When you publish a map to an ArcGIS Online or ArcGIS Enterprise portal, it creates a hosted feature layer or hosted tile layer item in the portal that you can share with others so they can access your data.
Before you publish to a portal
Before you publish to an ArcGIS Online or ArcGIS Enterprise portal, you need to do the following:
- To publish to an ArcGIS Enterprise portal, you must add the portal in ArcGIS Administrator. ArcGIS Desktop connects to ArcGIS Online by default.
- Sign in to the portal. The account you use to sign in must have privileges to publish hosted layers. If you're not sure if your account has these privileges, contact your ArcGIS Online or ArcGIS Enterprise portal administrator.
- Add the data to the map that you want to publish as a hosted web layer.
- Configure the layers. For example, set symbology and transparency.
Publish hosted web layers
You can publish the data in your map as a hosted tile layer or hosted feature layer to an ArcGIS Online or ArcGIS Enterprise portal.
Follow these steps to publish a hosted web layer:
- Click File > Share As > Service.
- Choose Publish a service and click Next.
- Choose My Hosted Services from the Choose a connection drop-down menu.
- Type a name for the service.
This name will be used for the hosted web layer item in your portal.
- Click Continue.
The Service Editor opens.
- To specify the type of hosted web layer to publish, click Capabilities and check one (or both) of the following:
- Tile Mapping—Choose this option to publish a cached, read-only hosted tile layer. Hosted tiles layers allow you to provide a responsive reference layer.
- Feature Access—Choose this option to publish a hosted feature layer. You can configure hosted feature layers to allow the people you share it with to edit the data and take the data offline.
- If you checked Feature Access in the previous step, specify the operations By default, people who use your hosted feature layer can only query the data. To allow editing or offline use, click Feature Access under Capabilities and check the boxes for the operations you want to allow.
In this example, the people with whom you share the hosted feature layer will be able to query the layer and create features in it.
- Create—Allow users to add features to the layer.
- Delete—Allow users to delete features from the layer.
- Query—Allow users to view the features and attributes in the layer.
- Sync—Allow users to include the layer in web maps that they take offline.
- Update—Allow users to update the attributes of the features.
- If you checked Tile Mapping in step 6, click Caching and define the number of levels to include in the cache, the tiling scheme you want to use, the minimum and maximum cache scale, and the tile format. You can also create the cache as soon as you publish, or you can build the cache later in your portal.
Building caches in ArcGIS Online consumes credits.
- Click Item Description and provide a summary description of your hosted web layer and tags that will help people find your layer in the portal. You can also provide a more detailed description of the layer, define any restrictions on the use of the layer, and give credit to the entity or entities that allowed you to use the data.
The information you provide for the item description will appear in the hosted web layer's item details in the portal.
- By default, only you have access to the hosted web layer in the portal. To share the layer with others, click Sharing and choose to share with your organization, groups to which you belong, or the public.
- Click Analyze to confirm you can publish the layer to your portal. You must correct any high severity errors before you can proceed with publishing.
- Click Publish to create the hosted web layer item in your portal.
When you connect to the portal, you will see the web layer on the My Content tab of the Contents page.
Now that the layer item exists, the people you shared it with can access it from ArcMap as well as access it in the portal to which you published it.