ArcGIS Enterprise 10.8 and 10.8.1 include updates, enhancements, and bug fixes. For a list of issues fixed at 10.8.1, see the 10.8.1 Issues Addressed List. For issues fixed at 10.8, see the 10.8 Issues Addressed List.
If you're upgrading to 10.8 or 10.8.1 from 10.7.1 or earlier, or want to license an app that is new to ArcGIS Enterprise at this release, you must reauthorize your software. You can obtain a new license file from My Esri.
Review the deprecation notice to determine whether your hardware and software components are still compatible with version 10.8.1 and to see a list of functionality that has been deprecated. To review which earlier ArcGIS product versions are compatible with ArcGIS Enterprise 10.8.1, see Portal compatibility with earlier versions of ArcGIS.
Organization administration
Portal administrators have the following new capabilities and options in this release:
- The New Member Defaults tab allows administrators to set a default user type and role for new members. At 10.8.1, you also can set add-on license assignment and group membership defaults for new members. The defaults specified are automatically assigned to new members who create their own built-in accounts and members added by an administrator or through automatic account creation.
- Two new options are now available for default administrators creating groups in the organization. An administrator can protect the privacy of members of groups by hiding the list of group members on the Members tab of the group page. They can also restrict members from leaving the group, which ensures that members remain in the group unless they are removed by the group owner or a group manager.
- At 10.8.1, you can assign groups to members in bulk from the Members tab of the organization page.
- Parcel fabric and utility network functionality are now licensed as user type extensions. User type extensions can be included in a user type or assigned as an add-on license.
- As of 10.8.1, a new help source option determines whether your organization's access to help topics is derived from https://enterprise.arcgis.com or an installed source. By default, the source is set to the local, installed source. When internet access is available, enable this option to deliver help from https://enterprise.arcgis.com.
- Portal administrators can now use the importlicense command line utility to import a license file containing licensed apps and user types.
- Administrators can now place ArcGIS Enterprise in read-only mode through the portal. When read-only mode is turned on, most content and settings in the portal, any federated servers, and ArcGIS Data Store cannot be created, modified, or deleted. Read-only mode does not prevent normal access to the portal. This can be useful in preventing downtime and data loss when making system updates and when upgrading ArcGIS Enterprise.
- Administrators can configure a custom access notice that is displayed to users who access your organization. When enabled, a message will appear upon accessing the portal, and users can only proceed to access the site if they accept the terms of the notice. At 10.8.1, you can specify a separate access notice for organization members and for all users who access the organization.
- Administrators can configure a custom information banner to appear at the top and bottom of your Enterprise portal to display important information to your users. Examples of the information banner in action include informing users who access your organization about the status of the organization or alerting them to upcoming maintenance. The information banner is configured in the organization settings of the portal, so you no longer need to use the classificationBanner property in the configuration file. At 10.8.1, the information banner can also be configured to show on sites created with ArcGIS Enterprise Sites.
- An enhanced security privilege model enables portal administrators to restrict or grant access to a subset of administrative tasks in the Portal Admin API based on a member's assigned privileges. For example, administrators can limit the ability for some administrators to interact with portal settings pertaining to the portal's look and feel. They may also restrict access to manage federated servers or update security settings such as password policy updates. This allows organization administrators to delegate specific administrative tasks without granting full access to the Portal Admin API. At 10.8.1, administrators can also restrict or grant access to a subset of administrative tasks in the federated Server Admin API.
- New webhook trigger events are available that allow administrators to monitor changes made to their organization's roles, such as being notified when a role is created or when an existing role has been updated. As well, administrators are also now able to subscribe to more encompassing trigger events. Previously, the webhook trigger events allowed administrators to be notified to changes to a specific item, group, or user. For example, a trigger event could have been set to trigger whenever a specific user signed in or out of the portal or when a specific item had been updated. Now, organization administrators can subscribe to events that allow them to monitor all activity for users, items, and groups, such as seeing when any item in their organization is added or deleted.
- At 10.8.1, the Storyteller user type is available for users to create stories using ArcGIS StoryMaps. Storytellers can create stories using maps, scenes, and apps created and shared by members of their organization, or create embedded maps on the fly.
- At 10.8.1, you can configure your portal to send emails by integrating with your organization's SMTP server. This will enable new email-driven workflows and notifications such as forgot password, password policy, and license expiration notifications.
- A new version management privilege is available for custom roles at 10.8.1 that allows role members to manage branch version locks and to view, alter, and delete branch versioned data accessed through ArcGIS Server feature services. By default, enabling the new privilege also enables the feature edit and edit with full control privileges, which allow version administrators to make corrections in a version when completing quality assurance reviews before posting edits.
- At 10.8.1, administrators have the option to install and configure Map Viewer Beta in ArcGIS Enterprise. This allows your organization members to try out the next generation of Esri web mapping capabilities, however, keep in mind functionality is still in beta form and is still under development. To get started with Map Viewer Beta, see the Map Viewer Beta in ArcGIS Enterprise 10.8.1 blog post.
- At 10.8.1, when you set the language for your organization, you can now specify a number and date format for three additional languages—French, German, and Italian. Individual organization members and those with public accounts can also change the number and date format through their profile page. For example, if the language is set to French, you can display dates and numbers using the formats defined in the Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR) for France and Switzerland.
User experience
- The user profile and settings experience has been redesigned, allowing you to view and update account settings and profile information.
- At 10.8.1, access ArcGIS Enterprise Sites, ArcGIS StoryMaps, and ArcGIS Experience Builder from the Create menu on the content page as a quick way to start creating sites and apps from the portal.
Data management
- New options in ArcGIS Server Manager allow you, the portal administrator, to create data store items for existing database and file share data stores that were registered directly with a federated server. This replaces the 10.7.1 workflow.
- The workflow for updating the contents of a hosted vector tile layer is improved. The Replace Layer interface allows you to replace the content of the current hosted vector tile layer with the content in a replacement layer. It also allows you to choose how to archive the current content and preview the styles that are applied to the layer. It alerts you when the current and replacement layer don't match, so you can correct problems before you replace content.
- When preparing web maps for offline use, you can now draw a polygon to define the area of data included in the map when users take it offline. This provides you more control over the data that is taken offline. You can also schedule updates for read-only clients to allow them to download prepackaged updates.
- To help people determine how to use, style, and edit the data in the hosted feature layers you share with them, add descriptions and define the types of values that should be stored in each field.
- You can take advantage of more complex symbology by publishing hosted map image layers from your hosted feature layers and hosted spatiotemporal feature layers using ArcGIS Pro 2.5. These hosted map image layers are rendered on the ArcGIS Enterprise machines and can provide faster drawing times for large volumes of data. Hosted map image layers also provide read-only access to the data, which means you can share the hosted map image layer with a wider audience.
- Hosted feature layers now include system-maintained fields that store length and area values for line and polygon features.
- REST feature layer queries can return results in RFC7946 GeoJSON.
- If you need to alter the fields that track editors' logins for hosted feature layers, you can disable the Keep track of who created and last updated features setting on the layer, access the feature layer table from the Data tab of the hosted feature layer's item page, edit the values in the fields, and reenable Keep track of who created and last updated features. You might do this if you use the values in this field to control who can see features in the hosted feature layer or to control who can edit features. For example, if editor1 leaves your organization, no other editors can see or edit the features that editor1 created. In this case, you can replace the editor1 value in the field that tracks who created a feature with the login name of the person who will take over editor1's work.
- When you publish a hosted feature layer from ArcGIS Pro or ArcMap, you can define a datum transformation to allow your data to draw properly when viewed against ArcGIS Online basemaps.
- You can publish a hosted building scene layer from ArcGIS Pro 2.6 to ArcGIS Enterprise 10.8.1 and include an associated feature layer. This allows you to edit and update the building scene layer. See Building scene layer in the ArcGIS Pro help for more information on this type of scene layer.
- At 10.8.1, there are new ways to update the contents of hosted scene layers:
- If you published the scene layer from a scene layer package, you can replace the layer's contents using a second scene layer. When you replace the layer, you maintain the current scene layer's item ID, which means the scene layer remains accessible from existing scenes and apps.
- If you published a point or 3D object scene layer from ArcGIS Pro and you edit the features in the layer, you can rebuild the scene layer cache to include only attribute updates. Updating only attributes takes less time than rebuilding the entire cache.
- If you published a building scene layer from ArcGIS Pro 2.6, you can rebuild the entire scene layer cache to include edits made to the features, or pull in only attribute edits.
- When you synchronize bulk-published layers with their data source in 10.8.1, updates to the schemas of the source data appear in the web layers. You also have the option to update the bulk-published layers' details with changes made to the source layer metadata.
- At 10.8.1, the size limit for files uploaded to the ArcGIS Enterprise portal has increased from 200 GB to 500 GB.
- At 10.8.1, the import and export group content operations can be used to move content from one ArcGIS Enterprise organization to another. These operations are useful when moving content from a development to a staging environment or across disconnected environments. The import and export operations are available in the REST API and similar functionality is available in the ArcGIS API for Python API's GroupMigrationManager.
Mapping and visualization
- At 10.8, Esri vector basemaps are enabled by default in the basemap gallery for new organizations. Existing organizations that upgrade to 10.8 will maintain the basemap settings configured in the portal.
- You can now customize the style of vector tile layers directly in Map Viewer.
- Map Viewer has three new symbol sets to support the utilities community: Water, Sewer, and Stormwater. There are also new symbols included in the Public Safety symbol set.
ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World content
The new Living Atlas in ArcGIS Enterprise group in ArcGIS Online allows you to see what Living Atlas content was present in each ArcGIS Enterprise release. Use group categories to find the active and mature support content present in specific ArcGIS Enterprise releases.
3D GIS
- New smart mapping styles in Scene Viewer provide complete styling capabilities for lines and polygons. You can now create attribute-driven 3D extrusions from building footprints and color them by usage type, for example. Additionally, new line profiles allow you to create visualizations with 3D tubes, squares, walls, and strips in your scene.
- Isolate each level of a building interactively with the new floor picker in the Building Explorer tool. Explore and gain better insight into BIM buildings published from ArcGIS Pro with predefined filters that allow for custom views.
- Add animated water visualizations to your scenes. Whether you're looking at an ocean from far away or a lake close-up, the new Water polygon style allows you to create realistic views, such as sunlight reflections off the water.
- Scene layer performance continues to improve. Scene Viewer loads integrated mesh, 3D objects, and buildings up to four times faster with the new I3S specification version 1.7. In addition, new client-side caching helps reduce areas without data when exploring the scene.
- The Esri-provided gallery in Scene Viewer includes new 3D models, such as bicycles and fire hydrants, to further customize your scenes. Additionally, Infrastructure and Recreation web styles are new in the gallery, automatic level of detail has been added to 3D models of schematic trees to maintain strong performance in scenes, and Scene Viewer now supports the CGCS 2000 coordinate system.
- Define the visibility range of layers in a scene using the new scale range slider in the layer properties. Create a scene that alternates between layers showing countries, cities, and buildings while zooming in, for example.
- You can now display pop-ups on point cloud scene layers. Select individual points to inspect properties, such as the classification or elevation.
- Performance improvements: 3D scene layers now load up to twice as fast. Vector tile layers have increased rendering performance when navigating in scenes.
- Visual improvements: A new lighting and shading model adds contrast and definition to your 3D content when you choose Quality in the Settings tool. Additionally, Scene Viewer has improved transparency rendering for edges and adjacent extruded polygons.
- At 10.8.1, the Building explorer tool has improved the building visualization when the level picker is used; the bottom levels now appear semitransparent for added visual context. In addition, if your building attributes contain construction phase data, a new filter allows you to choose the construction phase to display.
- At 10.8.1, you can drape feature layers onto integrated mesh scene layers for better 3D visualization. Set the elevation mode to On the ground for point, line, and polygon feature layers.
- At 10.8.1, you can now label 3D object scene layers based on an attribute, such as the building name or address.
Sharing and collaboration
The following are new in sharing and collaboration:
- You can now share items with a group you own or manage directly from the group page.
- The portal has an improved experience for inviting large numbers of members to groups.
- At 10.8.1, from your content page, you can quickly see who can access your items and the groups with which they have been shared. You can also search for groups by name when sharing items with a group, and use filters to help you find specific groups with which to share your content. For example, choose the Special Groups > Shared Update filter to display only shared update groups or find other types of groups such as administrative or featured item groups. You can also filter by owner or group creation date.
- At 10.8.1, you can now embed videos when a rich text editor is available. This allows you to provide additional information, context, and instructions about your items or groups, and further customize your organization's description and banner.
- At 10.8.1, when sharing services as a reference in distributed collaboration, Viewer credentials can be saved to allow recipients to access these services without needing to provide credentials. Viewer credentials must be for a built-in member and must have access to the service(s) via the collaboration group. This functionality is available for both ArcGIS Enterprise collaboration hosts and guests.
- Starting at 10.8.1, collaboration hosts and guests will be able to update the collaboration's web tier authentication information after the collaboration has been created.
- At 10.8.1, when creating or editing the settings of a collaboration, hosts can specify if layers that are unable to be shared as copies should be shared as references or not.
ArcGIS Notebook Server
A new application, ArcGIS Notebook Server Manager, is now available in the portal if you have an ArcGIS Notebook Server site federated and configured with the portal. Manager is an intuitive interface for common administrative tasks and resources in ArcGIS Notebook Server sites. You can view and modify settings, query logs, and manage notebook containers.
Analysis
Standard feature analysis
The following tool enhancements are available in the ArcGIS Enterprise portal:
- Create Drive-Time Areas has been updated with the following new parameters to improve the tool's functionality:
- Travel Direction allows you to choose whether the drive-time areas are created away from your input locations or toward them.
- Show unreachable areas as holes returns a detailed polygon in which areas in the output that are not reachable through the road network are not included in the output polygon.
- Include reachable streets creates an output layer that includes the streets used to create the drive-time areas.
- Connect Origins to Destinations includes the following new parameter and enhanced abilities to create multiple connections:
- Route Shape determines the appearance of the output routes. Straight line creates a straight line connecting the origin-destination pair and is best when you want to generate spider diagrams or desire lines (for example, to show which stores customers are visiting). Follow streets creates a shape based on the underlying street network and is best when you want to generate the routes between origins and destinations.
- You can now connect more than one origin to multiple destinations. For example, if you have three stores and 50 customers from each store, you can connect all stores with all of their customers.
GeoAnalytics tools
Find out what's new in GeoAnalytics Server including new tools, functionality, and more.
Raster Analysis tools
Find out what's new in ArcGIS Image Server 10.8.1, including new raster analysis tools, apps, functionality, and more.
Apps
There are new features and enhancements for apps in the portal.
ArcGIS Configurable Apps templates
The following new ArcGIS Configurable Apps templates are available:
- Attachment Viewer—Highlight the photo, video, or PDF attachments on the feature layers in your map.
- Nearby—Help app users find locations of interest at a specified distance from the location they provide.
- Zone Lookup—Help app users determine whether the location they specify falls within a predefined area (zone), and return information about that zone to them.
The Category Gallery app template includes new options that allow you to open apps from thumbnails in the gallery and control sign-in options, the information that appears for each app in the gallery, and when the filter pane appears.
ArcGIS Dashboards
At 10.8.1, the Operations Dashboard for ArcGIS app has a new name: ArcGIS Dashboards.
Legacy Operations Dashboard
The legacy Operations Dashboard product was retired on January 1, 2019. See the Product Life Cycles page for more information. Starting at ArcGIS Enterprise 10.8, existing Operation View, Operations Dashboard Extension, and Operations Dashboard Add-In items can no longer be used by the legacy Operations Dashboard product. These are now retired, and you can no longer open and view them. The item details pages for these items remain as read-only in your portal. Consider re-creating these items using the new and improved Dashboards web app that is built into ArcGIS Enterprise.
ArcGIS Enterprise Sites
There are several new enhancements in ArcGIS Enterprise Sites as part of the 10.8.1 release, including improved content management workflows and more options for customizing your sites.
For full details, see What's new in ArcGIS Enterprise Sites.
ArcGIS Excalibur
There are new features and enhancements at the release of ArcGIS Excalibur v2.0 at 10.8.1. These include saving a project directly from canvas, saving markup to a project, creating a report for your findings, and publishing hosted imagery.
For full details, see What's new in ArcGIS Excalibur.
ArcGIS Experience Builder
ArcGIS Experience Builder is a new app in ArcGIS Enterprise at 10.8.1. You can use flexible templates and layouts to create single- and multipage apps with interactive widgets for a web experience that combines tools, text, media, and 2D and 3D data that your audience can access on any device. Use the Experience Builder Apps content filter to find Web Experience and Web Experience Template items when searching content in your portal.
For more information, see the ArcGIS Experience Builder help.
ArcGIS Mission
ArcGIS Mission is a new app in ArcGIS Enterprise 10.8 that provides organizations and teams with mission-focused, real-time situational awareness and collaboration tools for a comprehensive understanding of the operating environment. This allows users to create, share, and monitor a mission in real time, designate maps and other materials for operations, facilitate peer-to-peer communication, and monitor the mission in real time.
ArcGIS Mission is composed of three core components: ArcGIS Mission Manager, ArcGIS Mission Responder, and ArcGIS Mission Server. Mission Manager is a web app that allows users to create and provision missions to the mobile app, share work during active missions, as well as monitor missions. Mission Responder is a mobile app that allows users to work on missions assigned by Manager, send status and location updates, and share information through peer-to-peer communication. Mission Server facilitates peer-to-peer networking between Manager and Responder.
For more information, see the ArcGIS Mission help.
See What's new in ArcGIS Mission for new features at 10.8.1.
ArcGIS QuickCapture
The ArcGIS QuickCapture designer is now installed with ArcGIS Enterprise, allowing you to create and share projects entirely within your enterprise environment. Alternatively, you can continue to use the ArcGIS QuickCapture website, while signed in to your ArcGIS Enterprise organization, to create and share projects. When you use the ArcGIS QuickCapture website, you have access to the latest updates of the QuickCapture designer.
ArcGIS Enterprise 10.8 includes the ArcGIS QuickCapture 1.2 designer. ArcGIS Enterprise 10.8.1 includes the ArcGIS QuickCapture 1.5 designer.
For more information, see the ArcGIS QuickCapture help.
ArcGIS StoryMaps
ArcGIS StoryMaps is the new generation of Esri's storytelling tools, delivering a more elegant and streamlined experience for making and sharing story maps. The new StoryMaps app is now available in ArcGIS Enterprise at 10.8.1.
For more information, see the ArcGIS StoryMaps help.
ArcGIS Tracker
The Track Viewer web app is now installed with ArcGIS Enterprise, and no longer requires a separate installation. You can now also change the basemap when viewing tracks.
For more information, see the ArcGIS Tracker help.
ArcGIS Web AppBuilder
ArcGIS Web AppBuilder has new widgets, and multiple widgets and themes have been improved. For more information, see What's new in ArcGIS Web AppBuilder.
- The new Business Analyst widget allows you to generate Business Analyst infographics and classic reports.
- Use the Data Aggregation widget to create geographic features from address or coordinate information stored in CSV files and define how to correlate field information between the CSV file and the destination layer The widget supports multiple target layers. (10.8.1)
- You can add stops in directions by searching feature layers.
- With Query and Filter, you can perform a query on a combination of date and time.
- The My Location widget has new options that display compass orientation and location accuracy on a mobile device.
- With Group Filter, you can define filter values using a URL parameter.
- The Near Me widget has configurable buffer input options to search with a precise distance.
- The Parcel Drafter widget now supports international foot as a measurement unit. (10.8.1)
- You can configure the Public Notification widget to add field names in the CSV download. At 10.8.1, you can allow users to add and remove selected parcels on a specific addressee layer.
- Smart Editor has several enhancements, including supporting relative dates and using a URL parameter to define a preset value. At 10.8.1, when configuring attribute actions for the widget, you can choose to populate a field based on MGRS coordinates.
- The Screening widget allows you to hide the summary table in the report.
- Many widgets and themes have been enhanced for accessibility.
ArcGIS Workforce
The ArcGIS Workforce web app is now installed with ArcGIS Enterprise and no longer requires a separate installation.
For more information, see the ArcGIS Workforce help.