Latest Contributions by GeriMiller

For those of us teaching with ArcGIS Pro (or currently migrating), attached is a training guide from our friends in Esri Training Services, containing a collection of web courses, lessons, tutorials, training seminars, MOOCs, etc. Of course these resources are available at Esri Training, Learn ArcGIS, Documentation, etc. but the PDF contains logical groupings which may appeal to some.  ... View more

Huge thanks to Eric Shook (University of Minnesota), Patricia Carbajales (Clemson University) and Blake Lytle (Clemson University) for their fantastic presentations and follow up discussions on CyberGIS/HPC.  The recording and slides are located here. ... View more

Huge thanks to Marjean Pobuda (Esri), Product Engineer for Spatial Statistics and R-Bridge on the excellent presentation on R-ArcGIS integration!!!   The recording and slides are located here.    Below are a couple of the resources we discussed - be on the lookout for a new Learn ArcGIS lesson! Analyze Crime Using Statistics and the R-ArcGIS Bridge existing Learn lessons Using the R-ArcGIS Bridge web course Using R Scripts into ArcGIS Geoprocessing Tools web course Go Deepter with Data Analytics Using ArcGIS Pro and R training seminar   Please post any questions or further follow up here.  ... View more

Huge thanks to our presenters, Orhun Aydin (Esri) and Kimani Mbugua and Brian Hilton (Claremont Graduate University) for sharing their knowledge, projects and examples of AI/ML.     The recording and slides are located in this Box folder.   This is the Story Map which CGU shared as part of the Microsoft AI4E Azure Grant project.   Below are a few other items we discussed: Azure Data Science VMs Azure for Students Azure Student credits announcement Where Seagrass Grows: ArcGIS and Machine Learning blog - including links to data, Jupyter Notebooks, etc. Learn ArcGIS lesson on “Predict Seagrass Habitats with Machine Learning” – great for classroom instruction   Please post any questions or further follow up here.  ... View more

Thanks to Josh Joyner (Esri) and Dr. Brian Hilton, Salem Alghamdi, Abdullah Alleisa and Mansour Alzahrani (Claremont Graduate University team) for sharing their knowledge and projects on GeoEvent Server.  The recording and slides are located here.    Other resources of interest: GeoEvent Server tutorials - we ran out of time to mention these, but they could be used as a stepping stone to get familiar with the technology. At Johns Hopkins we've used a couple of them to teach Real Time GIS via GeoEvent Server, which worked well. Each student had their own deployment of ArcGIS Enterprise with GeoEvent Server running in AWS, and started with the "Introduction to GeoEvent Server" tutorial, which contains 6 modules and provides an initial overview of this powerful capability. ArcGIS GeoEvent Server Gallery - lots of other resources for learning/teaching GeoEvent.  Please post any questions or further follow up here.  ... View more

As educators, we are always faced with challenges on how we structure our curriculum activities to ensure that we are in line with modern industry practices. This is easier said than done—for one, there is likely no consensus on what a "modern geographic information system (GIS)" means; and two, it takes a tremendous amount of time to do curricula updates. As an instructor of a variety of courses on Web GIS, programming, and spatial analytics at Johns Hopkins University, I am relentlessly faced with course updates. However, my being a Solutions Engineer at Esri as well provides me with a unique perspective into the technology and helps me stay focused on what is important in the geospatial industry. What will the next generation GIS curriculum look like? We may call it Web GIS or something else, but we will have to address the need for this forward-looking curriculum and embrace it as educators. GIS graduates are telling us this, as seen in this Esri Young Professionals Network (YPN) survey. Below is an attempt to outline a few important topics amid the massive digital transformation we have experienced. For now, these topics are meant to serve as points of discussion—a means for self-assessment and reflection—to make us think about what we teach today and what tomorrow will bring. Yes, it is a bit IT heavy, but in today's GIS environment, IT is much needed. These topics come from feedback we received from students and graduates, who pointed out that we may not be placing a strong enough emphasis on the software and application development competency of the Geospatial Technology Competency Model (GTCM). GIS Today—GIS is not just a desktop technology anymore. We need to think about the trends that have influenced GIS evolution, such as cloud computing, mobile devices, big data, the Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning and others. An important point to discuss here is the use of the technology to solve problems as well as facilitate access to information—anywhere, anytime, on any device. GIS as a Service—The industry is shifting rapidly from specific software implementations to services in which the underlying technology is less visible–and probably less important—to the user of this technology. While the enterprise deployments providing some of these services will be important to understand, we probably need not focus on that in these early stages. Information products are fueled by services—ready-to-use services or those we can create—and there are different protocols and capabilities we can expose through these services, which would be important concepts to discuss. Understanding the notion of hosting, whether through the cloud or on-premises infrastructure, and demonstrating how GIS is web-oriented architecture (without necessarily calling it that) are key. GIS in Your Apps—People use simple, focused apps to access information at home, and this same trend is now in the workplace. The industry is moving away from long development cycles to the use of apps that are easily configured, which allows organizations to stay current with technology. How people experience GIS through apps that are ready to use, configurable, native, web based, etc., also emphasizes the notion that information can be made available in many possible ways to those who need it. These apps are fueled by underlying maps, layers, and services provided by server technology, access to which is facilitated through a portal. Access, of course, could be dictated by identity and credentials. GIS APIs and SDKs—GIS, as an information system, is built with SDKs and APIs. As GIS has become embedded into all aspects of business, the need for developers has grown. Understanding that GIS capabilities can be extended and having knowledge and experience with software libraries, APIs, and SDKs will afford students opportunities to grow into their careers. Graduates have expressed a strong desire and employers have expressed a strong need for this programming knowledge, whether it is Python, JavaScript, or any other language that emerges in the future. GIS in Your IT—This also falls under the “software and application development” competency of the GTCM, specifically, to design a geospatial system architecture that responds to user needs, including desktop, server, and mobile applications. Understanding what it means to architect and manage a GIS, using an organization's infrastructure, whether in the cloud or on-premises, is a must. The focus is on the management of the networks, portals, map servers, web servers, databases, and data stores and on the understanding of how these components work together. Graduates entering today's workforce will be needing these skills. GIS in the Field—Organizations are employing field GIS workflows, whether through crowdsourcing, citizen science, secure data collection, or maintenance. Content can be delivered in many ways in the field, such as via a public-facing, highly available app or by supporting an internal-facing, intermittently connected, field collection app. Teaching a variety of approaches is important. More Types of Services—Other services provide additional capabilities—whether through client- and server-rendered services or by simply enabling users to access specific functionality, such as real-time GIS capabilities, to solve a problem. GIS as Geospatial Data Science—Careers that include data science have exploded. Geospatial technology curricula ought to better mesh with data science/analytics curricula, infusing traditional geospatial technology topics with data science methods. This should include big data analytics platforms/databases, machine learning, Python and R data scientific libraries, business intelligence (BI) technologies, NoSQL databases, and mapping APIs. A program might promote these as data analytics, data engineering, machine learning, artificial intelligence, or in other ways. And, of course, one should not neglect traditional topics, such as mapping and visualization, spatial analytics, and data management, being infused with the above. Now how do we learn and how do we teach GIS? GIS is a changing field, and change is accelerating. Transformation is occurring not just in the curriculum but also in how we learn, the resources we use to teach, and pedagogic approaches. The way one learns GIS in class should probably equate with how one learns it in the workplace. We ought to be considering a shift in the traditional resources we've used so far in our classrooms; a single book that covers a whole class may not be enough anymore. Also, a book that was written six months ago may likely be outdated. Modernized Curriculum = Shift in Resources Used and Pedagogy Classes need to be agile, which means that writing and following cookbook exercises are not sustainable ways to teach rapidly changing technology. The Internet and the wealth of information available provide ways for users to find answers fast. Relying on recently updated online documentation, blogs, and other freely available web-based resources and channels is key. An important concern persists, though—how do we know what information is good to include (i.e., truly current and worthy material)? There is a lot of information to weed out. "Less is more" is a generally appropriate approach; when in doubt, leave it out. A less desirable approach is a disclaimer of "keep in mind that . . . " or "use at your own discretion." In the workplace, students will also come across a staggering amount of information, so it is important to learn how to discern what is quality content (with guidance, if need be) and applicable to solving a problem. At Johns Hopkins, we follow some of the above approaches to keep content current and foster a culture of collaboration and peer-to-peer interaction among students, which, in turn, encourages community building; this is particularly important for fully online courses. Challenging students to take more responsibility for their learning when solving a problem, is crucial. There certainly are many other approaches to handling some of the challenges in teaching modern GIS – feel free to share yours! The AAG Annual Meeting and the Education Summit @ Esri User Conference (Esri UC) sessions on "Modern GIS Practices in Your Curriculum," could be great venues for continuing this discussion. ... View more

Thanks to Dr. Ming-Hsiang Tsou at San Diego State University for sharing his thoughtful vision of ways to enhance geospatial technology curricula with big data analytics and spatial data science concepts. Thanks to everyone for the great questions and discussion.  The recording and slides are located  here.    Further events of interest and resources mentioned: Data Science symposium (April 26-28) co-sponsored by Harvard's CGA and Esri UCGIS annual symposium themed "Frontiers of Geospatial Data Science" (May 22-May 24) "50 Years of Data Science" article by David Donoho ... View more

Thanks to everyone who joined the "ArcGIS API for Python” web meeting on Nov 8, and special thanks to the presenters, Rohit Singh (Esri) and Peter Knoop (University of Michigan)! Below is a follow up of our discussion.          The recording and slides are located  here.  The main focus of the meeting was to discuss the capabilities of the Python API for teaching, research and administration of ArcGIS in academic setting. We particularly suggest anyone interested in automating ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Enterprise administration to take a look at the recording - Peter Knoop shared invaluable lessons learned and innovative workflows for administering ArcGIS Online at University of Michigan. Note, in the Box folder above, the Word document titled ArcGISAPIforPython_HandsOn.doc was revised to streamline some of the instructions to install the API. Please grab an updated copy.  Further resources: ArcGIS API for Python home ArcGIS API for Python GeoNet pages Five Tips to Get Started with Jupyter Notebooks blog Three Reasons to Use Jupyter Notebooks blog ArcGIS DevLabs – under Python API ArcGIS API for Python Esri UC Plenary presentation Introduction to Scripting your Web GIS with ArcGIS API for Python ArcGIS API for Python in 5 Minutes ArcGIS Python API: Introduction to Scripting your Web GIS Esri UC presentation ArcGIS API for Python: Advanced Scripting UC presentation DevSummit Hands On Workshop There are a couple of Esri Training courses coming out in 2018 on the Python API.   Feel free to post any further questions here.   Look forward to seeing everyone at the Big Data Analytics web meeting on Wed, Dec. 6 at 10am PDT. ... View more

At a recent meeting for State of Virginia University Consortium (~18 institutions), a lot of best practices were discussed surrounding portal administration and management of ArcGIS Online (cloud) or ArcGIS Enterprise (on-premise) portals. One of the items discussed is what to do with existing content created by students who have graduated. As administrators of ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Enterprise portals in academia, we often work with influx of students coming to our organization and graduating after certain amount of time. What do we do with all the content they create? We all have dealt with this in different ways, such as:      Let it accumulate over time and keep it in the production environment ArcGIS Online or ArcGIS Enterprise portal      After student graduates, delete the content and remove the student user      Stage a separate portal to keep a copy of the student content, then delete it from the production environment portal      Others? While any of the above are valid approaches, as a best practice, we’ve started suggesting that instructors at the end of a course or a program advise students to use the ArcGIS Online Assistant  tool to transfer content from a production portal to their own Personal, Developer or other ArcGIS Online/ArcGIS Enterprise account.  The ArcGIS Online Assistant would give students (or any named user in a portal) the ability to transfer their content and “take it” with them. Chrissy Rothgeb at James Madison University, Cise IT Labs and Server Support, has already started advising faculty to incorporate this approach. As a result of our discussion, she created the attached PPT to be shared with faculty and students, listing specific instructions on how to transfer this content. Thanks for sharing, Chrissy, and for providing permission for anyone to use the attached PPT and share with respective faculty/students!! Advantages of this approach:      Students get to keep their content and build a portfolio of maps and other information products to share with potential employers      Students are empowered to administer and manage their own ArcGIS Online portal, which gives them an essential and marketable skill in today’s GIS world      It gives us as administrators the ability to safely remove content and delete users without having to worry about lost content      Others? Further considerations:      For anyone using enterprise logins (SSO), this must be done before the user is removed from the enterprise directory, which disables the ArcGIS account and the user can no longer login      This can be done for ArcGIS Enterprise portals as well – the name of the tool could be deceiving. Also, Portal for ArcGIS is now a component of ArcGIS Enterprise, and on the tool itself one would still see “Portal for ArcGIS” as the option (vs ArcGIS Enterprise).      This tool can be shared and used by any named user, whether student, faculty or staff      Distributed collaboration could achieve a similar result - it is currently available between ArcGIS Enterprise and ArcGIS Online portals. In future releases, we will see ArcGIS Online to ArcGIS Online collaboration, where transfer of content would be possible between two ArcGIS Online portals.   Further feedback is welcome! ... View more

Thanks to everyone who joined the "Insights for ArcGIS” web meeting on 10/11, and thanks to all the presenters! Below is a follow up of our discussion.        The recording and slides are located here. In the folder above, there is a Word document script and accompanying data (zipped shapefile) for an upcoming Learn ArcGIS lesson using Insights for ArcGIS - if anyone wants to utilize it as an activity/assignment. We've been cleared to use the data and this draft so feel free to share.       There are a number of upcoming webinars on Insights for ArcGIS, feel free to attend/share with others:       What Is Insights for ArcGIS? | Webinar: Wednesday, October 18        Spatial Business Intelligence: How Customers Have Used Insights for ArcGIS | Webinar: Wednesday, November 8        Insights for ArcGIS: Digging Deep into Data and Analytics | Webinar: Wednesday, November 29  Further resources: Solve a spatial problem Quick Start Exercise  Insights blog Insights videos - Insights for ArcGIS - YouTube   Opelika Utilities case study and accompanying 2 min video Insights for ArcGIS: An Introduction video Insights for ArcGIS: Advanced Topics video Feel free to post any further questions here. Look forward to the ArcGIS API for Python web meeting on Wed, Nov. 8 at 10am PDT. ... View more

Thanks to everyone who joined our “Teaching ArcGIS Enterprise” web meeting. Attached are some of the resources we discussed, the presenter slides, as well as the recording for those who didn’t make it.       “ArcGIS Enterprise: Architecting Your Deployment” pdf (attached) – this document was created post-UC, given the increased interest and questions.       Recording is here, along with slides (GeoNet could not handle files larger than 50MB).       SSL certificate discussion – certainly a pain point to be aware of – explanation of different types of SSL certificates in the Enable HTTPS on your web server documentation – as discussed, likely a CA-signed certificate would be used, and self-signed certs are definitely not recommended.      Ports used by various components of ArcGIS Enterprise – to be aware of:      Ports used by ArcGIS Server      Ports used by Portal for ArcGIS      Ports used by ArcGIS Data Store      Ports used by GeoEvent Server      Blog on items to keep in mind when Launching ArcGIS Enterprise in AWS (or on any platform).      ArcGIS Enterprise Functionality Matrix      If anyone goes down the road of having ArcGIS Enterprise in individual student AWS instances, the proper way to obtain licensing for each student is through ArcGIS Developer Subscription.      AWS Lambda service Siva mentioned – would be interesting to explore! Feel free to post any further questions here. Look forward to the Insights discussion on Oct 11 at 10am PDT. ... View more

*Updated 2023 For a while we have recommended that the best approach for managing ArcGIS Online is SAML logins (previously known as enterprise logins), commonly referred to as Single Sign On (SSO). SSO is a capability supported by many vendors, which has been broadly implemented across organizations, including in higher education, to enable a user to access multiple systems with a single username and password. With the upcoming retirement of ArcGIS Desktop,  the ArcGIS named user model will be the only method to license ArcGIS. Single Use and Concurrent Use methods of licensing ArcGIS Pro will be deprecated. Hence, it is crucial that organizations implement SAML logins for efficient access to all ArcGIS apps, including ArcGIS Pro. The information below will be useful for those who are not familiar with or have not yet implemented SAML logins. SSO explained SSO enables a user to use the same set of credentials for signing into multiple applications. This means that students, faculty, and staff can use the same credentials coming from their institution’s enterprise identity store to login to ArcGIS Online. When configured to use SSO, ArcGIS relies on your institution's authentication and authorization mechanisms. When a new user accesses ArcGIS for the first time and they successfully authenticate and are authorized, an ArcGIS Online account is automatically created and linked to their institutional identity. SSO can be set up for any of your ArcGIS Online organizations or ArcGIS Enterprise instances. What are the benefits of SSO Ease of access – one set of credentials will be used. Simplified User management – this is HUGE for academia. Enabling SSO means that no additional account logins need to be created for ArcGIS Online. We don’t have to add students to the organization manually (or via script) and share credentials with them. It eliminates inefficiencies associated with creating and managing multiple accounts, which takes time and thus is an incurred cost. Students and faculty have one account only, which makes it easy to save projects and build their geospatial portfolio. When a student or faculty is no longer affiliated with the university, and has been removed from the institution's identity store, access is prevented automatically. They will no longer be able to login to ArcGIS Online. Having SSO enabled could help facilitate easier tracking of ArcGIS Online usage across campus. Once you are using institutional identities, then you have a key to join information between ArcGIS Online and your authoritative campus systems. For example, you can collect information such as usage across degrees and programs, or take a username from ArcGIS Online and determine a user's role (student, faculty, staff) from another system, etc. An example is described here.   What you would still need to do (i.e., what tasks it does not eliminate) Manage groups – a group for a course or project may still need to be created, and users added to it. SAML-based group membership functionality is available to help with this workflow. Manage content when a student or faculty leaves the institution, if desired.   Communication will still need to take place when offboarding users (graduating students, faculty leaving an institution), to ensure they are prepared before  they lose access to the institution’s organization. Check Messaging for ArcGIS Online users leaving the university. Organizational challenges and solutions Cost Savings – we have seen a handful of instances where a cost recovery policy precluded enabling of SSO. Proposed solution: While organizational structures and approaches differ, we have recommended Central Funding for ArcGIS software (not support/services) in combination with adoption of SSO. That has worked well for many institutions. While such a change may impact budgets in different units in different ways, the overall result is lower total cost of ownership for the institution through efforts saved on managing ArcGIS. Please check Funding and Support Models for GIS and We only provide MS Excel for Business majors resources. Collaboration with IT – we sometimes hear of a lack of collaboration with IT units as a barrier to SSO. In the majority of these instances, the initial communication with appropriate IT teams has not been made, or one attempt was made and not followed up on. Proposed solution: SSO has become an industry standard with which campus IT organizations are now very familiar. Please reach out to the appropriate team(s) and place a request to use established methods for your institution. It is important that the initial communication with your IT team(s) be clear, complete, collaborative, and include a specific request to implement SSO to support ArcGIS. Be sure to follow-up at regular intervals to ensure the implementation goals are met. Using SSO for ArcGIS, in collaboration with the appropriate campus IT resources, requires little ongoing effort to maintain, while you can realize enormous savings in effort spent managing accounts. Technology issues – they rarely appear though we do hear of them occasionally. Proposed solution: Please reach out and work with Esri Technical Support. They are there to help. In addition, please reach out to highered@esri.com for additional support and recommendations. Because the SSO approach is based on industry standards, issues are rare, however, when they do occur, working with Esri Support to resolve your issue will also benefit others in the educational community with similar implementations. Bottom Line - How do we do it Work with your IT department and refer to the documentation – these are industry standards, and IT staff will be aware of them. Attached is a template letter to College/University IT staff that could be used to request SSO. Esri Technical Support is there to help if any issues arise.  Further feedback is welcome! ... View more

*Updated 2023  We are continuing to see questions about ArcGIS and high-performance computing (HPC), such as:  I am part of a grant involving HPC – how do I run ArcGIS in HPC?  What specific ArcGIS tools work in HPC environment?  How do I license ArcGIS in a HPC environment?  Where do I go for further questions?  Conceptual Summary  Some of the inquiries we’ve received do not distinguish between multicore computers and HPC. This could stem from general fuzziness about what some people mean by HPC, and how the term has evolved in recent years. Most modern desktop computers, including laptops, are “multicore” – meaning they have more than one CPU (central processing unit).  If there is an environment where multiple computers are connected (and each of these may have multiple cores), then you have a compute cluster or distributed compute environment, which could be run in various infrastructures, commercial cloud being the likely place for such an environment. Traditionally HPC, or a distributed compute environment, is described as multiple computers (hundreds) connected and traditionally application software was specifically written for this compute environment.  A lot of the tools in ArcGIS Pro can take advantage of multicore hardware and parallel processing. Some tools do this automatically, some honor a geoprocessing environment, that allows one to specify how many processors one wants to use. Note that not all ArcGIS Pro tools run parallel processing and these tools do not run across multiple machines, therefore a user would need a large single machine to do a big job.  For a full list of the spatial analysis tools that can utilize parallel processing, please refer to this documentation: ArcGIS Pro Parallel Processing   ArcGIS Pro is desktop software which runs on a Windows platform, but what if you are running a Linux HPC environment?  Deployment Options  The vast majority of HPC environments are Linux based, for which a build for ArcGIS Pro does not exist.   For users who have a Linux HPC, there are 2 options available.  Option 1: Deploy ArcGIS Enterprise  ArcGIS Enterprise and the GeoAnalytics Server and Image Server (Raster Analytics) server roles are designed to run in distributed compute environments and can also run across multiples cores of a single machine. These roles are designed to take advantage of distributed storage (not all on one node/disk) and distributed computation (multiple computers).  With a deployment of ArcGIS Enterprise, users can then deploy any of the additional server roles that suit their analytical needs.  These roles are made available via ArcGIS Enterprise but can be accessed from a desktop application, such as ArcGIS Pro, or from a web browser (such as the Map Viewer). Running analysis tools utilizing these server roles can be much faster since the analysis tools have been optimized for the distributed computation across multiple nodes. Users utilizing these tools do not need to do anything additional (coding or writing an application) to take advantage of their distributed compute environment.  For additional guidance, below is documentation related to various configurations for raster analysis and deep learning:  Configure and deploy raster analytics  Configure ArcGIS Image Server for deep learning raster analytics   Option 2: Deploy ArcGIS Server  If a user is looking for core geoprocessing tools that are part of ArcGIS Pro (the ArcPy python library), these are found within ArcGIS Server.  By installing and licensing ArcGIS Server, users can then programmatically run the ArcPy geoprocessing tools via scripting environments.  Conclusion  With a Windows HPC environment, users have the option of installing ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Enterprise, or ArcGIS Server. In a Linux based cluster, ArcGIS Enterprise or ArcGIS Server provide the best options. Secondly, the GeoAnalytics Server and Image Server (Raster Analytics) server roles utilize distributed computing and can run across multiple machines, or multiple cores of a single machine. A base ArcGIS Enterprise deployment would need to be setup, and these additional server roles enabled.  Further questions  As an academic user, please reach out to highered@esri.com with any Education-related questions.  ... View more

The ArcGIS Developer Subscription is now available and it is a way to provide students (as well as faculty and staff) access to a variety of ArcGIS applications and capabilities, including their own dedicated ArcGIS Enterprise and ArcGIS Online portals, along with other developer tools.   Of the following ArcGIS Developer Subscription plans, any student can sign up for the Essentials level, without going to a Site License Administrator, but that does not give them many options - it does not provide ArcGIS Enterprise licensing, dedicated ArcGIS Online organization (2,500 credits, 5 users), and more advanced capabilities. As part of a Site License, students, faculty and staff are eligible for the Enterprise level of the ArcGIS Developer subscription. In this blog, we wanted to document a possible process for obtaining ArcGIS Developer subscriptions (Enterprise level) for students. Why do that? I’d like my students to:       Have ArcGIS Enterprise licensing, including advanced Server roles and capabilities – get experience in setting up and managing ArcGIS Enterprise.       Have their own ArcGIS Online organization (2,500 credits, 5 users).       Experience Administrator role functions, such as setup a portal home page, add users, delete users, experience portal management through scripting, etc. (ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Enterprise).       Transfer their content from university portals (ArcGIS Online or ArcGIS Enterprise) to their own portal (ArcGIS Online or ArcGIS Enterprise) – they can build and keep a portfolio of all projects they have worked on.       Have access to many other ArcGIS tools and capabilities available with the ArcGIS Developer Subscription. Steps to request ArcGIS Developer subscription for students are below – note that there could be variations in the assignment and management of ArcGIS Developer subscription codes, depending on the institution preferences. My Esri account access is used for distribution of licensing and executables, as part of the ArcGIS Developer Subscription. The workflow outlined below could be appropriate for issuing subscriptions to many students (i.e. in a course setting), and assuming that the students will not be accessing the university’s My Esri account. For issuing ArcGIS Developer Subscriptions to faculty or students who have access to My Esri, the majority of these steps could be done by Site License Administrator or faculty/staff who has licensing privileges in My Esri. Bottom line: The assumption is that students don’t have access to the university My Esri portal, hence they will need to create a new My Esri account, activate their code, and from their My Esri account, download any software executables and licensing.       Site License Administrator or authorized staff/faculty would email Esri Customer Service to request “X” amount of ArcGIS Developer Subscriptions (Enterprise level), to be used by students in “X” course.         Esri Customer Service will issue the codes – they will be emailed back in an Excel file, and will appear in My Esri, under “Manage Developer Subscriptions”. Each code will start with “ADS” plus a series of numbers.         Two options to share with students:   In the Excel file, assign your students to a specific code, then share that code assignment with your students. Instruct your students to go to http://my.esri.com and click on the “Create a new account” link. The ArcGIS Developer Subscription code will be activated in the student’s My Esri account. Site License Administrator or authorized staff/faculty, using the university’s My Esri account, could manually “Send Developer Subscription Codes” to the student’s email (under “Licensing”, then “Manage Developer Subscriptions”). The student would get an email asking them to “Register your ArcGIS Developer Subscription”. They would need to follow the “Register Your Subscription” link, and given that they do not have access to the university’s My Esri account, they will need to “Create a new account”. The ArcGIS Developer Subscription code will be activated in the student’s My Esri account.   Both options will achieve the same – the issued ArcGIS Developer Subscriptions would be tracked under “Manage Developer Subscriptions” in My Esri – date of activation, name and email, to whoever they are issued to, will be visible.         Students would need to go to their My Esri account and register their code (sent to them in the Excel spreadsheet or emailed to them, depending which method above is used). Under “My Organizations”, they will see “Licensing Forms” section. They would need to click on “Developer Subscription Registration” and register the code.          Under the “Developer” Menu, they will need to click the “Activate” button to activate their Developer Subscription.    6.   At this point, they can create their ArcGIS Online organization, which will give them 2,500 credits and (5) named users.         They will be able to download their install executables (under Downloads), and download licensing available with the ArcGIS Developer Subscription (Create New Provisioning File), depending on the capabilities that would be taught in the class. Alternatively, the executables could be provided by the university or instructor via a distribution method of choice, which is probably recommended.          Attached is a Word doc with possible instructions for students on how to Download executables and licensing for ArcGIS Enterprise or any tools provided with the ArcGIS Developer Subscription, and setup their own ArcGIS Online organization. Feel free to modify and reuse.        Further items to consider:      It would make sense that the ArcGIS Developer Subscription is issued per student. What if different instructors at a university decide to request ArcGIS Developer Subscriptions for students in different courses? How would one keep track of which students have been issued codes already?        A: Regardless of the method used to register the codes, once the students activate their subscriptions, a Site        License Administrator would be able to see the name and email of the student that the license was issued to (Under        Manage Developer Subscription).         ArcGIS Developer Subscription is active for (1) year – what happens after that?        A: This is a university preference, licenses could be renewed upon request from Site License Administrator. An       option could be that the student purchases a student license and any ArcGIS Online or ArcGIS Enterprise content       be transferred into that organization.           If the students have an existing My Esri account, or a My Esri account associated with the university, could this be confusing?        A: A student could potentially end up with multiple My Esri accounts.  Please feel free to share any thoughts or experiences with the attached workflow. ... View more