It’s time to open your Notebook!
With the June 2020 update of ArcGIS Online, ArcGIS Notebooks are now available to everyone in your ArcGIS Online organization. There is nothing extra to buy nor an app to assign to start using ArcGIS Notebooks – it’s just there. However, your members do need the right privileges before they can hit the ground running.
(Note: the information below is updated from the blog introducing the ArcGIS Notebooks public beta.)
Here’s how to enable your community to use ArcGIS Notebooks
If you are an administrator of an ArcGIS Online organization, you will notice a new Notebook option in the top ribbon navigation of ArcGIS Online.
Administrators and members with notebook privileges will see a new Notebook option in the top navigation of ArcGIS Online.
If, as an administrator, the idea of members of your organization suddenly creating Python notebooks sends waves of worry down your spine – don’t panic. The flood gates are not open. For non-administrators to create notebooks they will need to be granted a new set of privileges as part of a custom role.
There are two privileges associated with ArcGIS Notebooks: a basic privilege for “Create and Edit Notebooks” and an advanced privilege that allows you to use arcpy or GPU enabled notebooks called “Advanced Notebooks”.
Any notebook user must have the Create and Edit Notebooks privilege enabled.
The Advanced Notebook Privilege is required if you want to create notebooks that use ArcPy or access the GPU-enabled notebook runtime. Remember, Advanced notebooks will consume credits.
To assign these privileges to a user you will need to use a custom role. (If you need to create a custom role, go to Navigate to Settings > Member Roles > Create Role). Assign the users that you wish to have notebook privileges a custom role that has one or both of the notebook privileges.
We recommend that you use this same custom role in the New Member Defaults so all new users will have these capabilities available. Advice for configuring New Member Defaults is available in this blog and this video.
Do ArcGIS Notebooks Use Credits?
Within ArcGIS Notebooks in ArcGIS Online there are three options for creating notebooks: Standard, Advanced, and Advanced with GPU support. These options differ in what Python libraries are included and the underlying compute resources that are provided.
Standard includes open source Python libraries and the ArcGIS API for Python. It includes a smaller amount of CPU and memory than the other two options. It is ideal for web GIS administration automation and any analysis that uses the built-in tools of ArcGIS Online. Using Standard notebooks (which are enabled by granting users the “Create and edit notebooks” privilege) will not cost any additional credits to create or run, as everything included in the notebook is either open source or already built-in to ArcGIS Online.
Advanced notebooks include everything that is in Standard and also includes arcpy. Advanced notebooks provide a moderate amount of CPU and memory and are a good choice for almost any workflow. Advanced notebooks will consume credits, as they provide unlimited access to geoprocessing capabilities of arcpy.
The third option is Advanced Notebooks with GPU Support, these notebooks include the same Python libraries as “regular” Advanced notebooks. The only difference is that this option provides dedicated GPU infrastructure under the hood allowing you to do computationally intensive workflows such as machine learning. Due to both the access to arcpy and GPU resources, these notebooks will also consume credits.
Keep in mind that you can control credit consumption by restricting who has been granted the “Advanced Notebooks” privilege and through the per-user credit budgeting system that already exists within ArcGIS Online.
Where can I get more information?
If you used ArcGIS Notebooks during the beta period and have questions what happens to your notebooks and content now, see this announcement from Shannon Kalisky, Product Manager for Analytics and Data Science.
To learn how ArcGIS Notebooks can be used in teaching, read Coaching the Next Generation of Spatial Data Scientists or view the webinar Teaching with ArcGIS Notebooks.
For lessons and ideas for using ArcGIS Notebooks in your courses, see the new Learn Path Teach with ArcGIS Notebooks.
For details about using ArcGIS Notebooks, see the topic Get started creating notebooks in the ArcGIS Online documentation.