How to Add Azure Maps as a Standalone Item in ArcGIS Online?

[AustinOffice]

I'm looking for a way to add Azure Maps as a standalone item in AGOL, so that it can be offered as a default base map for our organization — similar to how we previously used Bing Maps.

I have seen the blog post from ESRI (https://resources.esri.ca/getting-technical/integrating-microsoft-azure-maps-layers-into-your-arcgis) and the older Azure article (https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/discussions/azuremaps/using-azure-maps-in-arcgis-and-qgis/174496...) describing how to add Azure maps to a Pro project or to add directly to a web map in AGOL or Enterprise. These articles describe the same method and work fine. But there doesn't seem to be a way to add the tiled layer as its own item. I'd like to be able to share as a tiled layer across my organization so that users don't have to access the Azure maps subscription key directly.

I attempted to create a stand alone tile layer from the URL by manipulating the JSON with beta AGO Assistant, however I haven't been successful with this method. It appears web tile layers may not be a supported JSON type. I also attempted to add create a new item directly via the REST API. I can create the layer but I get warnings related to the x,y,z parameters of the URL string. AI suggests this is due to the format of the parameters as ?x=...&y=...&z=... rather than the standard {z}/{x}/{y} . I haven't been able to verify that this is the real issue.

Has anyone tried to do this and had success?

[AustinOffice · Accepted solution]

I've solved my own problem. I'll post it here in case anyone else needs this solution in the future. It was a very straightforward fix, but one I wasn't familiar with. Once you have created a map with the azure imagery as a base map layer that map should be added to a group within AGOL. The group can then be set as the Basemap Gallery group within the Organization > Settings within the Map section. There's even an option to include ESRI default basemaps as part of the same group.