COVID-19 Educator Support: Availability of ArcGIS Licensing

[GeriMiller]

With COVID-19 causing colleges and universities to move their courses online, educators are seeking information on how to provide access to ArcGIS software for students working remotely, and at times, needing additional licenses.   

At Esri, we are fully committed to providing enough licenses to support continuity of courses and ensure no disruption. Below is an outline of availability of licenses and recommendations on how to deploy to students.

In short, Colleges and Universities who already have Education Institution Agreement (former Site License), should have enough licenses for the entire campus. Colleges and Universities with a small or medium Departmental Agreement, or an older LabPack license, can receive a Large Departmental Agreement, to provision sufficient ArcGIS Online, ArcGIS Pro and ArcMap licenses. 

Colleges and Universities with Education Institution Agreement (former Site License):

•      Use on any device – please encourage students, faculty and staff to install ArcGIS on their own devices (ArcGIS Pro and ArcMap). With the new Institution Agreement (former site license), now technology can be installed and licensed on any student-owned device.
•      Best way to distribute executables and single use licenses – please use your institutional file share to distribute any desktop executables and licensing (ArcGIS Pro and ArcMap) – GoogleDrive, Box, OneDrive, etc. We recommend licensing ArcGIS Pro via ArcGIS Online Named User. For ArcMap, please share the executable on your institutional file share, and the same single use license file can be used by everyone on campus (total of 5,000). Please read this blog for further information.
•      Unlimited ArcGIS Online Named Users for teaching and research – with the updated Institution Agreement, we have unlimited named users available for teaching and research. If your institution has not migrated to the new institution agreement, and you are running low on Named Users, please contact your Education Account Manager. We will provision additional Named Users to you, to support your courses.

•      Provision ArcGIS Online Named User licenses for ALL new users – please leverage New Member Defaults in ArcGIS Online. Ideally, you would work with your IT colleagues to setup Single Sign On (enterprise logins) for students to use their university credentials, but if this is not feasible in a short time frame, New Member Defaults can still be used for ArcGIS-only named users. This enables any new students who login to ArcGIS Online to be provisioned for any licensing.  

Colleges and Universities with a small/medium Departmental Agreement, or older LabPack license (limited licenses):

•      We will be offering a donation of a Large Departmental Agreement to our customers with a term end date of 08/31/2020. This will provision (100) each ArcGIS Online, ArcGIS Pro, and ArcMap licenses. Please license ArcGIS Pro via ArcGIS Online Named User. 

•      To request the donation:

            -  If you are outside the United States, please contact your local Esri Distributor.

            -  If you are inside the United States, please fill out this form. Please disregard the “Site License” notation.                We will make additional licenses available to all customers, not just those with a site license.

•      Please consider moving to Institution Agreement in the future, as it provides unlimited allocation of named users along with many other benefits. Please contact your Education Account Manager or local Esri Distributor with questions.
•      Please follow the above recommendations for distributing executables and licensing (desktop and Names Users).

Other recommendations:

•      We realize that not all students have personal computers, and even if they do, ArcGIS Pro has certain system requirements which may not be met with older hardware. Please check our COVID-19 Educator Support space which lists additional resources, such as this Virtualization of ArcGIS: On-premise and Cloud Options for Higher Education blog.  
•      Run ArcGIS Pro on a Mac – please refer to the documentation, many students successfully run ArcGIS Pro on Mac machines.
•      If it is not possible for students to run desktop software on their own machines, and not possible to virtualize ArcGIS in a short timeframe, please consider moving to SAAS – ArcGIS Online and Apps, where students only need an internet connection. The technology has grown immensely over the years, and many capabilities are possible with ArcGIS Online and Apps. While intimidating, this gives us an opportunity to re-invigorate. Please check this blog for many online learning resources - keep your learning objectives and competencies, and map them to some of these existing resources.