Who are the “users” listed in My Esri’s Permissions Log who aren’t really users?

Your company uses ArcGIS Online. At some point, your company's ArcGIS Online administrator created an Esri Account for you, so that you can sign in on arcgis.com and do cool things with maps.

But one day you try to sign in to My Esri - perhaps to download a new software release - and you get this message:

"Your active account <username> is not enabled for Esri access."

Accompanying this message is the name of your ArcGIS Online administrator.

Note that this message says "Esri access", not "My Esri access". This is because there is a setting on your ArcGIS Online account that, once turned on, allows you to use other Esri sites like GeoNet, the Esri Academy for training, and yes, My Esri.

Contact the ArcGIS Online administrator listed to have them turn on the Allow or Enable Esri Access setting for your account. This setting cannot be set or changed from My Esri, nor can it be changed by the user themselves.

Some ArcGIS Online organizations may not want to allow their accounts to have Esri access, so you may need to create or use another Esri Account in order to access the other Esri sites.

Here are some helpful resources about accounts.

• Enable Esri access. This ArcGIS Online documentation has instructions for the administrator on how to change this setting.
• Organization administrator can Enable Esri Access for all org members. This blog topic has some good information in the comments section about this setting.

• Account troubleshoot. Answers to questions you may have about your Esri Account, including how to have your account deleted.

You are getting too many copies of ArcNews.

You've changed jobs and you still want to receive ArcUser but at your new address.

You're an Esri-certified trainer looking for training opportunities.

You want to be notified when a new version of ArcGIS Business Analyst is being released.

How can these be accomplished?

With a few clicks after signing in to My Esri, you can easily access the location from where you can control which publications and notifications you receive from Esri.

After signing in, navigate to My Profile > Edit Email Settings.

Click Set your preferences.

You'll now be at the Subscriptions page.

From here, select which of the publications you'd like to start receiving. You may also unselect any publications you no longer which to receive.

Once you are satisfied with your settings, click Save Preferences.

The link at the bottom allows you to opt out of all email communications.

A link in the Print Newsletters section allows you to opt out of all print mailings. Printed newsletters are only sent to those in the US.

If you are receiving publications from your distributor, you'll need to contact them - simply enter the name of your distributor office in the search box there to find their contact information.

To stop others from receiving publications, as when a staff member leaves your organization, you may contact us.

More Information

That link on My Esri uses my work email address. I need to manage publications for my personal email address, too. If you are getting multiple publications, it may be because you have subscriptions under multiple email addresses. You can check your other email addresses from the Email preferences page on esri.com.

I'm only getting printed publications, so I haven't given you my email address. How do I unsuscribe from something I get in the mail? From the Email preferences page on esri.com, you can change print publication preferences by giving us the ZIP code and Subscriber ID that appear on the mailing label. You may also use this method to cut down on the number of printed materials your office receives.

How does Esri use my personal data? The Email preferences page on esri.com  provides some answers to frequently asked questions, including this one.

The My Esri team gets a lot of feedback from users who are trying to use their Personal Use copy of ArcGIS Pro, but they can't sign in because they get this error message:

The link provided on Learn more has the answer. It points to this helpful document on the ArcGIS Pro pages: Sign-in troubleshooting—ArcGIS Pro | ArcGIS Desktop 

That document explains that this Esri Account is not part of an ArcGIS organization. An ArcGIS public account has limited access to ArcGIS Online and does not allow this user to use ArcGIS Pro.

Anyone can confirm that their Esri Account is a public account by signing in to ArcGIS Online from a web browser. If the URL is www.arcgis.com/home/index.html, the account is public. An ArcGIS organization account has the form www.<orgname>.maps.arcgis.com/home/index.html.

You've moved on: you've changed jobs, or retired, or graduated from school, for example. It's time to clean house. You want to remove the connection you have with the old organization in My Esri.

You can do this a couple of ways.

The first way is to use the form found at My Organizations > Overview > Contact My Administrator to request the admin at that organization to remove you. This will send an email to all the admins at your organization, letting them know you want to be disconnected. The burden is then on the admin to sign in to My Esri and disconnect you. However, if your organization lacks an admin, that will not be an option for you. Or if the admin is on vacation, or misses your email, you will still be connected.

We've written this document that we hope admins will find useful. It covers the same tools and processes discussed in the blog post A Day in the Life of a My Esri Admin, but in downloadable PDF format.

When a user is made an admin by being granted Administrator permission, this document will be provided to them in their language via a link in the invitation email they are sent from My Esri.

In case you missed the email, you can download this PDF (the English version).

If you want a copy of the non-English version, you could do this: send yourself an invitation using Invite Users. As a My Esri admin, supply your email address on Invite Users, grant yourself Administrator permissions, choose your language to send the invitation in, then send the invitation. You'll get an email with a link to the Admin PDF in the language you selected. Then delete the pending invitation.

[UPDATED 3/16/2021 to bring the document up-to-date. As My Esri evolves, we work hard to improve processes to make administering your organization easier. This new version includes more information for how to invite authorized callers to your organization if you have a Technical Support contract; updates terminology and screenshots; and explains how to get more help if you need it. The translated versions are accessible from the links in the emails to newly-invited admins.]

[UPDATED 1/20/2023 to reflect the new experience. The latest version of the PDF in English is attached below.]

[UPDATED 5/11/2023 to reflect the deprecation of the Request Permissions form. The latest version of the PDF in English is linked below. I removed the attached version, as it could get out of date. The linked version will always be the latest version.]

We've added a new feature to My Esri that will allow you to set your default landing page. Wherever you see this button: 

You can click it to set that page as your default landing page. So, when you log back in to My Esri you will be brought directly to that page. If you decide you don't want that page to be your default anymore you can click this button:

This will clear your default page. You can access this button from the default page you've set and from your profile in the My Profile tab. 

If you are connected to your organization in My Esri, you can easily see what permissions you have been granted by your administrator or your distributor.

After signing in to My Esri, navigate to the My Profile tab. This shows you the Profile Overview page.

You'll see a card for each organization you are connected to.

In the screenshot below, you'll see I'm connected to my organization Test Account.

When I click on either the Expand/Collapse All link, or on Expand within the card, I see the permissions I've been granted.

My Esri aims to be a self-service site. We want it to be a place where you can get all the information about your organization’s relationship with Esri. But what if you can’t find what you are looking for? What if you find incorrect information you want to let us know about it? What if you have a question?

Here are some methods you can use to contact us, and the best reason to use one over the other.

Note that not all methods are available to all users, as they depend on what country you are in, what data we have for your organization, and how your organization is configured.

[UPDATED 4/25/2019 to change the name of the permission formerly known as "Assign Permissions" to "Administrator".]

[UPDATED 10/4/2019 to include information on our new Customer Service Cases functionality. Also updated the 3 locations of the Ask a Question form.]

What?

What are permissions?

Permissions are a MUST for every My Esri user.

Before we get started, let’s take a little quiz to see how much you already know about permissions on My Esri.

Question 1. Permissions allow me to do which of these things? Select the correct answer.

1. Download, provision, and license my software
2. Connect to my organization
3. Submit support issues
4. View User Conference registrations
5. View order history
6. All of the above, and more

Question 2. True or False: I don’t need permissions to use My Esri.

Question 3. True or False: Random people at Esri determine what information I have access to on My Esri.

Question 4. True or False: The best way to find out what permissions I have is to poke around and see what I can see.

Here are the answers; how did you do?

Question 1 – f. All of the above, and more

Question 2 – This is a bit of a trick question; either answer is correct. You can access My Esri without any permissions, but you won’t be able to do much. If you want to harness the real power of the site, you need permissions.

Question 3 – False. While there are exceptions, for the most part an administrator within your own organization sets what information you have access to by granting you whatever permissions they deem appropriate.

Question 4 – False. While you are free to poke around all you want, you can easily view what permissions you have been granted from the My Profile tab, on the Overview page. Simply Expand the panel to see the details.

Why?

Why do you need permissions? On My Esri, permissions drive how you interact with the site.

Permissions determine if you manage what permissions other users have at your organization.

Permissions are what connect you to your organization. THEY ARE THE MAGIC KEY.

How?

So, how do you get permissions? And how to they work?

Let’s say you are brand new to My Esri. You’ve just created your Esri Account MyNewUsername and you sign in to My Esri. You check out the neat stuff on the Dashboard tab, then on the My Profile tab, then you click on My Organizations and you see this:

Where the heck is the information about YOUR organization?

At this point, My Esri doesn’t know which organization is yours. My Esri has lots of organizations, but it needs you to tell it which organization you are associated with.

You do this by requesting permissions.

When?

Now! In the side navigation menu is a link to the Request Permissions page. Since you want to be connected to your organization, Continue from that panel.

The options you see on the form depend on some things we already know about your from your profile. For example, if your profile says you live in the United States, you’ll be asked to supply your Esri customer number.

Customer Number is optional in case you don’t know it. But if you do, it will speed up things considerably. But don’t guess – requests to invalid customer numbers will be rejected and you’ll have to start over.

Tell us the name of your organization. The term "organization" is used slightly differently on My Esri than it is on ArcGIS , where "organization" relates to a subscription. An organization on My Esri is equivalent to your place of business, school, governmental organization, or other entity. Each organization on My Esri has one customer number.

Help us out by providing as much information as you can, and we’ll try to match you to the organization you want to be connected to. If your organization is known with both a corporate name and an acronym (like Environmental Systems Research Institute and ESRI), give us both to help us match you correctly.

Some large organizations, like universities, have many customer numbers. Including the department you are part of may help us get you to the right customer number.

In the same way, many organizations have offices all around the globe. Including your city will help us not connect you to your company’s affiliate on a different continent.

Lastly, tell us what you want to do with My Esri. Some suggestions are given on the form.

After completing the form, click Send Request.

Who?

Emails are now going off to various places, to alert folks that you need to be connected. Who are these people?

The people who receive your permission access request depends on several factors. But in the simplest model, an administrator receives your request and processes it. An administration (admin for short) is someone who is already connected to your organization with "Administrator" “Assign Permissions” permission.

If you live outside the US, in most cases a designated admin at your distributor will receive your access request and process it.

If the admin recognizes you, they can pick from the list of available permissions which to grant to you based on what they know about you, and what you requested. Are you in your organization’s purchasing department? They may grant you permissions to view the Transactions sub tab. Are you the point of contact for GIS-related work? They may grant you permissions to view the Licensing, Downloads, and Support sub tabs. Or they could grant you permissions for all of those, and more. The admin determines which combination of permissions is right for you.

The admin is all-powerful. They may grant you permission to their organization. But they also have the option to deny your request.

You will be notified by email either way.

Since the admin knows who you are in this scenario because you gave them good information on the request form, they granted you all the permissions you requested. You learned the news from the email you received saying you are now connected.

Congratulations!

The next time you sign in to My Esri and click on the My Organizations tab, you’ll see something like this:

Which sub tabs you see (Users, Transactions, Licensing, etc.) are determined by what permissions you have been granted by the admin.

If you’re connected to more than one organization, you’ll see the Organization List on the sub tab bar. From there, you can see the list of organizations you’re connected to. You can switch between the Organization List page, or you can use the easy-access dropdown picker found on the right side of the banner.

Troubleshooting

But I’m already connected to my organization on ArcGIS . Why do I have to connect on My Esri? The term "organization" is used slightly differently on My Esri than it is on ArcGIS , where "organization" relates to a subscription. An organization on My Esri is equivalent to your place of business, school, governmental organization, or other entity. Each organization on My Esri has one customer number. Since these organizations are different entities, you must have permissions in each system.

Are you associated with more than one organization? No problem – just request permissions for all the organizations you want to be connected to . There is no limit.

Is requesting permissions the only way to get connected to my organization? Nope. Your admin could send you an invitation. The invitation email will contain a token. By accepting the token, you will be connected to your organization with the permission that were granted on the token. But don’t drag your feet; the token is only valid for a limited time. If your token expires, you will need to request permissions again.

I have permissions, but I want more! How do I get them? OK, Veruca Salt, simply fill out the Request Permissions form again, and specify the additional permissions you desire.

[UPDATED 4/25/2019 to change the name of the permission formerly known as "Assign Permissions" to "Administrator".]