Compatibility Between ArcGIS Desktop, ArcGIS Pro and ArcGIS Enterprise

When we publish web services from desktop applications (i.e. ArcMap and ArcGIS Pro) to ArcGIS Enterprise, ArcGIS Server web services transform our map content into web GIS resources. This transformation process is managed through service runtime. The behavior and functionalities of web services are determined by the service runtime and the version compatibility between our ArcGIS desktop application and ArcGIS Enterprise. Hence, we must consider the desktop products’ compatibility when publishing to ArcGIS Enterprise.

The following sections summarize the key publishing compatibility considerations when working with different versions of desktop and ArcGIS Enterprise products.

Troubleshooting ArcGIS Pro in Portal Connectivity Issues

When an organization deploys ArcGIS Pro named-user licenses for ArcGIS Enterprise portal, some additional configurations and checks may need to be conducted, when an end user is receiving error messages about connectivity.

Working with Portal for ArcGIS authentication: Enterprise groups, the Portal Administrator Directory, and SAML

A brief background

When managing authentication with your chosen identity store in Portal for ArcGIS, authentication can be configured at the Portal tier, the Web tier, or the External tier. The primary differences from a user experience perspective being Portal tier requires credentials to be provided to sign in and it does not support a Single Sign On (SSO) experience. Web tier can be configured to utilise the ArcGIS Web Adaptor, Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS), and Integrated Windows Authentication (IWA) for a SSO user experience.

If using an enterprise identity store with Portal tier authentication, by its nature it requires a closer integration with your Microsoft Active Directory (AD) or Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) compatible identity store.

Does Portal inherit AD configured membership groups and will users be added to these groups upon login to Portal with their Enterprise Login?

Portal for ArcGIS may be configured for Enterprise logins (eg SAML/Active Directory).   An organisation may require their Portal content to be managed based on Active Directory Group membership.  The below answers the question “Does Portal automatically create groups to match Active Directory Groups and will users automatically be added to these groups when first logging in to Portal using their Enterprise Logins?”

The answer is yes, we simply need to configure portal groups and bind them to  the active directory group using the below steps.

Determining the interdependencies of items in Portal for ArcGIS

With almost any Portal there comes a time when you have dozens of items, created over time by different people, and you may be looking to perform a bit of a clean-up.

The problem now arises that you do not know if the Web Map made by a colleague, who since left the organisation, can be deleted or if it is being used by any other items? You might find that deleting an insignificant-looking item brings your organisation’s most-used application down.

How to determine the machine level status of your ArcGIS Enterprise High Availability environment.

Background: GIS administrators are routinely required to do maintenance activities on their ArcGIS Enterprise High Availability setup. Examples of a maintenance activity can be: Installing Microsoft patches or Esri patches, or resizing instances etc. Before the maintenance is initiated, GIS administrators should know the exact status of the ArcGIS Enterprise setup so that a workflow can be finalized (that is, whether the application on the machine is assigned a Primary or a Standby role). If this is not taken into account, the architecture may become unstable. For example, if the Primary is shutdown first and then the Standby is shutdown, and the Standby is fired up and then the Primary, then the two machines may end up in a scenario where there is confusion as to which machine is the Primary machine.

Multi-tier base deployment of ArcGIS Enterprise 10.8.1 using ArcGIS Enterprise Cloud Builder for Microsoft Azure.

ArcGIS Enterprise Cloud Builder for Microsoft Azure is an application you install on your local Microsoft Windows machine to deploy ArcGIS Enterprise and stand-alone ArcGIS Server sites on Microsoft Azure. Depending on what role you want the site to fill, Azure Cloud builder provides several deployment options.

This blog will discuss the workflow of deploying multi-machine ArcGIS Enterprise (non-HA) with each component of base Enterprise deployment – Portal for ArcGIS, ArcGIS GIS Server, Data Store and App Gateway – installed on its own dedicated servers. One thing to note, starting from Azure Cloud Builder 10.8 for Microsoft Azure,  the base ArcGIS Enterprise deployment is no longer accessed through a load balancer and reverse proxy. The 10.8 version of ArcGIS Enterprise Cloud Builder for Microsoft Azure creates ArcGIS Enterprise deployments that use a single Azure Application Gateway to access the portal and all federated servers – this is referred to as a version 2 (V2) deployment type.

Important Portal for ArcGIS Security Alert

4 June 2020

Esri has announced that they have detected a critical security vulnerability in the Portal for ArcGIS component of ArcGIS Enterprise when special steps are taken by persons with network access to the ArcGIS Enterprise portal to exploit Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF), which can result in access to and control over other infrastructure resources by unauthenticated persons.

Spatial analysis for the rest of us

Since May of this year, when I demonstrated a very early version of the new Insights for ArcGIS product at the Directions LIVE events Esri Australia staged around the country, it has been the topic of many conversations I have had – both internally and with customers.

Everyone is keen to understand where Insights fits in to the ArcGIS platform, and where it sits in relation to other similar products in the broader market.

There’s a buzz about this that I haven’t witnessed for some time in Esri circles, and I’ve got to say – it’s infectious. For me personally, Insights, and the GeoAnalytics Server that is also in the pipeline for ArcGIS 10.5, stand to be highlights of my work over the next year or so.

I’d like to share my early thoughts on Insights, and I hope that leaves you curious enough to find out more.

A Brief Look at the Query and Search Widget for Web AppBuilder

While delivering Arc 2: Essential Workflows, I was enthusiastically describing the wonders and practical uses of the search widget in the Web App Builder for ArcGIS Online or Portal and the capability it has to search content within your feature layers. When asking my students, “which widget should I use?” Some referred to the functionality of the query widget which I had previously demonstrated, while others preferred the power of a search widget. Hopefully by the end of this post you will be well placed to make an informed decision as to whether you should use and configure a query or search widget for your web apps in ArcGIS Online or Portal.