Secure Services and Publishing Directly to ArcGIS.com Subscription Account

AaronBaumgarden · ‎05-30-2012

I have two questions, both related to a single problem. I'm using ArcGIS 10 SP1. Here is a little background on what I'm trying to accomplish:

I have a case where I need to access a secure service in ArcGIS.com (and Explorer Online). Once I go to 'Add Layer from Web' under a secure connection and type in the URL (including the token) I'm only able to add the layer 50% of the time. The other 50% of the time it prompts me for a username and password. I've tried entering my ArcGIS.com credentials and the username and password for my server. Neither seem to work and I'm unable to proceed further. Times when it does allow me to add the layer I get the same error as soon as I try to identify on a feature. If I go ahead and save the map and try to open in Explorer Online I get a generic error that says, "The source for the layer is inaccessible." If I try adding the layer in Explorer Online I get an error that says "No Services or Folders" when I type in the URL for my service. I've spent the last 24 hours reading through forums and help documentation and still can't find anything that quite speaks to what I'm experiencing.

Is adding a service using SSL supposed to be supported with Explorer Online? If not, is there another workaround?

I understand with ArcGIS Desktop 10.1 you can publish the service directly to an ArcGIS.com Subscritption account. I'm wondering if there is a way to set up automatic updates since the data I would be publishing is updated nightly. Is that even supported once the data is in the "cloud"?

Thanks,

Aaron

Anonymous User · ‎05-31-2012

Hi Aaron,

1. When you add a secured service to a Web map in ArcGIS Online, the Identity Manager will detect it's a secured service and prompt the end users of the service for login credentials. Appending the token to the URL when adding the service will not work the way you are thinking. Since the service is secured, anyone accessing it from a web map will have to authenticate.

2. ArcGIS Explorer Online does not support secured services, so the workflow above will only work with the ArcGIS.com Map Viewer and mobile clients.

3. Currently there is not a way to synchronize your changes to ArcGIS Online to reflect updates in the data. The best way to achieve this now is to re-publish the service and selecting the option to overwrite the published service.

Hope that helps,
Andrew

AaronBaumgarden · ‎06-01-2012

Andrew,

Thanks! That does help. Based on your responses I have some new questions though.

1. Every time I was successful in adding the secured layer to ArcGIS Online it still wouldn't take the username and password I use to access our secure server. Is that the username and password I'm supposed to be using? I tried adding the URL with and without the token and I'm still not seeing the behaviour I would expect. Is there something I'm missing?

2. I understand that Explorer Online does not currently support using secured services. I found a post titled Usage of secure services for ArcGIS.com and Explorer Online on ideas.arcgis.com but the last post was in October of 2011. It also says that it is currently under consideration. Do you know if or when this functionality might be provided? I would hope with the release of 10.1. I guess if the ArcGIS.com map viewer had the query functionality then I wouldn't need to use Explorer Online.

3. This is more of a suggestion than a question but having the ability to refresh a service stored in the "cloud" on a daily basis like we can on a local web server would make using the subscription service much more attractive. I think a lot of people would like the ability to set up a recurring publishing task without having to go in and manually run the process every day.

Thanks again for your help.

MikeMinami · ‎06-01-2012

Yes, you are supposed to enter the username/password of your server. Can you share the REST endpoint of your ArcGIS Server here? Would you be willing to give us access? You can send a private message in the forums...

Thanks,

Mike

EricDaniel · ‎06-05-2012

Andrew,

3. This is more of a suggestion than a question but having the ability to refresh a service stored in the "cloud" on a daily basis like we can on a local web server would make using the subscription service much more attractive. I think a lot of people would like the ability to set up a recurring publishing task without having to go in and manually run the process every day.

Thanks again for your help.

I couldn't agree more that the subscription option for ArcGIS online is much less attractive without some ability to store data beyond just a webmap. I think what you are asking for here is a geodatabase within arcgis online. If they could make this very simple and easy along with some limitation so it wouldn't compete with their Server product they would see huge adoption in my opinion. It would fill a huge gap they have now between this subscription service and ArcGIS server.