Overwrite an existing web layer owned by someone else in your organization from ArcGIS Pro

Charles-AndreRoy

Privileges in ArcGIS Online should give more possibilities for data/map management like a way to "centralize" things that multiple users can update/manage. ArcGIS Online is good to share contents with other within the organization (for mapping), but it's lacking of functionalities for data. For instance, it's currently possible to "overwrite an hosted feature layers" that was added using ArcGIS Online. That can be done for web layer that you own, but you can also overwrite an existing web layer owned by someone else (if role of the other user is set to Administrator).

Things that could be great:
- In addition to each user "My Content", should have a "My Organization Content" available to all (or through privileges/groups)
- Be able to overwrite content of another user from AGOL or ArcGIS Pro (through a My Organization Content or see other shared user folders/items)

JacksonTrappett · ‎03-19-2018

I up-voted this and I agree with it, and would like the functionality to also be available in ArcGIS Portal. Our workflow is that we have services that are published from ArcGIS Pro for organizational maps that are updated and maintained by everyone on our team. We would like the ability for one member of the team to publish a new Web Layer (Map Image Layer/Service), that will be going into a web map and/or app, and then share it with a group, with overwrite permissions, so that when changes are needed, any other member of our team would be able to make the updates in ArcGIS Pro, and then overwrite that web layer from Pro.

JoePlattner · ‎10-05-2018

Just started experimenting with ArcGIS Pro 2.1 and Portal 10.5.1 and was shocked when I couldn't see the published web layer my co-worker created when I went to overwrite it.

I have Administrator privileges too.

In ArcGIS Server and ArcMap I can overwrite my co-workers content so long as I have admin credentials.

I don't want to have to ask my co-worker to make changes like this, when I could do it myself. I'm not sure why you wouldn't want to allow other users to overwrite other workers content so long as they are permitted to do so via Portal Group permissions, or Administrator Role permissions.

Anonymous User · ‎10-10-2018

I was told this was by design as Esri doesn't want John overwriting Mary's published service, similar to how we have versions in an SDE. My comment to Esri was what happens when we have things that are updated daily or frequently and Mary goes on vacation for 2 weeks and none of us can overwrite the service with internal data that multiple people edit? They had no good response.

My suggestion to Esri, and as a comment to this idea, is to add a checkbox when a user publishes something to "Allow for other users to overwrite this feature service". And to even take it a step further and actually select the users in the Organization they are okay with overwriting their service - admins, supervisors, etc.

JoePlattner · ‎10-10-2018

I contacted ESRI tech support after I made my comment just to make sure I wasn't missing anything, and they confirmed that overwriting a feature layer published by others is not allowed.

The work around they gave me was to ask my co-worker for their log-in credentials. We use windows authentication to connect to portal, getting my co-workers passwords is kind of frowned on here and not an option.

That's interesting what Nathan said about this being set like this by design. There really ought to be a way through permissions or a checkbox to allow for exceptions.

I wondered what would happen if I changed the ownership of the Feature Layer from my-coworker to myself in Portal. Perhaps if portal considered me the owner then I could overwrite the feature layer. I was shocked and surprised again when I got a message saying "Error - Unable to change the owner of items that are shared to a group with update capability" Our maps and layers are all shared to a group that permits multiple people to make changes to the same app and supporting web maps. What's going to happen when my co-worker leaves? Are we supposed to keep their account active in portal forever?

So is it best practice then to instead of using an individual log-in, to publish services and maps to portal, or ArcGIS via a generic portal only user account? Something like "Portal_Publisher" maybe, with a password the whole team can share ....

deleted-user-1_r2dgYuILKY · ‎03-01-2019

I definitely need this feature. A lot of our services were created by my predecessor. Many of them are out of date and I need to be able to overwrite them, or delete them. I have to wait for out administrator to be able to deal with this stuff, which is annoying for both of us. It's because of this and the convoluted and confusing user types system that I would like to move away from AGOL and fully utilize our ArcGIS Server with the JS API. Just waiting to be able to publish services from Pro...

Jean-FrançoisLabrecque1 · ‎08-14-2019

Je suis entièrement d'accord avec cette idée, d'autant plus que les administrateurs dans les grandes organisations sont en plus grand nombre et qu'une mise à jour en temps réel est plus que souhaitable lorsqu'un client visualise le résultat final via l'internet.

DavidLineberry · ‎08-30-2019

We need a way to share ownership of a service. When one of our team members is out on vacation I cannot update the data to Online. Even when everyone is in the office it is a problem needing to ask someone else to update the service with the data layer I am working on because they were the first to serve it a month ago. Making multiple services with different names will cause more problems than it solves. I would like to see ownership at the group level so any group member can see and overwrite the service. Thanks.

Anonymous User · ‎09-05-2019

I've brought this up to Esri many different ways to many people - their solution is to have an admin go to the service and change the owner to the person that needs to overwrite it and then change it back. Yeah....try doing that daily when multiple people edit data internally and need to overwrite a service.

YoavRappaport · ‎10-21-2019

There is a similar idea with less votes here Enable multiple users to overwrite hosted feature services so vote for both! Currently we are achieving this by making all members of our group admins, then going in and changing the ownership when you want to overwrite someone else layer. But first you have to share the layer with a group that doesn't have "update" capabilities. Sounds counter intuitive, but that's how it is. Then to share that layer with a wider group you must create a View fs.

AndreaRichardson1 · ‎12-04-2019

We really need this. Similar to other user stories posted above, we have the need for multiple users to be able to overwrite certain services. I thought giving other user Admin privileges would solve the issue - was quite surprised when it didn't. Changing owners just to do this simple task is ridiculous. Having multiple-user overwrite ability as an option would prevent accidental overwriting of layers you don't want overwritten - similar to how delete protection is now an option.