GeoDev Webinar Series - ArcGIS Hub

[AmyNiessen]

by Amy Niessen, John Gravois, and Patrick Hammons

We tend to host our GeoDev Webinars in the middle of the month, in the middle of the week. This helps make it easy for our developer community to make themselves available for a webinar and encourage the likelihood of attendance. We had no such problems getting the developer community to sign up for the ArcGIS Hub webinar!

John Gravois (@geogangster) and Patrick Hammons (@hamhandedly) delivered the fourth installment of the GeoDev Webinar series and introduced the developer community (and aspiring developer community members) to ArcGIS Hub!

They took time to set context and explain the history of the ArcGIS Online Open Data offering, showing the additional capabilities that Hub exposes, and they demoed both its administration and community management tools.

With over 700 participants in attendance, John and Patrick dove into the low-level open source components that make up ArcGIS Hub and discussed customization options, key extensibility points, and relevant development paradigms like Configurable Apps and Shared Themes. They also took a look at opportunities for civic tech inspired citizens to collaborate with our government customers and leverage tools like the ArcGIS API for Python

If you would like to see the slides from the webinar, check them out: https://johngravois.com/presentations/geodev-hub/#/

Throughout the webinars, we encourage users to submit questions that we address at the end of the hour; however, there are so many that are not addressed, so instead of leaving anyone hanging, we have addressed them below. (A big 'thank you' goes to John and Patrick for taking the time to answer each question!)

Q: For Initiatives and Comnmunity part of Hub, the documentation is not there. When can we expect that?

A: You can find documentation for both Initiatives and Community here: http://doc.arcgis.com/en/hub/.

Q: Is this part of an Enterprise license? Do we have access to it if we have an ArcGIS Online organization?

A: The open data capabilities (creating sites, sharing data, making pages) are included with your ArcGIS Online license, but premium capabilities like the initiative builder and the community admin tools require additional licensing.

Q: Can one organization administer multiple hubs for multiple clients from one centralized ArcGIS Hub admin console? 

A: No, the Hub admin only pertains to one Hub associated with one ArcGIS Online organization. To manage multiple Hubs you would have to log in to each individually.

Q: Is there any copyright issue if I leave any organizational account? Later can I use my maps in my personal account of what I've created before? Or does that organization own those maps? 

A: Esri doesn't dictate the license of either individuals or organizations.

Q: Is there a way for a user to select projection for data being downloaded?

A: Local projections can be set on an organization level, but not on a download by download basis.

Q: You guys mostly focused on governmental communicaton with the wider community. Do you see Hub as being a useful resource for the private sector (or semi-private) to interact with the communities around them? (e.g., utilities)?

A: We are focused primarily on public sector use cases, while continuing to explore other potential markets. Open data and transparency are core capabilities for this product, both of which tend to be public sector concepts, but the Hub could be very useful to any groups that interface with the public.

Q: How is it licensed? Does this require additional licensing? 

A: The open data capabilities (creating sites, sharing data, making pages) are included with your ArcGIS Online license, but premium capabilities like the initiative builder and the community admin tools require additional licensing.

Q: If a city has Open Data setup, what does it cost and take to get Hub going on top of that?

A: For the premium Hub capabilities, pricing is scaled by community population. For more details specific to your context we recommend talking to your account manager.

Q: Can it run on ArcServer?

A: Hub is currently only available on ArcGIS Online. Services can be hosted on your own servers or on ArcGIS Online, but should be available on the open web in order to be registered in ArcGIS Online

Q: Regarding social media logins for citizens: Does this create an ArcGIS Online account so that non-subscribers can use Survey123 or Collector as long as those apps are published as public?

A: Yes, the social media login process creates a named user that can be given the same permissions as any other named user in ArcGIS Online.

Q: Can we link our events with the citizen calendar? 

A: We do not currently have direct integration with other event management applications in the roadmap. That said, there is nothing stopping you from linking to events within a Hub page/site.

Q: Why is the social login with Twitter not available?

A: Google and Facebook logins were targeted first because they have the largest and most diverse base of users.

Q: Two-part question: a) Can we confine a hub to a "private" ArcGIS Online organisation and b) is it in the roadmap to make ArcGIS Hub available for ArcGIS Enterprise?

A: a) Yes, you can have a private Hub site populated with datasets only visible internally, and b) Yes, Hub for Enterprise is in the roadmap for mid 2018.

Q: Will they add ability to download as geodatabase and if so, I'd recommend including metadata.

A: Geodatabase downloads are not currently in the roadmap.

Q: Also, how much does Hub cost. is it part of our agreement if we have an Enterprise ArcGIS Server and ELA and Org acct?

A: The open data capabilities (creating sites, sharing data, making pages) are included with your ArcGIS Online license, but premium capabilities like the initiative builder and the community admin tools require additional licensing. The pricing scales according to the population of the community served.

Q: Will you speak to integrating non-spatial data that lives in databases separate from our enterprise GIS geodatabases as open data to the Hub platform and using it to feed initiatives?

A: Datasets need to be registered within ArcGIS Online and shared to an open data enabled group in order to be used within Hub. The most recent release of ArcGIS Online implemented cloud storage integration . More info available here: https://doc.arcgis.com/en/arcgis-online/share-maps/add-items.htm

Q: Can we use hub to collect data?

A: Yes. One of the ways you can do this is by embedding a Survey123 app.

Q: So how we can migrate Open Data to Hub? What are the requirements or restrictions?

A: Open Data operates the same as it did, only with additional Hub capabilities. You shouldn't need to migrate anything. 

Q: Are Hub pages mobile friendly, e.g. responsive?

A: Yes, Hub sites are responsive.

Q: Does the Hub team have any plans to support cache data sets in the future in open data site?

A: The Hub currently caches datasets automatically, but you can control this manually through the admin.

Q: If you want to track who is downloading your open data, is it possible to develop a form to capture user name, phone#, email, etc, prior to the download as opposed to forcing users to "follow" an initiative?

A: Users can create surveys to collect information from users, but not as a prerequisite to download.

Q: Does it use credits from ArcGIS Online?

A: The only credit consumption comes from storage in ArcGIS Online.

Q: Is ArcGIS Hub available on Portal or only ArcGIS Online?

A: Hub is currently only available in ArcGIS Online, but Hub for Portal is on the roadmap for mid 2018.

Q: Have you ever thought about collaborating with Colleges to be the "go to" platform for students to present presentations and their research?  

A: Yes, we have!

Q: What type of subscription i need to make an Arcgis Hub ? is the organization account enable me ?

A: The open data capabilities (creating sites, sharing data, making pages) are included with your ArcGIS Online license, but premium capabilities like the initiative builder and the community admin tools require additional licensing. You need admin privileges to enable Hub for an ArcGIS Online organization.

Q: I am a student and I need to learn more about creating initiative and developing in GIS, can the trial subscription enable me to create and manage Arcgis Hub page?

A: You would need an organization account or organizational access in order to create Hub sites and pages.

Q: I thought the Webinar was great. They did a good job of explaining the how and why's of the program. I tried going into ArcGIS Hub but, to be perfectly honest with you, I am struggling to understand how to navigate the program. I look forward to the webinar recording so I can review it. I am really new to this so the navigation difficulty is more than likely me and not how the page is set up! I will keep stumbling around and see what I can do.

A: ArcGIS Hub | ArcGIS 

-- End of Q&A --

If you missed the webinar and would like to see the "ArcGIS Hub" webinar in its entirety, please check it out (along with all of our past webinars) on http://go.esri.com/geodev.

We will see you in January during our next webinar, "Extending Web AppBuilder for ArcGIS".