one of our countries larger ELAs. The old ASP licence also catered to this but again only really for large enterprises.

From what I'm finding and reading here small companies wanting to work privately with their clients are still needing to revert to PDFs, ArcReader etc.

Interested to hear other use cases that my account manager and I could look over. 

[KathyKaufman]

Sam Brown, Have you looked into hosting the application privately and then using your own authentication to allow users access? I began to look into it, but unfortunately didn't get far enough to figure out if such a solution would be technically feasible, affordable, or permissible within the licensing agreement. 

I'm pasting my bookmarks on this below. Since it's been a while and I didn't follow through, some may be outdated or not specific to ArcGIS, but you may be able to find something useful there. In particular, check out the links on Setting up a proxy.

Please do let us know if you take away insights that may help others with this. 

Servers-Web hosting

The Basics of Web Hosting | 6-Step Guide | HostingAdvice.com

MapsAlive User Guide - MapsAliveUserGuide_IntegratingInteractiveMaps.pdf

Master Agreement (E204CW)

Setting up a proxy with Web AppBuilder for ArcG... | GeoNet

Setting up a Proxy | GeoNet

resource-proxy/README.md at master · Esri/resource-proxy

Share maps to nominated individuals or groups w... | GeoNet

ArcGIS Online Named Users

ArcGIS Security and Authentication | ArcGIS for Developers

arcgis online - Embed private AGOL webmap with automatic authentication - Geographic Information Sys...

[SamBrown2]

Thanks Kathy - some great info and I'll have a good look at them.

Another option we used at my previous job we looked into these type of things. We settelled on publish the app and AGOL WebMap publically but all services used came from our own ArcGIS Server on our own hardware. We then used ArcGIS Server to secure the services themselves. This emant we had to Administer our users from ArcGIS Server but did mean no additional named users. Getting the OK for this was mainly due to the fact we had an ASP licence agreement which I believe are being phased out.

In my case both options are probably to much work - am looking for a way to share ad hoc, quick work I have done as a GIS professional helping non spatial companies and individuals. In an ideal world some of these may take the plunge and get a named user account but for now getting a farmer to jump through those hoops is too much of a barrier. Understand the need to pay for the service which is why allowing me to register a named user against my organisation and assign to an email address of an individual outside would be a good compromise (and allow me to build a charge in to my service for that - when it becomes on-selling I think).

[KathyKaufman]

I'm in a very similar situation. I work with small voluntary organizations which have no licenses and could never afford ArcGIS fees. And in many cases, maintaining data privacy is essential. 

What I had thought was available with my account -- and would be ideal for my use-case, but perhaps not for yours -- would be the ability to invite a limited number of "guest users" to access group resources on a short-term read-only basis. 

Have you explored other products? When I last checked Tableau had similar limitations, although the mapping facility is very nice. PowerBI might be a good option for you. It's available for free to anyone with MS Office and does integrate with ArcGIS and some other mapping products. It's a bit more limited but with some finagling can be used to create pretty neat data dashboards with embedded maps. One that I didn't explore but have heard about is mapbox.