Is Esri providing support for work from home?

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03-19-2020 05:13 PM
AndrewQuee
Occasional Contributor III

A host of providers are offering free resources during this exceptional emergency

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/software/list-of-free-software-and-services-during-coronavirus... 

Safe software is offering free ETL geoprocessing licences

https://www.safe.com/covid-19/

"Use the COVID-19 specific download form to access your free FME licenses. The license will be active until at least September 30, 2020."

 

Not quite so useful but Esri is offering to stand up AGOL with “ArcGIS Hub Basic” for free during the emergency

https://www.esri.com/en-us/disaster-response/request-assistance

This is a great feature but unfortunately our main workflows centre around ArcMap, ArcCatalog and to a lesser extent ArcGIS Pro.  If staff are isolated or quarantined at home without access to their work computer they won't be able to be effective there without this software.

Has there been any thought from Esri regarding a similar response to Safe Software's?

Edit: Words.

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by Anonymous User
Not applicable

Hi Andrew Quee - Check out this post which might help. ArcGIS Support for a Remote Workforce In this doc, the author offers guidance on how to enable licensing of desktop software without having to connect to an internal portal or license manager.

Another option to try is to contact your System/GIS manager for a desktop license.

Let me know if that is helpful or if you need other options.

Thanks.

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by Anonymous User
Not applicable

Hi Andrew Quee - Check out this post which might help. ArcGIS Support for a Remote Workforce In this doc, the author offers guidance on how to enable licensing of desktop software without having to connect to an internal portal or license manager.

Another option to try is to contact your System/GIS manager for a desktop license.

Let me know if that is helpful or if you need other options.

Thanks.

AndrewQuee
Occasional Contributor III

Thanks Chris, that's very helpful.  We have been planning a move to distributed editing but are not there yet and locked into direct network connections to the EGDB.  If only this had held off for a year...

We don't have the ability to use those features in the timeframe available, but Esri AU support has been very helpful in allocating temporary offline authorization files.

AndrewQuee
Occasional Contributor III

Update:

Well what looked like a quite simple workaround for the expected few weeks of Coronavirus isolation (oh, sweet summer child...) has now turned out to be a completely 'new normal' style of working.  For average office mouse-pushers filling forms at home, that works fine, but not when you're pushing gigabytes of geoprocessing around, or relying on fragile direct database connections which can drop at any time.

Esri has been very helpful with getting people to work from home and some licence teething issues aside, this has worked well.  Unfortunately the next hurdle is our third-rate national internet infrastructure which at times can be impossible to overcome.  As I predicted many moons ago, relying on mixed-mode non-fibre VDSL/ADSL is now coming back to haunt us as working from home upstream saturation (teleconferencing, oy) is probably killing the network.  Not to mention everyone else not working binging Netflix through the day.  We have one officer working via satellite(!) who is just able to function albeit with a 700ms turnaround on his desktop and awful bandwidth.

So, GIS at home is a lot more problematic and there's no magic wand Esri can wave to fix it (not to mention similar issues with other GIS vendors, yay interoperability).

The best solution we've found is to actually take the work PCs back to base where they sit safely behind the firewall with gigabit access to the EGDB/Server and licence managers and interlocked infrastructure then simply remote control them (i.e VNC/MS RDP) which is pretty much the same as being in the office but ticks all the boxes of reducing bandwidth load, avoiding major security issues, and reducing latency/connection issues between systems.

Good luck all, and happy working from home.  Stay home, stay safe.

Addendum:

After writing this I found some other good resources Esri has produced around how to manage working remotely in these unique times and how business models might change under COVID-19.  Relates to the question and well worth reading.  We are investigating these as an upgrade path for business into the future.

  1. How to successfully transition your GIS team to work remotely
  2. How to optimise your GIS team's remote work environment
  3. How to future-proof your GIS team's remote work environment