ArcGIS Governance in Education: Credit Management

[GeriMiller]

INTRODUCTION

Credits are the currency used across ArcGIS – they are the basis of how costs are incurred and computed. Credits can be consumed for specific transactions, for storage or for using premium content.  As ArcGIS Online usage grows across educational institutions, so do the costs incurred by credits. Therefore, Education customers should manage credits proactively to maximize the value received from their Esri license.

This is part of a broader message of governance in Education - setting institution-wide standards and policies that apply to how credits are used and consumed. A governance plan for managing ArcGIS, and credits in particular, can help institutions plan for growth.

The purpose of this blog is not to address everything that goes into a governance plan, rather, to focus specifically on managing credits, including discussion of alternative options for high credit consumption items/transactions.   

CREDITS – UNDERSTANDING

Understanding how credits are consumed

The Understanding Credits section of the documentation outlines what credits are, and how they are consumed.

Many ArcGIS Online activities do not consume credits, such as viewing maps and scenes, using ArcGIS Living Atlas basemaps and imagery, exporting data, and performing single address or place searches. Other activities do consume credits, such as performing analysis, publishing or storing content, and batch geocoding addresses. 

It is important to understand costs related to credits, i.e. what actions/items consume most credits. Broadly speaking, the items below are examples of high-credit consumption items or transactions.

• Storage (feature, file and image storage)
• Batch geocoding
• Analytics
• Premium content

Check the Credits by Capability section of the documentation for specific examples on the above.

Understanding the pattern of consumption specific to your organization is important, as outlined in next sections. The monitoring and management of credit expenditures is a crucial component for efficient credit administration for any organization.

Understanding patterns of credit use in Education

For Education customers, on average, 85% of credit use is consumed by feature services storage. Geocoding and Network Analysis are the next workflows which consume majority of credits in Education organizations (percentages below are approximation).

• Feature Services – 85%
• Geocoding – 7%
• Network Analysis – 4.5%
• GeoEnrichment – 1%
• Data Storage – 1%
• Spatial Analysis – 0.5%
• Imagery – 0.5%
• Tile Services – 0.1%
• Notebooks – 0.1%
• Data Pipelines – 0.1%
• Demographics – 0.1%
• Scene Services – 0.1%

Therefore, closest attention needs to be paid to workflows associated with responsibly managing the size of Feature Services (i.e., hosted feature layers). Please check the Storage and Content Management blog.

In addition, for Education customers, a typical pattern of use is below (percentages below are approximation):

• A few users use most of the credits (~2%).
• Most users don't use many credits, if any (~98%).

Therefore, it is important to understand who the key GIS users are (who consume most of the credits), and work with them proactively, as needed.

CREDITS – BEST PRACTICES

Our goal with the recommendations below is to help you understand when you need to act, and plan proactively. Being a good steward of resources and operating within the bounds of existing credit allocations is important for future management of ArcGIS resources.

The sections below outline options for managing and monitoring of credits.

Credit Budgeting  

Enabling credit budgeting is the first step Education customers should take to ensure responsible use of credits. Next you should set a credit allocation, so that all new members who join the organization will be provided that specific credit amount. They will not be able to run tools or processes that consume credits above this allocation.

There are several goals of credit budgeting:

• Protect users from mistakes – items such as infinite loops during programming, or working with incorrect extents can cause unnecessary credit consumption. Enforcing a credit allocation will prevent exhausting the organization’s credits due to such mistakes.
• Safeguard users’ access – it is best not to impose limits on what someone can do in ArcGIS (i.e. do no limit licenses or privileges), rather, ensure appropriate use through credit budgeting/allocations.
• Promote reasonable use – proactively direct users to better solutions instead of consuming credits beyond that reasonable use, i.e. ensure “the right tool for the right job” in the ArcGIS ecosystem.

It is a good best practice to reset the credit allocation each semester, to ensure members of your organization have an adequate amount of credits to do their work. It can help reduce inquiries to administrators for additional credits. This can be done manually or automated via a script.

IMPORTANT: Credit allocation limit does not apply to user's storage consumption, therefore, storage has to be monitored and managed separately.

Please check Enable Credit Budgeting section of the documentation on how to enable credit budgeting and set credit allocations, if you have not done it yet.

Approaches vary by Education users in terms of the right amount of credit allocation. Typical Education customer needs could be served by 500-2000 credits in terms of allocation amount. This does not mean that everyone will consume their credit allocation limit. As stated above (under Understanding patterns of credit use in Education), most users in Education organizations will not consume credits, rather, credits will be consumed by a few GIS users doing intensive work. 

• If the credit allocation is set too low - an excessive number of "credit allocation exceeded" notifications could be received, and users may not be able to accomplish their work done in a timely manner, i.e. they will have to ask for additional credits, and administrators will have to act upon the request.
• If the credit allocation is set too high – your organization may need to purchase additional credits, as the credits could get exhausted.

Therefore, setting a reasonable allocation to allow GIS users to do their work is advised, as well as regularly revisiting the amount to accommodate your organization's evolving  patterns of use.

Checking credit use

What does credit usage look like at your institution? How do you determine what most users consume credits on, so that they can be helped and supported?

As a best practice, we recommend monitoring credit usage weekly or monthly.

For a quick view of your credit consumption, on the Organization, Status page, go to Dashboard, which can show credit usage over time and credit usage by type. Specifically, you can drill into the Credit Utilization Chart for a percentage breakdown by type of items. Further, you can click into the categories (Storage, Analytics, Subscribe Content, Published Content) for further information.   

For additional, ongoing monitoring of your credit consumption, on the Status page, go to the Reports section and generate a credit report. Once you have the report created, you can sort the fields to understand your credit usage.

You can also schedule the report to run automatically every week or month. ArcGIS Online only retains 2-years of history, therefore it is important to schedule reports and start accumulating data now, if you haven’t started yet. You can use the past to predict future consumption.

For additional credit budgeting strategies, see Understanding and managing credits in ArcGIS Online.

Alternatives to Credits

Below are additional options to consider if you/your users are consuming excessive credit amounts due to feature storage, or if you will be doing a lot of geocoding, spatial analysis or geo-enrichment, i.e. those high credit consumption actions. The below options will have an associated cost.

• Storage – as identified above, for Education customers, approximately 85% of credit usage is consumed by feature services storage. Therefore, to reduce the number of credits being consumed by storage, review the recommendations in the Storage/Content Management blog, specifically, under the Reduce Content section.

NOTE: Purchasing Premium Feature Data store is more cost effective than buying additional credits to cover storage costs. Again check the Content and Storage management above on how to generate a report for feature storage, and what alternative options are.

• Geocoding and Routing Solutions – ArcGIS Street Map Premium

Geocoding is the process of converting text to an address and a location. It is a commonly used operation in GIS, please check the Geocoding documentation for additional information.  The purpose of this blog is not to dive into deep detail on Geocoding, rather, to encourage you to estimate potential use of credits, and evaluate alternative solutions such as ArcGIS Street Map premium. 

Using the ArcGIS World Geocoding Service or views of this locator for batch geocoding in ArcGIS Online consumes credits. Same applies to Routing/Network Analysis services. However, credit estimation is available at the top of the tools, before running the geocoding (or routing/network analysis) job. Therefore, encourage your users to estimate the number of credits they will use, and have a discussion of what makes sense.

A common solution and alternative to geocoding/routing is to obtain ArcGIS StreetMap premium, which provides enriched street dataset on premises (not running in the cloud, and therefore, not consuming credits). It is a subscription product renewed yearly, and it is available at a cost. Please work with your Account Manager for additional information on obtaining ArcGIS Street Map Premium.  

Different institutions will have different approaches in terms of recommendations on what geocoding should be done in ArcGIS Online, versus offloaded to an alternative solution – there is no one size fits all. In addition, there are different types of Education licenses, which provide different credit allocations. Use your best judgement in terms of credits available to you in ArcGIS Online (including projecting for future use, which is why understanding your patterns of credit use, as outlined previously, will be important), before considering ArcGIS StreetMap Premium as a more cost-effective solution.

• Spatial Analysis Options – leverage ArcGIS Pro local tools

Similar approach applies to running any of the Spatial Analysis tools in ArcGIS Online (though as earlier those only consume approximately ~0.5% of overall credits in Education). Use the credit estimator in ArcGIS Online Map Viewer to calculate the expected credits for a transaction.

As an alternative, consider running the tools locally in ArcGIS Pro. ArcGIS Pro offers a more comprehensive and powerful suite of tools, especially for more advanced workflows. 

CONCLUSION – NEXT STEPS AND WHERE TO GO FOR HELP

Invariably, there is complexity associated with the various options above. What is important is that good stewardship of resources is maintained. The most important takeaway from this blog is to enable credit budgeting/credit allocation, start monitoring your credit use, and consider some of the alternative options, so that you are not unexpectedly exceeding your organization agreement's credit allocation. 

Some of the solutions above will continue to evolve, and we’d like you to be part of this journey – a contributor with ideas, processes and workflows.

Please share any comments and feedback here. If you have a workflow in place that has helped you responsibly manage your organization's credits , we’d like to hear it.

For any additional questions, please contact your Account Manager or highered@esri.com.