Add Portal Connections during a silent ArcGIS Desktop Install (SCCM)

[MichaelJones8]

For Installing ArcGIS Desktop Silently by script, I believe, if I have an on site portal and need to redirect all installs from ArcGIS online to said portals, that this should be a scriptable option. This is in the same way as pointing to the current license managers to consume a concurrent License. I should not have to go to each and every system and redirect the application manually or have my users add the Enterprise Portal for ArcGIS individually.

[JohnDye]

Please add a Registry Key to Wow6432Node\ESRI\License<desktop-version> for setting Portal Connection Properties and implement a new command-line switch – ADDPORTAL=url – on the ArcGIS for Desktop setup.exe file to specify Portal Connection properties

I envision this operating similarly to the SEAT_PREFERENCE and SOFTWARE_CLASS switches available on the setup.exe file. Just as those switches simply write their values to the Esri License Registry (eg. Wow6432Node\ESRI\License10.3), the ADDPORTAL=url – switch could write one or more portal connections to the system registry. ArcGIS Desktop would then read those registry keys at inialization to determine which Portal Connections, if any, are available and possibly another to determine which connection is the active connection. One could still manage Portal Connections through the ArcGIS Administrator GUI if they found that easier and had Admin permissions to do so, but just as is the case with setting your SOFTWARE_CLASS or SEAT_PREFERENCE through the ArcGIS Administrator instead of the Registry, all ArcGIS Administrator would really be doing is modifying the appropriate registry keys by writing new keys for new connections, modifying existing keys for changes to existing connections and deleting keys for removed connections.

This Registry Key approach combined with the addition of the ADDPORTAL switch to ArcGIS for Desktop's setup.exe file would allow Administrators to establish Portal Connections for users during installation of ArcGIS for Desktop by calling the ADDPORTAL switch on the setup.exe. This would prevent our organization (and I expect many others) from being required to remote into a user's system to configure their Portal Connections after an automated install deployed over the network.

[JonahLay]

You can add one or more portal connections to the Portals page in ArcGIS Pro using the PORTAL_LIST parameter. For more information, please see Install ArcGIS Pro Silently.