Here are some suggestions for using My Esri most effectively.
1. Don’t share accounts.
For security and privacy reasons, each user at your organization should have their own public account.
Some organizations have connected a shared account to their organization which is used by multiple people. Should someone who has access to that account leave your organization, you will need to remember to change the password, so that separated employees no longer have access to your information on My Esri.
It’s better for each user to have their own account. This way, the My Esri administrator at your organization can customize the permissions for each user, and disconnect that user when they leave the company without disrupting other users.
2. Use only one window or tab.
For accuracy, ensure you only have My Esri in one window or tab of a single browser.
My Esri only recognizes one selected organization at a time; if you have multiple windows or tabs open, and your change your selected organization, your organization is changed in all windows and tabs, even if you still see the previous organization listed on the page. A page refresh will show the correct selected organization.
If your public account is only connected to one organization, you won’t be as affected by this best practice as someone who is connected to more than one. If you are connected to more than one organization, you could potentially take an action on one organization (say, invite a new user) when you’re really taking it on another.
3. Where to get help.
My Esri aims to be a self-service site. But we know sometimes you need to contact someone to get assistance. My Esri provides several ways to do that; which one to use depends on what type of help you need. This Esri Community article explains what the different ways are, and which one to use when to get help most efficiently.
4. Use License File Configurations to license your products faster.
If you are generating license files for your organization and find that you are generating the same type of license file for the users in your organization, License Files Configurations in My Esri offer a way to make this process easier for you.
By clicking the ‘Save Configuration’ button in the License Esri Products workflow you can save your workflow in a reusable configuration that you can come back to over-and-over. For example, if you find that you are generating ArcGIS Desktop license files for the same core product for your users, but for various extensions, save a configuration on the ‘Select Extensions’ step of the workflow. Then, when you come back to the configuration all you need to do is select whatever extensions your user needs and you’re on your way.
5. Tag your license files.
My Esri makes it easy to keep track of the license files generated across the different departments in your organization. If you need to manage the license usage for each department you can create a tag that for that department that can be attached to each license file. That tag will show on the license files pages and reports in My Esri that you can use to manage that usage.
6. When to use Recover lost licenses.
Recovering lost licenses is a process to retrieve licenses from a machine that is no longer accessible due to system failure, system loss, or destruction. This process is not an alternative to returns through the software itself. Again, it should only be used when a machine is no longer accessible.
Tom Lutz and Josh Beaton contributed to this article.
