This topic provides an overview of what an ArcGIS portal is, the main components, and the key capabilities it provides for developers.
What is a portal?
An ArcGIS portal, also referred to as portal, is a website with tools and applications that users and developers can use to create, manage, access, and share geospatial content and data. As a developer, it allows you to host many different types of content that you can use to build applications such as web maps, web scenes, hosted layers, and data services. It also supports hosting other types of content such as files, low-code/no-code applications, and Python notebooks. The content in a portal can be private, shared with the organization members, or shared publicly. A portal also contains tools that support tasks such as creating developer credentials, creating layers, importing data, creating data services, managing groups, and managing members.
Below are the key capabilities a portal provides developers:
- Security and authentication: Private access to a website to create, manage, and host content for your applications.
- Developer credentials: Create and manage API key and OAuth 2.0 credentials for your custom applications.
- Content management: Create and share web maps, web scenes, and hosted layers for your applications.
- Data services: Create and host data as feature services, vector tile services, map tile services, image services, and other services for your applications.
- Portal service: Access the portal service directly to build applications and automate workflows.
- Low-code/no-code apps: Create, store, and share apps by configuring them with app builders.
Portal components
The main components of a portal are the following:
- Website: Unique domain and URL with pages and tools that support all portal content management and administration tasks for an organization.
- Portal service: The underlying service for a portal that can be used to access the portal and content programmatically.
- Data store: The infrastructure for storing all portal content and data services data.
- Members: The list of users that have an ArcGIS account and can sign in to a portal.
- Tools: Tools with developer, administration, mapping, data management, and sharing functionality.
- Apps: Applications and app builders for configuring applications, dashboards, story maps, and field data collection apps.
Organization
An organization is the list of members, also known as users, that can sign in, access, and interact with a portal. All of the members of an organization typically belong to the same business, institution, or entity. Each member has an ArcGIS account that has been approved by an administrator to access a portal. Each member is assigned a user type, set of roles, and privileges that define the portal capabilities and features available.
Types of portals
ArcGIS portals are hosted in Esri's infrastructure or in your own infrastructure. The type of portal you have, where it is hosted, how many users it supports, and how you access it depends on the type of product you have.
ArcGIS Location Platform and ArcGIS Online portals
ArcGIS Location Platform and ArcGIS Online developers can access their own portal after they sign up for ArcGIS Location Platform or subscribe to ArcGIS Online. A portal website, portal service, and data store are all created automatically as part of the sign-up process and hosted in Esri's infrastructure in the cloud. By default, the portal is private and has a unique domain that you define when you sign up. The portal can only be accessed by the owner (administrator) and members who have an ArcGIS account and have been added to the organization.
ArcGIS Enterprise portals
ArcGIS Enterprise developers can also create and access their own portal by installing Portal for ArcGIS. The portal website, portal service, and data store are all hosted in your own infrastructure. The domain to access it is configured with the web adaptor where it is installed. The portal can only be accessed by members who have an ArcGIS Enterprise account and have been added to the organization.
Portal capabilities
The key capabilities and functionality a portal provides for developers are listed below:
Tools
A portal contains a number of tools to perform content management tasks:
- Developer credential tool: Create API key and OAuth 2.0 developer credentials for custom applications.
- Mapping tools: Tools such as the Map Viewer and Scene Viewer for creating, exploring, and share web maps.
- Content management tools: Tools for creating and sharing content with members of your portal.
- Data management tools: Tools for importing and creating layers and data services.
- Portal administration tools: Configure and administer website pages and tools for the portal and organization.
Security and authentication
A portal provides secure access to all resources in a portal.
- Sign-in and user authentication.
- OAuth 2.0 authentication.
- API key authentication.
- Access token creation.
- Access token verification.
- Member and group security.
- Content security.
- Data service security.
Developer credentials
A portal allows you to create and manage developer credentials to allow custom applications to access specific resources.
- Create and manage API key and OAuth 2.0 credentials.
- Assign and manage privileges for credentials.
- Grant access to specific items in a portal.
- Grant access to specific data services.
- Create client IDs and client secrets.
- Create temporary access tokens.
- Recycle API keys access tokens.
Content management
A portal supports creating and sharing content items.
- Create, manage, and share items.
- Create hosted feature layers, vector tile layers, map tile layers, imagery layer, and more.
- Create and author web maps and web scenes for applications or low-code/no-code applications.
- Set the sharing level of all items to either private, groups, organization, or public.
- Share maps, layers and applications to support collaboration.
- Create and manage groups to share content items in your portal.
- Search for content in your organization.
- Organize content in folders.
- Define metadata for all content.
- Filter, categorize, and tag content.
Data services
A portal supports hosted layers and data services for applications.
- Create, manage, and organize geospatial content, files, and data.
- Import your data to create hosted layers and feature services.
- Update, edit, and manage access to feature service data.
- Create data services such as vector tile services and map tile services.
Portal service
A portal supports a portal service and administration tools that allow you to manage and administer the features and members of your organization.
- Manage the subscription.
- Add and remove members in your organization.
- Manage user types, privileges, and roles.
- Monitor site service status resource usage such as data storage.
- Manage all licenses.
- Configure the website behavior and functionality.
- Configure all portal privacy and item access settings.
Low-code/no-code apps
A portal supports creating and hosting apps with builders.
- Use builders such as Instant Apps to create applications hosted in your portal.
- Configure and re-configure applications.
- Share applications with everyone or just members of your organization.