Publish a feature service from ArcMap

To publish a feature service to an ArcGIS GIS Server site, prepare your data, author a map, publish a map service, and enable the Feature Access capability on it. This generates a URL through which you can use the feature service. The lifetime of the map service controls the lifetime of the feature service. If the map service is shut down, the feature service is shut down as well.

License:

To publish feature services, you must use an ArcGIS GIS Server site. See About ArcGIS Server licensing roles in the ArcGIS Enterprise help for more information.

If you're working with traditional versioned data, by default, only the version in the map document is exposed through the feature service when you publish the service. If you want to query or edit a different version, change the version your map references before you publish.

Note:

If your map document contains an in-memory join or relate, you cannot use the joined or related data when you publish it as a feature service. See the related error topic for solutions.

Follow these steps to publish a feature service from an ArcMap document:

1. Open your map document in ArcMap and choose File > Share As > Service from the main menu.

   The Share as Service window appears.

2. Choose Publish a service and click Next.
3. Choose the GIS Server connection you want to use from the Choose a connection drop-down list. If the connection you want to use is not listed, you can create a connection by clicking Add ArcGIS Server . For full instructions, see Connect to ArcGIS Server from ArcGIS Desktop.
4. Optionally, in the Publish a Service window, type a new name for the service. The name cannot be more than 120 characters and can contain alphanumeric characters and underscores only.
5. Choose the folder where you want to publish the service, or create a folder to contain the service, and click Continue.

   The Service Editor appears.

6. Set the properties for your map service. You can choose what users can do with your service and take fine-grained control of how the server will expose your service.

   For details on how to manually set map service properties, see Set map service properties. You can also automatically import properties from an existing service definition or a published map service by clicking Import . For information on how to best configure your service for deployment, see Tune and configure services.

   Tip:

   If you close the Service Editor during this session, you'll be prompted to save your work as a draft service. Draft services allow you to come back to your service configuration work at a later time. By default, draft services are saved in the Drafts folder of your ArcGIS Server connection. For more information, see About draft services.

7. In the left pane of the Service Editor, click Capabilities and select Feature Access.

   Enabling this option creates an associated feature service with your map service that allows clients to perform feature editing over the web.

8. In the left pane of the Service Editor, click Feature Access and set the properties for your feature service.

   Here, you can choose what users can do with your service and take fine-grained control of how the server will expose your features. By default, the data exposed through the feature service can be queried and edited. Editing allows users to apply changes to the data in the source geodatabase using the service. For details on how to set feature service properties manually, see Editor permissions for feature services.

9. Click Analyze .

   This examines your map document to determine if it can be published to the server.

10. Fix any errors () in the Prepare window so you can publish your map document as a service.

    You can fix the warnings and informational messages to further improve the performance and appearance of your feature service. For more information about resolving these issues, see Analyze your GIS resource.

    Tip:

    To give yourself more viewing area when configuring your service, click the Collapse button at the top of the Service Editor.

11. Optionally click Preview to see how your map will look when viewed on the web.

    See Preview your map for more information.

12. Once you've fixed the errors and, optionally, any warnings and messages, click Publish .

    Note:

    If the feature service you're publishing will be copying data to the server, the size of the data and your network bandwidth will impact the time it takes to publish.

Your feature service is now running on the GIS Server and can be accessed by clients on your network. If your ArcGIS Server administrator has allowed web access to the service, your service is also now available on the web.