Get started with administering an ArcGIS Online organization

With a subscription to ArcGIS Online, organizations can manage all of their geographic content in a secure, cloud-based Esri environment. ArcGIS Online administrators are responsible for configuring the website, inviting and managing members access and licensing, and managing and monitoring resources.

In this tutorial scenario, you are a newly hired information technology specialist and have been tasked with administering your environmental consulting firm's ArcGIS Online organization. You need to understand and review the key responsibilities you have as an administrator of an ArcGIS Online organization.

This tutorial was last tested on March 29, 2024.

Requirements

• ArcGIS organizational account with an Administrator role (see options for software access)
• You will be completing the tutorial using your own ArcGIS Online organization. As you work through the tutorial, you will be making live updates that may impact your organization members' experience.

Get started with administering your organization

Since you are taking over administration of an existing organization, your first steps will be to review some of the organization’s key indicators of health to decide what to learn about first and how to prioritize your administrative tasks.

Use the Organization page to check organization health

First, you will sign into your ArcGIS organizational account as an administrator and review the Organization page. The Organization page is a single location to see some of the critical metrics of your organization’s health. To ensure uninterrupted access to the organization for all members as you transition into the role of administrator, you’ll need to note two pieces of information available on this page: the renewal date and the credit budget.

1. Sign in to your ArcGIS organization with your administrator account.
2. On the ribbon, click the Organization tab.

   

   The Organization page appears. One of the first items to review on this overview page is the account renewal date.

3. In the Organization box, verify the Renewal date information.

   

   Subscriptions typically last for a year at a time. To make sure your members have access to the data, analysis capabilities, and other tools they need, renew the organization on or before the renewal date listed.

   Next, you will review the organization’s remaining ArcGIS Online credits.

4. In the Credits box, verify the total remaining credits.

   

   ArcGIS Online is based on an annual subscription that offers a set of plans, each including an allotted number of members and credits. Credits are the currency used across ArcGIS and are consumed for feature and file storage, performing analytics, using subscriber content, and publishing tiles. Any app that interacts with ArcGIS Online, such as ArcGIS Pro, can use credits. The ArcGIS Online tools and storage that your organization uses will determine the number of credits consumed. In many cases, credit-consuming activities carry a relatively low cost.

   You want to make sure your organization has enough credits to reach the renewal date, though you can purchase credits at any time. Later, you’ll learn strategies for managing credits. Next, you’ll check your organization’s feature data store, which supports your organization’s hosted feature data.

5. On the Organization page, on the Overview tab, click Feature Data Store.

   

   The Feature Data Store window appears.

   

   This window reports on the health of your feature data store, showing both the storage space currently available and when resources are being used. By default, ArcGIS Online organizations include standard feature data stores with 500 GB of storage.

   If your organization is close to using 500 GB of storage, you have two options. First, you can delete content to free up space, or you can upgrade to a premium feature data store. To help decide which of these options is right for your organization, you’ll later create an administrative report to see the content in your organization.

6. Close the Feature Data Store window.

   The Organization page also shows information about members, licenses, and content; you’ll come back to these later.

   Using the Overview page, you’ve reviewed some key metrics to assess your organization’s status. Next, you will review your organization’s security settings.

Check the organization’s security settings

As the administrator of your organization, you can configure security policies for your organization’s website, including settings for sharing, searching, and signing in.

1. If necessary, sign in to your ArcGIS organization with your administrator account.
2. Go to the Organization page and click the Settings tab.
3. Click Security.

   By default, anonymous users can't access your organization's home page; that is, visitors must sign in with a member account. There are benefits to making your organization home page public. For example, if you've configured your home page to showcase your company’s public-facing content, you can make it public so that prospective clients can see your portfolio of projects.

   You’ll set the access and permission settings so anyone can see your organization’s website.

   Caution:

   You will be completing the tutorial using your own ArcGIS Online organization. As you work through the tutorial, you will be making live updates that may impact your organization members' experience.

4. Under Policies, in the Access and permissions section, turn on Allow anonymous access to your organization's website.
5. Make sure Allow members to download licensed Esri applications is enabled.

   

   Enabling this setting allows organization members to download applications from their user profile page. You'll accept the defaults for the remaining policy settings.

   Next, you will configure the sharing and searching settings for your organization.

6. Under Policies, in the Sharing and searching section, turn off Members can make their content, groups, and profile public.

   

   When an item is shared publicly, anyone can find and access the item. You want to ensure that only authoritative content is shared with the public, so you'll disable the option that allows members to share with everyone.

   Note:

   Administrators can still share content outside the organization.

7. Make sure Members can search for content outside the organization is enabled.

   Enabling this setting allows organization members to search for ArcGIS Online content from other organizations. You'll accept the defaults for the remaining sharing and searching settings.

   Next, you will review settings related to usernames and passwords that members use to sign in to the organization. For members with ArcGIS accounts, you can establish rules to determine the format and reuse policy of their passwords.

8. Under Sign-in policy, click Manage password policy.

   

   The Manage password policy window appears with a variety of rules for member passwords. You can define a minimum number of characters and what type of characters are required for passwords. You'll set a rule that prevents members from repeating their last five passwords when they reset their password.

9. In the Manage password policy window, turn on Users cannot reuse the following number of last passwords. Accept the default value of 5.

   

   Note:

   If you're not following the sample, turn on the options that meet the needs of your organization.

10. Click Save.

    There are a number of other security options.

    Under Logins you can specify that members sign in with existing organization-specific enterprise accounts, such as your company or school login credentials. With this approach, members don't need to create and remember multiple usernames to access essential systems. For more information, see documentation on setting up single sign on.

    Under Multifactor authentication you can to enable multifactor authentication for member ArcGIS accounts for added security.

    Under Trusted servers you can to provide access to services that are secured with web-tier authentication. These settings are for a more complex scenario than that of this tutorial. For more information, see Configure security settings.

You have configured your ArcGIS organization’s security, sharing and searching, and password policy settings. Next, you will learn how to monitor your organization’s performance.

Monitor your organization’s performance

Now that you've ensured that nothing in the organization needs immediate attention, you’ll generate and schedule a set of administrative reports to help you keep track of how the organization is being used by members. This will allow you to make informed decisions about credit usage, storage and sharing policies, and more. Reports are most helpful for getting a picture of everything happening in your organization and creating snapshots of that activity for later analysis.

1. If necessary, sign in to your ArcGIS organization with your administrator account.
2. Go to the Organization page and click the Status tab.

   

   The Status page includes a Dashboard tab and a Reports tab.

   The Dashboard tab provides more in-depth information about some of the topics reported on the Overview page such as credits, content, and members. You can review information manually here, which is helpful if you want to see detailed information for a specific member or content item.

   To get a holistic picture of the organization’s members, items, and credits, you’ll generate reports. The item report specifically will allow you to see the items taking up the most space in your feature data store.

3. At the top of the page, click the Reports tab.
4. Click Create report and choose Single report.

   

   Creating a single report will immediately generate a report.

5. For Report type, ensure Item is selected and click Create report.

   

   Depending on the number of items in the organization, the report may take a few moments to complete. When it’s finished, the report will appear on the Reports tab. In addition to the single report, you’ll also set up a schedule to automatically generate periodic reports.

6. Click Create report and choose Report schedule.

   For annual tracking purposes, it is recommended that you generate periodic reports about the organization for later reference.

7. For Report type, ensure Item is selected. For the time range, choose Quarterly, and make sure the Start date value is the current day.
8. Click Create schedule.

   

9. Repeat steps 4-7 to create a Member report and schedule quarterly updates.

   You can also generate other reports as necessary.

10. In the Reports pane, next to the Items report, click Download.

    

    Reports are generated as .csv files.

11. Locate the report in your Downloads folder and open it.

    The report contains information on every piece of content in your organization, including who owns it, when it was created, how many views it’s getting, and how much storage it requires.

12. In the spreadsheet, select Column H, View Counts, and sort the column from largest to smallest. If prompted, choose Expand the selection.

    

13. Copy the item IDs or names of the items that are getting the most views.

    

    Views are one way to measure the popularity or importance of your content. For example, if you’re sharing and promoting content for marketing purposes, item view counts may be a helpful metric for what types of content or topics are performing well with your audience.

14. Sort Columns J and K by largest to smallest and copy the item IDs or names of the items that are taking up the most storage.

    

    Once you identify several specific items that you may want to look into further, you can use the Dashboard tab of the Status tab to look in more depth at individual items. If the items aren’t being used anymore, have been replaced by newer versions, or otherwise aren’t necessary, consider deleting them to free up space in your feature data store.

15. Download and open the Member report.

    Using this report, you can track member activity. For example, if you have a limited number of a certain user type in your organization, and you notice a member hasn’t been active in the organization in a long time, you may consider reallocating that user type to another member who needs it. You can also track how many items each user has, how many credits they’ve used, and other information.

You have set up automated reports that document your organization’s quarterly credit, data store, and membership information. You have explored what the reports contain and how to sort them to view the most key information you need to maintain your organization.

Next, you will learn how to understand and manage credits for your organization.

Understand credit budgeting

Credits are the currency used across ArcGIS and are consumed for specific transactions and types of storage, such as storing features, performing analytics, and using premium content. The most granular way to understand credit consumption in your organization is the Credits dashboard. While the reports you generated were helpful for understanding consumption at the organization level, the dashboard drills deeper into specific credit-consuming actions.

1. Click the Dashboard tab.

   

   The Status page opens to the Credits tab. This tab shows how and by which members the organization’s credits are being used. The default period for which data is reported is 15 days.

2. Use the Usage Aggregation by Time chart to see which category of credit consumption took the most credits in the last 15 days.

   Clicking any of the bars in the Usage Aggregation by Time chart shows credit consumption by the hour for the day you select.

3. Scroll down to the Usage Aggregation by Type donut chart.

   

4. Click the segment of the donut chart that represents the category consuming the most credits.

   The donut chart updates to show a breakdown of credit consuming operations within that category. By understanding what types of operations are consuming the most credits, you can make informed decisions about how many credits to purchase, how many to allocate to users depending on the types of analytics or subscriber content they need to access, and how to manage your content, such as how frequently you check for and remove unused items.

   To enable credit budgeting and allow your members to check their own credit usage, you’ll ensure these options are enabled.

   Note:

   Without Enable credit budgeting tools enabled, each member has no limit to the amount of credits they can use.

5. On the ribbon, click the Settings tab. Click the Credits button.
6. For Credit allocation, enable both Enable credit budgeting tools and Show each member’s available credits on their settings page.

   

   After enabling credit budgeting, you can set a default allocation for the organization or begin allocating credits to members. You can also allocate credits as part of the invitation process.

7. On the ribbon, click the Members tab.

   Next to each member, Credits Remaining lists how many credits each member has.

   

8. For one of the members, under Credits remaining, click the credit number.

   The Set credit allocation window appears.

   

   While you as the administrator can give the member no limit to the credits they can spend, it’s recommended that you keep this limit set. Though Analysis tools in Map Viewer have credit estimation tools, members may still use more credits in an analysis than they intend to if, for example, they forget to apply a filter to the features they’re analyzing, don’t set an analysis environment they mean to, and other mistakes.

9. For Set allocation, enter a number of credits and click Save.

   Note:

   The example image shown uses a credit budget of 200 credits. This budget is based on the member’s job responsibilities and typical ArcGIS usage. Your members may need a higher or lower credit budget depending on what their responsibilities are.

   If any members in the organization run out of credits, you can reset them at any time.

Now you’ve seen many of the key metrics on how your organization is performing, you can decide what topics or tasks to focus on first. To find more resources for administering your organization, see Get started with administration and other documentation resources.

Acknowledgements

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