ArcMap

Manage ArcMap portal connections

ArcGIS Desktop can connect to ArcGIS Online or Portal for ArcGIS. By default, ArcGIS Desktop clients connect to http://www.arcgis.com. To connect to your organization's Portal for ArcGIS or to an ArcGIS Online for organizations site from ArcMap, use the Manage Portal Connections tool in the ArcGIS Administrator as described in this topic.

Use the Manage Portal Connections tool in the ArcGIS Administrator to perform the following tasks:

  • Add a portal URL for ArcMap to use.

    The http://www.arcgis.com URL is present by default and cannot be removed. You need to add a URL to connect from ArcMap to a Portal for ArcGIS website or to an ArcGIS Online for organizations site that uses enterprise security methods such as Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), Windows Active Directory, or SSL.

    The URL to connect to a Portal for ArcGIS website is in the form https://webadaptor.domain.com/arcgis or https://loadbalancer.domain.com/arcgis. In these examples, webadaptor.domain.com is the fully qualified name of the machine where the web adaptor is installed, loadbalancer.domain.com is the fully qualified name of the server where a third-party load balancer is installed, and arcgis is the context. Note that you must provide the fully qualified server name in the portal URL.

    The URL to connect to an ArcGIS Online for organizations portal that uses enterprise security methods is in the format https://<organization short name>.maps.arcgis.com.

  • Connect to an available portal from ArcMap.
  • Remove a URL from the list of available portal connections. You can only remove URLs you added to the list; you cannot remove the default http://www.arcgis.com URL.
  • View a portal connection and edit the URL.

Add portal connections

There are occasions when you will want to access your organization's portal from ArcMap rather than access the default portal (http://www.arcgis.com). Or you might have connected to your organization's portal and want to switch back to the default ArcGIS Online connection. To do this, use Manage Portal Connections in the ArcGIS Administrator as described in the following steps:

  1. Close all ArcGIS Desktop applications on your machine.
  2. Open ArcGIS Administrator from All Programs > ArcGIS > ArcGIS Administrator.
  3. Click the ArcGIS node in the table of contents.
  4. Click Advanced.

    The Advanced Configuration dialog box appears.

  5. Under the ArcGIS Online section, click Manage Portal Connections.

    The Manage ArcGIS Portal Connections dialog box appears.

  6. Click Add.
  7. Type the URL of the portal and click OK to save.
  8. To connect to the portal you just added, select the URL from the connection list and click Connect.

    Connecting to the portal URL essentially connects you to the website's home page. You must sign in to the portal from ArcMap to access portal content and publish to the portal.

Remove or edit portal connections

You can remove or edit nondefault portal connections from the Manage ArcGIS Portal Connections dialog box.

  • To remove a portal connection, select the URL from the connection list and click Delete.
  • To edit the URL of a portal connection, select the URL from the connection list and click Edit. When you finish editing the portal connection information, click OK to save the changes.

Portal connection status

ArcMap uses the ArcGIS Connection utility to determine its portal connection status.

You can change the frequency with which ArcGIS checks for a connection by doing the following:

  1. While ArcMap is open, right-click the globe icon in the system tray of your client machine.
  2. Click Properties.
  3. Choose when ArcMap should test automatically for a connection. The default is to check only at the start of a session, but you can specify to check at an interval or to never check at all.
  4. If you want to test periodically, click the up or down arrow to increase or decrease the minimum frequency (in seconds) that ArcGIS will check for a portal connection.