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Introducing the GIS Enterprise Reporter

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04-05-2022 11:57 AM
DannyKrouk
Esri Contributor
45 13 24.6K

A common challenge in administering an ArcGIS Enterprise system is the need document and/or otherwise communicate its design and configuration. 

Typically, this is done by someone creating one or more diagrams.  These diagrams sometimes have errors and/or omissions.  And, they easily lose their relevance as the system changes.  The underlying challenge is that the documentation of the system is not generated by the system itself, it reflects the understanding of one person at one moment in time.

GIS Enterprise Reporter is designed to help address this challenge by automating the creation of documentation artifacts.  Point the tool at your ArcGIS Enterprise, with administrative credentials, and it will generate documentation that includes:

  1. A logical diagram
  2. Listings of administrative/configuration settings (from the REST admin API's)
  3. Listings of machine resources and installed software (for the machines running the software in the ArcGIS Enterprise system)
  4. ArcGIS Server service inventories (inclusive of workspaces and datasets)
  5. Portal content inventory
  6. Portal users and groups inventory
  7. And, information about TLS/SSL certificates (including certificate expirations, required trust chains, etc.)

The documentation is output in Microsoft Excel format, making it easy to share, analyze, and mark-up.

This tool is intended to be used by ArcGIS Enterprise administrators to understand and document their system deployments.  It works best if it is run under a credential that is also a local machine administrator, but that is not required.

Please note that this tool has been created to support Esri Professional Services consulting practices.  As such, it is not supported by Esri Technical Support.  All of the requests issued by the tool are supported ArcGIS REST API operations.  

You can download the tool here: https://github.com/dannykrouk/gisenterprisereporter.  The .zip contains both the executable and documentation.  The executable is a ".Net Core" executable that should run on any contemporary Windows operating system. 

The executable is signed with a certificate that is not issued by a public certificate authority.  So, you may get warnings (or limits) from your operating system related to that.  If so, please follow the guidelines of your organization and the privileges extended to you by working with the appropriate IT security authorities, importing the certificate into a your trust repository, or using elevated privileges to execute the tool.

Please be in contact with me, Danny Krouk (dkrouk@esri.com) with questions or enhancement ideas.

This article is intended to be the first in a short series of articles about GIS Enterprise Reporter.  Future articles will address topics such as running the tool, interpreting its output, and creating useful analyses from the output.

Next Series Article: Running the GIS Enterprise Reporter, Tips & Tricks

 

13 Comments
vbort_ef
Occasional Contributor
Good morning, I find this tool essential for building an exhaustive inventory of an ArcGIS Enterprise organization. It is a wealth of information for customers but also to consolidate our relationship with them. For example, in the context of support cases, migration, version upgrade or even implementation of new uses of an ArcGIS platform. I really hope that it will be maintained, why even packaged in a solution (synchronization, data published in services on portal, synthesis with ArcGIS Dashboard). But I'm definitely dreaming. Thank you again, this is very useful for me to follow the uses of my customers. Best wishes
DannyKrouk
Esri Contributor

@vbort_ef  Thank you very much for the kind words.  I have no plans to stop maintaining the tool ... we use it in Esri Professional Services.  If you have ideas for improvement, or come across defects, please let me know. 🙂

CaitBoyer
Emerging Contributor

Hello! Thank you so much for providing this very powerful tool, we have used it quite a lot. I have a (hopefully) simple question: our organization is attempting to track down what EGDB connections were used when the map services on our stand-alone ArcGIS Server sites were published. I know I can find this information in the D:\arcgisserver\directories\arcgissystem\arcgisinput\[Folder]\[xyz.MapServer]\extracted\manifest.xml file, however, I am curious if Enterprise Reporter is capable of collecting all of this information into a single source? I have briefly examined its outputs and I definitely see registered data stores, but I have been unable to identify specific service database connections. 

Any advice is very appreciated 🙂  Thank you, kindly.

DannyKrouk
Esri Contributor

@CaitBoyer  Thanks for the kind words.  

You might be looking for:

DannyKrouk_0-1722549951005.png


Which gives you this kind of thing:

DannyKrouk_1-1722550004599.png

If that's not quite what you're after, perhaps you can tell me what is missing relative to your interests?

Thanks 🙂

CaitBoyer
Emerging Contributor

Dearest @DannyKrouk , you have just saved me HOURS and HOURS of work. If I could bake you a box of cookies, you'd best believe I would. Thank you so so much for your lightning quick and immeasurably helpful reply and work on this incredible product. 🙏

DannyKrouk
Esri Contributor

@CaitBoyer  Ha!  Thanks.  Virtual cookies are almost as good as real ones! 😉

SteveMcCarthy
Regular Contributor

@DannyKrouk Has there been any thought as to adding this amazing tool to ArcGIS Monitor?  It would be a great fit based on the permissions required to run ArcGIS Monitor.  The ArcGIS Monitor Excel Report tool and the would Enterprise Reporting Tool really compliment each other.

Great job on this tool!

Thank you,

Steve

DannyKrouk
Esri Contributor

@SteveMcCarthy - Thanks for the idea (and the kind sentiment).  I have worked with the ArcGIS Monitor team to help them plan their functionality roadmap as it relates to eGDBs.  I had built extensions for the "classic" ArcGIS Monitor edition.  I believe their design intent was to include much of what those extensions did in the core product.  I have to confess that I have not followed what has come to fruition.  But, it does seem like there has been interest and intent.  I am sure that, if you have specific ideas, that they would appreciate hearing them. 🙂

Daniel_C
New Explorer

@DannyKrouk  This tool is amazing and has saved me a ton of time tracking dependencies on services/databases when we migrated our org to a new server stack last year that had a totally revamped architecture.  

I would like to use the output from this this as the source data for some Power BI dashboarding that we are looking to develop to give an admin perspective of our Prod/Test/AGOL environments.  The part I'm trying to work though is figuring out how to set this up as a scheduled task.  I have been looking at Python subprocess and I can open the program but am struggling with the arguments.  Do you have any advice for scheduling Enterprise Reported to run on an interval.

DannyKrouk
Esri Contributor

@Daniel_C  Thank you for the kind words!

There is a separate executable called "er.exe" which can be used for scheduled execution of GIS Enterprise Reporter.  That's kind of an historical accident.  The code called by the executable is the same as that which gets called by the GUI.

Section #6 in the Word document that comes with the tool discusses how to use the command-line interface.  Essentially, you put your parameters in a json file and provide the file as an argument to the command-line.  Here's a partial screen capture from that section of the doc:

DannyKrouk_0-1724181341936.png

Please note that AsynchronousExecution is no longer supported (i.e. the parameter should either be absent or the value should be "false" if it is present) ... another historical accident (sorry).

Does this help?




Daniel_C
New Explorer

@DannyKrouk

That is exactly what I needed.  Appreciate the info!

dgiersz_cuyahoga
Frequent Contributor

Will there be a Windows 11 version released? I get a 'This app can't run on your PC' warning when starting the executable. I am using Windows 11 Enterprise.

 

***Edit*** My bad, I think my exe was corrupted somehow. Downloading the latest version corrected my issue.  Keep up the great work!

DannyKrouk
Esri Contributor

@dgiersz_cuyahoga Thanks for the update.  The app should run on Win11.  If you continue to have problems after your re-download, please reach out *with screen captures* ... here or via email (dkrouk@esri.com).