Latest Contributions by HeathBrackett1

Nice!  That's new in today's latest release? ... View more

I agree, David.  I get the feeling that ESRI is just running around trying to catch up with technology when it comes to updating ArcGIS Online instead of really planning for a good user experience.  Documentation lags far behind functionality in my opinion and I spend a lot of time digging around and experimenting with things before going to ESRI Support or GeoNet to log incidents, which becomes a whole other time-suck. In our agency, when we want to create custom tools we have the conversations about whether we think ESRI will address that in the near future or whether we should invest the time to find our own solution.  It's a fine line we walk sometimes. ... View more

I understand that.  But I don't understand why the responses provide different results. The user['role'] property honors custom roles when accessed via <PortalURL>/sharing/rest/portals/self/users.  If you access the user['role'] property via <PortalURL>/sharing/rest/community/users/<USERNAME>, the response is never a custom role - it seems to always default to the ESRI standard role template that was used to create the custom role.  Why isn't the same value populated in each location? The REST API documentation does not address this. Conversely, according to the REST API documentation, user['groups'] property coming from .../portals/self/users is a list of the groups that user is a member of, but it always returns an empty list (why is this list empty?).  The user['groups'] property coming from .../community/users/<USERNAME> returns an array of all of the groups that a user is a member of.  Is there a reason that the user['groups'] property must be a list instead of an array when accessed via .../portals/self/users? This is all very confusing.  I get the feeling that ESRI is not aware that these calls aren't returning appropriate results. Heath ... View more

ESRI still doesn't allow us to assign a default role.  The default role is set as the standard user.  So, we are doing this through a Python script.  We have written a script that queries ArcGIS Online every minute to search for new users.  When it discovers a new user, it then calls update_user_role in the PortalPy module to assign that custom role.  It's currently a bit clunky, but I've got it working and will continue to refine it.  ... View more

Thanks for the response, Brady. I am aware that you can download the geometry and schema in gdb format.  But that doesn't include symbology and popup configuration, nor the item description.  I don't want to republish a service, I want to replicate it exactly as it existed.  I'm pretty sure that you can get all of the symbology, popup information (and the original Item ID) in json format, but I still am not sure how to put those pieces back together to exactly recreate the item that these pieces are backing up.  Is there a way to create an empty item in AGO from the downloaded json file that includes the original Item ID, and then load the schema and geometry tables into that item so that it does not break any connections in maps and apps that reference the item? ... View more

Thinking more about the migration process in implementing enterprise logins, I'm less concerned about losing content through script failure.  The process involved in moving content from one user to another involves just changing the value of 'owner' for each of those items and does not involve any copy/delete process.  So I assume(?) that if a script were to fail during the migration process, the worst that would happen would be that the content would be split between the two users - which would require manual movement or creation of another clean-up script.  My observations/concerns that I mentioned above still stand, though, and I'd be very interested in hearing ideas on how to back-up and recreate content with the exact specifications of the original content. Cheers, Heath ... View more

Thanks for the suggestions.  I think this is a pretty relevant topic because of the shift in software infrastructure.  I'm not necessarily concerned with the total system wipeout.  That is definitely up to ESRI to handle.  And I'm not particularly concerned with errors in feature editing, either.  (Although in an enterprise system we have ways to restore entire systems AND individual files if ever needed.)  And I haven't yet addressed the issue of possible file corruption in ArcGIS Online where you are forced to delete and recreate a (hosted) feature service, but it's something to consider.  My primary concern at the moment comes as a result of my organization's switch to using enterprise logins, which requires migrating accounts.  The content of each account needs to be transferred to a newly created account and I have written scripts to handle this.  These scripts access Python modules that ESRI has created.  I'm trying to account for all potential failures.  What happens if an internet connection is lost while content is being moved from one user to another?  What if there's a power failure during account migration?  I don't appreciate that I have to just cross my fingers and hope that nothing goes wrong. Here are a few of my observations about (hosted) feature services in particular that concern me.  A service definition cannot be updated in ArcGIS Online.  Meaning, any reconfiguring of popups, editing of features, or changing symbology/transparency/scale dependency  in a feature service while in ArcGIS Online is not reflected in the service definition which essentially makes the service definition useless if anything in the service is changed.  Web maps reference feature services based on the Item ID, a unique ID assigned by ESRI.  So if a feature service is lost and needs to be replaced, all web maps that reference that feature service must also be updated regardless of whether the name changes or not.  I'd like to have a way to restore that feature service and maintain the original Item ID so that it does not break the web maps that consume the service. I see that you can download and store all of the descriptive properties of a (hosted) feature service as a json file via the REST API, but I don't know of a way to access the geometry so that both could be combined to restore an individual feature service.  (I have not tried to recreate an item based on the stored json file to see if I could even recreate the item with the same original Item ID). I'm very curious to know if any other organizations are having these same conversations internally and how they are handling these situations.  I'm also curious about whether ESRI has any plans to introduce backup capabilities that also restore the original Item ID.  If we are to truly dive into ArcGIS Online, we have to have some assurances that we have the ability to restore data under any circumstance. Heath ... View more

Hi Martin, Are there any blank spaces in the Hyperlink URLs?  If so, you would need to replace all of the blank spaces in the hyperlink strings with the "space" encoded character of %20. Heath ... View more

Mike, the ArcGIS Online Catalog tool that I first mentioned does collect the file size of each item.  There is a checkbox that you must check to include the file size in the catalog.  Once it runs, you can then download the file to a csv and sort as you like, particularly based on "size".  If you want to see what sort of information can be obtained about each item, check the REST API Help.  Also, each user has a "storageusage" amount tied to that user which can be accessed through the REST API.  If you are more familiar with Python than using REST calls, like I am, then the getUsers function in the agoTools that I referenced above (or the get_org_users function in the PortalPy tools) can be used to search all of your users for the biggest data hogs. Heath ... View more

Gordon, Check out this tool which will create a spreadsheet of all of the content in your organization.  You can then sort based on file size.  That would be the easiest way to go.  But you can also create some custom scripts using the Python modules (PortalPy, agoTools, ArcREST) found on ESRI's ArcGIS Online Admin GitHub site.  I've found scripting using these tools to be very helpful and surprisingly easy to use. Heath ... View more

Thanks Drew.  That should help. Heath ... View more

Jay, That depends on how you are accessing this list.  If it is in a group and you are querying the group, the group owner can change the method of sorting the items when the group is viewed.  If it is in the group that you link to your Featured Content or Gallery Content, you have the ability to also change the sorting method.  But if you are talking about having your item show up first in a search, then it will be dependent on the search parameters that you use to find it.  Search results are shown by default in order of "Relevance" - essentially by how closely the title and tags align with the search parameters. If it's in a group and you really need it to be the first group item displayed, then I would recommend altering the title of the item so that you can sort alphabetically.  Your other options are Views (which will change based on popularity), Owner (most likely irrelevant in this case), Rating (which may change based on popularity), and Date (which changes each time the item is modified).  If it's being discovered through searches, then you should think hard about how people are searching for that document and use those appropriate tags so that you will increase the likelihood that it shows up first in your search results. Heath ... View more

How are you trying to connect?  That server is a 10.0 server and uses Port 80 rather than Port 6080.  To connect to the server in ArcCatalog 10.2, click Add ArcGIS Server under GIS Servers.  Then choose Use GIS services.  The server URL you should enter is: http://egip.mka.mos.ru/arcgis/ Using that method I was able to connect and use those services. Heath ... View more

Mary, ESRI has a GitHub site dedicated to ArcGIS Online Administration.  There's a section on Home Page Tweaks which includes a lot of information on how to make changes and where those changes occur.  Here's a link to our organization which incorporates some of these optimizations. Heath ... View more