Whether you’ve been building against ArcGIS Server, or you’re just getting your feet wet with ArcGIS online, Geocortex technology is built to enable change, allowing for easy and seamless integration with the ArcGIS platform in its entirety.
In this week’s Geocortex Tech Tip, we take a closer look at the intrinsic nature of web maps, and how Geocortex Essentials can be integrated with ArcGIS online and ArcGIS Enterprise portal.
Video Transcript
“Hi, my name’s Drew and I’m the Chief Technology Officer and in this Tech Tip we’re going to explore how Geocortex Essentials can be used alongside ArcGIS online, or your ArcGIS Enterprise portal, so let’s dive in!
So I think we’ll start with some context surrounding how to connect Geocortex Essentials to the ArcGIS platform. For many years, our customers have been able to connect Geocortex Essentials directly with ArcGIS Server. Public services can be connected to directly, or we can use token or Windows authentication to connect Geocortex Essentials sites to ArcGIS Server map services, feature services, tiled services, and other types. Applications produced by Geocortex Essentials can also connect to ArcGIS Server through that same authentication method.
ArcGIS Online, portal introduced Web Maps, and that’s really the central currency in the geoinformation model. When we used Geocortex Essentials with ArcGIS Enterprise or ArcGIS Online, web maps become an intrinsic part of this equation.
Here we can see multiple users or groups of users signing in to a portal. This can be ArcGIS online or an ArcGIS Enterprise portal, and they’re using their ArcGIS identity to do so, and then they can create web maps inside of this organization. Those web maps can be shared and used within apps like Operations Dashboard, Collector, or Web AppBuilder-based applications so that other users can use those apps that consume the web maps.
If we add Geocortex Essentials to this picture, users can sign in with the exact same ArcGIS identity that belongs to their portal (or ArcGIS Online org). Then, when we author a site, the identity’s credentials are used to fetch content, like the web map. So the very same web maps can be referenced inside of a Geocortex Essentials site. Then apps created out of Geocortex Essentials can be shared back in that portal, increasing the use of GIS throughout the organization.
Let’s have a look at this pattern in practice.
Here’s a web map that I want to use in a Geocortex Essentials application. It contains store locations and it’s stored inside of my ArcGIS online organization.
I’m going to sign into Geocortex Essentials using my ArcGIS online account. Once I’ve signed in, I’m brought to a list of sites that I’m able to manage. This time, I want to add a new site, give it the display name “Stores”, and I’m going to reference a web map from ArcGIS Online to create my application.
Now, I can search the public database for content, or I can hit this checkbox and refine the search results to only the web maps that are inside my organization.
Notice the lock icon indicates that this web map isn’t shared with everyone. That means end users of my application are going to have to sign in with their ArcGIS identity to access this app.
Geocortex Essentials makes a reference to the web map and understands all of the content within it. So it has an understanding of all of the map services and layers that are used within this web map, and now I can start to author my application within Geocortex Essentials Manager.
Let’s add a viewer to this application using our HTML5 viewer template. Without making any configuration changes, lets launch this in a new browser window.
Now, transparently and behind the scenes, I was signed in to this application. In the top right corner you can see that I can sign out and that I’m currently signed in using my ArcGIS Online account. The reason I was signed in is because the web map inside this application is protected. If I sign out, I’m prompted to sign in using my ArcGIS identity. If that web map is shared and made available to everyone, the end user is not required to sign in using an ArcGIS identity or otherwise.
Now that I’ve built an application, I can publish this back in to my ArcGIS Online organization and share it with other users or make it one of my favorites. Notice that this have been given an item ID, and if I click on this link, I’m brought to my ArcGIS Online org, where I’ve got my Stores application. Clicking on this will simply launch my application.
For now, I’ll simply add it to my favorites. If I go into My Content, and then click on Favorites, there’s the Stores application that I just published from Geocortex Essentials.
You can see this pattern in action using Geocortex Essentials to build applications, share them back inside of your ArcGIS Online organization, or inside of your portal so that they can be used by more users.
Geocortex Essentials 5-Series applications also integrate with ArcGIS Enterprise and ArcGIS Online. Here we can see three example applications – Printing, Workflow, and Reporting. An ArcGIS identity is used to sign in to the design experience of these apps.
Once we’ve signed in, we can create content in the form of items. With Geocortex Workflow for example, the item type is a workflow, and with Geocortex Reporting 5, the item type is a report template.
These items are stored inside of the ArcGIS Online organization or within the ArcGIS Enterprise portal alongside apps and web maps and other types of content.
Those items can be used by Geocortex apps or within Web AppBuilder for ArcGIS apps so that more Geocortex content can be shared with other users within the organization.
Now, lets explore this pattern. I’m going to sign in to Geocortex Workflow. I’m using my ArcGIS identity to sign in so that I can restore a workflow that I created earlier. In the File menu, I can browse all of my workflows that I’ve authored, workflows that have been shared with me, or – if I have the URL to a workflow the item ID, and the URL to my ArcGIS Online organization – I can open it that way.
The workflow I’m looking for is one that I worked on recently. This workflow is called “StoreFinder” and it does just that; it allows the user to search for stores inside of the map. I’ve got a search form prompting the user to select from a list of store types, and once they select a store type, if they click search, we’re going to query the stores layer based on the center type that the user selected. Then we’re going to get the extent of the results, set the map to that extent, and then simply display the results in a list. It’s a pretty simple workflow.
If I go to the Info tab, you can see that this workflow is stored inside of my ArcGIS Online organization, and it has an item ID. I’ve named my workflow “StoreFinder” and it’s got a unique URL used to discover it.
Now, if I sign into Web AppBuilder using that same ArcGIS identity, I can access that workflow.
Let’s go to the widget tab in the authoring tool, and add a new widget to my application. I’ll use the workflow widget (which I’ve installed earlier), and I’m allowed to browse for any workflow in my organization. I can look for my content, my organization, groups, and even public workflows.
Using the keyword search “StoreFinder”, I was able to discover the workflow I authored earlier.
Now I’m just running through the workflow inside of my Web AppBuilder designer experience. Let’s look for all strip malls on this map.
You can see that the results are highlighted and then the workflow displays an item picker, allowing me to hover on each result and show the corresponding record on the map.
That’s an example of how Geocortex Workflow 5 was used to integrate with an ArcGIS Online organization by storing an item and consuming it inside of a Web AppBuilder for ArcGIS app.
The idea here is that you can deploy Geocortex alongside other ArcGIS applications that you have that are also consuming web maps. Collector, Operations Dashboard and Web AppBuilder can all be used alongside Geocortex Essentials.
We’ve built Geocortex Essentials to allow our customers to enable technology change. Whether you’ve been building directly against ArcGIS Server, or you’ve started to work with ArcGIS Online, or ArcGIS Enterprise, Geocortex Essentials has technology for you to integrate with the entire ArcGIS platform.
Thanks for watching this short Tech Tip. I hope you learned something today.
Bye for now!”
Want to learn more about how Geocortex Essentials can help organizations of any size or industry address business challenges? Check out the Discovery Center to get a feel for the product.
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