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What is Portal for ArcGIS?

Portal for ArcGIS is a component of ArcGIS Enterprise that allows you to share maps, scenes, apps, and other geographic information with other people in your organization. The front-end ArcGIS Enterprise portal is powered by the back-end infrastructure of Portal for ArcGIS. You can customize the ArcGIS Enterprise portal to fit your organization's look and feel.

The ArcGIS Enterprise portal brings together all the geographic information in your ArcGIS platform and shares it throughout your organization. With it, you can:

  • Create, save, and share web maps and scenes.
  • Create and host web mapping apps.
  • Search for GIS content within your organization.
  • Create groups to share GIS information with colleagues.
  • Share links to GIS apps.
  • Share map and layer packages to use in ArcGIS Desktop

The ArcGIS Enterprise portal makes GIS accessible for users of all experience levels. Geographic viewers are designed for those who are just beginning with GIS, while experienced GIS users can connect to the portal from ArcGIS Desktop, developer APIs, and other applications.

To learn more about how Portal for ArcGIS can be used, see An example of using Portal for ArcGIS in your organization.

What do I get with Portal for ArcGIS?

Portal for ArcGIS includes the following:

  • The ArcGIS Enterprise portal website — At the front end of the portal, users sign in to search, use, and share content.

  • Map Viewer — This app within the portal website allows you to view, design, and save web maps. Think of it as a canvas in which you combine GIS information and services to make your own map. You can save your maps, share them with others, and embed them in apps you create using configurable app templates or Web AppBuilder for ArcGIS.

  • Web AppBuilder for ArcGIS — The portal website includes an embedded interactive app for designing and building web applications from your web maps. Applications you create with Web AppBuilder require no programming knowledge and are HTML-based, meaning they work on desktop browsers, tablets, and smartphones without needing a plugin. Web AppBuilder comes with a variety of themes you can customize and widgets that allow you to deliver advanced functionality such as high-quality printing, geoprocessing, editing, and search. To learn more, see About Web AppBuilder for ArcGIS.

  • Activity Dashboard for ArcGIS — The website includes an embedded app that reports various usage statistics for items, users, and groups. Portal administrators can use this information to monitor reports, information, and metrics detailing activities in the organization. To learn more, see About usage reports.

  • Scene Viewer — In the ArcGIS Enterprise portal, the Scene Viewer application is used for viewing 3D geospatial content. Scene Viewer works with desktop web browsers that support WebGL, a web technology standard for rendering 3D graphics.

  • ArcGIS apps — Portal for ArcGIS supports user-friendly applications that allow people to interact with web maps and scenes from your ArcGIS Enterprise portal. For a full list of portal-ready applications, see Common clients of Portal for ArcGIS.

  • ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World content — By default, portals are configured to access ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World content provided by Esri. Living Atlas content is available to ArcGIS Enterprise portals in connected and disconnected environments; to learn more, see Configure Living Atlas content.
  • Administrator tools — The ArcGIS Enterprise portal website includes administrator tools that allow management of users, groups, and content. Only members of the portal who have administrator privileges can see these options when they sign in to the website.

  • ArcGIS Portal Directory — The ArcGIS Portal Directory is an interactive view of the ArcGIS REST API's resources for working with the portal. For example, some administrative tasks such as unregistering the ArcGIS Web Adaptor (IIS), updating the location of the portal's content directory, and setting the identity store are all available in the ArcGIS Portal Directory. To learn more, see About the ArcGIS Portal Directory.

Get started

If you are getting started with Portal for ArcGIS, review the following topics:

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