You can configure your portal to get directions between destinations specified in the portal map—a useful piece of functionality if your portal members need to find routes for such things as delivering or picking up packages or customers.
The Directions functionality in the portal map viewer relies on the portal's route and geocode utility services. The portal's geocode utility service is used to locate the addresses or place-names your portal members input for start and end points on their route. The route utility service is used to find the route between start and end points.
As the portal administrator, you must configure a route utility service to make this functionality available. If you do not set a route utility service, the Directions button will not be present in the portal map viewer.
The portal uses the World geocode service hosted in ArcGIS Online by default, but you can configure a custom geocode utility service. You would do this if your organization has its own locator data to use for finding the addresses and places portal members submit to the portal for directions. Or, if your portal does not have access to the default geocode utility service, you must configure a custom geocode utility service; otherwise, portal members will not be able to get directions in the portal map.
Enable Suggest capabilities on your custom geocode utility service if you want address or place-name suggestions to appear when users search in the map viewer.
Configure a route utility service
You can either use an ArcGIS Online route service or your own network analysis service for the route utility service.
Use an ArcGIS Online route service
If your organization has an ArcGIS Online organizational account, you can configure the portal to use an ArcGIS Online route service.
Follow the steps in the "If the service is not from a federated server and requires credentials" section of Configure utility services to add the service as an item to the portal and specify it as the route utility service.
Use your own network analysis service
If you do not have an organizational ArcGIS Online account, you can publish a route service and set that as the portal's route utility service.
Tip:
Route services require the ArcGIS Network Analyst extension. If you are unfamiliar with this extension, see the following topics in the ArcGIS for Desktop help:
The following steps summarize what you must do to configure your own route network analysis service:
- Create a route network analysis layer and publish it as a service.
Follow the instructions in the "Creating the map document" and "Publishing the network analysis service" sections of Tutorial: Publishing a network analysis service, using your own network dataset rather than the tutorial data.
- Configure the resultant service as your portal's route utility service by following the applicable instructions in Configure utility services.
Configure a geocode utility service
Portal for ArcGIS uses the World geocode service hosted in ArcGIS Online by default. If your organization has its own locator data to use for finding addresses and place-names, or if your portal does not have access to ArcGIS Online, publish a geocode service and set it as your portal's geocode utility service.
- Follow the instructions in Creating an address locator in the ArcGIS for Desktop help to create a locator from your data. If you want to use suggestions in the portal map viewer, check the Suggest option on the Create Address Locator tool when you create the locator.
- Publish the locator as a service by right-clicking the locator in the Catalog tree in ArcGIS for Desktop and clicking Share As Service.
For more information on publishing a service, see How to publish a service in the ArcGIS Server help.
- If you did not enable suggestions on the locator when you created it, you can enable suggestions on the geocode service after it is published. Open the Service Editor for the service in ArcGIS for Desktop or ArcGIS Server Manager, click the Capabilities tab, and check the Suggest operation.
- Configure the resultant service as your portal's geocode utility service by following the applicable instructions in Configure utility services.