Publish hosted tile layers

Tile layers support fast visualization of large datasets using a collection of predrawn map images or tiles. Hosted tiles provide geographic context for your operational layers. For example, you can include tiles of streets in your neighborhood to provide a visual reference for the street signs in your feature layer.

You can publish a tile layer to be hosted in ArcGIS Enterprise using any of the following methods:

• Create tiles from an existing hosted feature layer.
• Define a map in ArcGIS Pro and allow ArcGIS Enterprise to create the tiles.
• Build a tile package in ArcGIS Pro, upload, and publish to your organization.

You can build a cache on your tiles automatically when publishing or build the cache manually after publishing. See Best practices for tile caches for more information.

To publish a hosted tile layer, you must be a member of one of the following in your organization:

• The default Publisher role
• A custom role that has privileges to create content and publish hosted tile layers

When you publish from ArcGIS Pro or a tile package, a tile package file is added as an item in your content. Once you confirm that the tile layer functions, you can delete the tile layer package from the portal to save space, but only do so if you are certain that you no longer need the tile package.

Tip:

To avoid copying data and, therefore, decrease the time it takes to publish, you can create tile caches, upload them to a cloud data store, and use ArcGIS API for Python to create tile layers that reference the ready-to-use caches rather than use the publishing workflows described in this page. For more information on this alternative workflow, see the blog article Publishing large cache contents.

Publish from a hosted feature layer

You can publish a hosted tile layer to your organization using an existing hosted feature layer that you own. This is a useful workflow to visualize large datasets because cached tiles draw more rapidly than dynamically rendered features.

Note:

• Edits to spatial attributes made to the hosted feature layer are not automatically reflected in the hosted tile layer. You must republish the hosted tile layer from the updated hosted feature layer.
• There are styling restrictions on the hosted feature layer that could prevent you from publishing a hosted tile layer.
• You cannot publish a hosted tile layer from a multipatch or point cloud hosted feature layer.

Follow these steps to publish a hosted tile layer from a hosted feature layer:

1. Sign in to your organization and click Content > My Content.
2. To publish, do one of the following:
   • Click the hosted feature layer you want to publish and click Publish.
   • Click New item > Tile Layer and choose a Feature Layer to publish as tiles.
3. Type a title, tags, and summary for the hosted tile layer.
4. If your organization administrator configured content categories, click Assign Category and select up to 20 categories to help people find your item.

   You can also type in the Filter categories box to narrow down the list of categories.

5. Choose the folder where the hosted tile layer will be stored.
6. Optionally, change the extents at which the layer will display by dragging the end points of the Visible Range slider.

   Caution:

   The portal presents you with a suggested scale range, but you can modify that. Be aware, though, that including large scales in your scale range can vastly increase the resources consumed on the hosting server. Don't create tiles beyond the precision of your data.

7. Click OK.

   The hosted tile layer is created and its item page appears.

Define and publish a map in ArcGIS Pro

You can publish a hosted tile layer from a map in ArcGIS Pro.

Note:

If the layers in ArcGIS Pro have definition queries applied to them, ArcGIS applies the definition queries to the published hosted tile layer. However, all data is copied to ArcGIS Enterprise. If you want to publish a subset of the data, you must export the subset to another feature class and publish that.

Web browsers cannot display some of the more complex cartographic symbols you may have originally used when you authored the map. Most symbol types are available, but in some cases, the symbols may be downgraded when you publish them. See Author maps to publish feature services in the ArcGIS Server help for more details about what symbols are supported, and make any required changes to your map symbology prior to publishing.

1. Start ArcGIS Pro and open the project that contains the map you want to publish.
2. Be sure your portal connection is active and sign in to your organization using an account that has privileges to create content and publish hosted tile layers.
3. To publish a tile layer, do one of the following:
   • Select the layers in the Contents pane. Right-click the selection set and click Share As Web Layer.

   • To publish all the layers in the map, click Web Layer in the Share As group of the Share tab and click Publish Web Layer.

   Tip:

   If the Share As Web Layer menu option is not active, it could be due to one of the following:

   • The account you signed in with does not have privileges to publish hosted layers.
   • Your portal is not configured with a hosting server, which is required to host web layers.
   • You're trying to publish a multipatch layer, which is not supported.

4. Type a name for the tile layer.
5. Choose Tile for the Layer Type under Copy all data.

   This automatically unchecks other Layer Type options, as only one can be checked at a time when copying data.

6. Provide a summary and tags for the tile layer.
7. Choose where to save the layer.

   The layer is saved to My Content by default. You can save to a subfolder within My Content by either typing the folder name or browsing to an existing folder.

8. Specify who should have access to the hosted tile layer.

   All layers you publish are automatically shared to your personal workspace in your organization (My Content). Your content is inaccessible to others until you share it with one or more of the following:

   • Everyone—Choosing this option makes the layer available to anyone who can access your organization.
   • The name of your organization—Choosing this option allows the layer to be shared with all authenticated users in the organization.
   • Groups—You can share the layer with members of groups to which you belong by choosing the groups from the drop-down list.
9. Click the Configuration tab and click the Configure Web Layer Properties button to specify cache settings.
10. Under Options, choose a Tiling Scheme option.
11. Resize and drag the Levels of Detail bar to indicate minimum and maximum scale for your tile layer.

    The estimated size of the resultant cache changes as you change the minimum and maximum scale.

12. Choose when and where to build the tile cache.
    • Choose Cache automatically on the server if you want the tiles to be built on the hosting server when you publish the layer.
    • If you want the cache built and stored on the hosting server, but you want to build them yourself after publishing, choose Cache manually on the server, open the tile layer in the portal website after the layer is published, and manually create the cache.
    • If you want the cache built and stored on one of the ArcGIS Enterprise servers, but you want to build them yourself after publishing, choose Cache manually on the server, open the tile layer in the portal website after the layer is published, and manually create the cache.
    • Choose Cache locally and specify a location on the ArcGIS Pro machine to store a temporary tile package if you want the cache to be built and packaged on the ArcGIS Pro machine. The tile package will be automatically uploaded to the hosting server to be unpacked and the cache stored there.
    • Choose Cache locally and specify a location on the ArcGIS Pro machine to store a temporary tile package if you want the cache to be built and packaged on the ArcGIS Pro machine. The tile package will be automatically uploaded to ArcGIS Enterprise to be unpacked and the cache stored there.
13. To allow people to download map tiles for use offline, check Allow clients to export cache tiles.
14. If you checked Allow clients to export cache tiles, use the Limit export to field to specify the maximum number of tiles clients can take offline at one time.
15. To calculate the number of tiles and storage your caching options will use, open the Estimate section and click Calculate.

    You can change the cache settings and calculate again to see how the settings affect the cache.

16. Click the Content tab to confirm the tile layer will include the data layers you intended.
17. Click Analyze to check for any errors or issues.

    Any issues discovered are listed on the Messages tab. Right-click each message to get more information, read help for the error or warning, and access suggested fixes. You must fix the errors before you can publish. You can fix the warnings to further improve the performance and appearance of your hosted tile layer, but it is not required to do so.

18. Once you fix the errors and, optionally, any warnings, click Publish.

    Note:

    Your data is copied to the server at this point. The size of the data and your network speed and bandwidth affect the time it takes to publish.

When publishing completes, you can click Manage the web layer to open the portal website.

Build a tile package in ArcGIS Pro and upload to your organization

Use the Create Map Tile Package geoprocessing tool to create a tile package, add the package to your organization, and publish a tile layer.

ArcGIS Pro 2.3 and later releases allow you to specify the output of this geoprocessing tool to be either a .tpk file or a .tpkx file. The new .tpkx format uses a simplified file structure, which provides improved performance when running in the cloud and shared network locations, and is an open-specification format. You can use either format in this workflow.

1. Open the project that contains the data you want to package.
2. Open and run the Create Map Tile Package geoprocessing tool.
3. When creation of the tile package completes, sign in to your organization using an account privileges to create content and publish hosted tile layers, and click Content > My Content > New item.
4. Click Your device to add the tile package
5. Choose Add tile package and create a hosted tile layer.
6. Click Next.
7. Type a title.
8. Choose a folder where you want to save your item.
9. If your organization administrator configured content categories, click Assign categories and select up to 20 categories to help people find your item.

   You can also start typing a category name to narrow the list of categories.

10. Optionally, type tag terms separated by commas.

    Tags are words or short phrases that describe your item and help people find your item when searching. Federal land is considered one tag, while Federal,land is considered two tags.

11. Click Save.

The tiles are unpacked and a hosted tile layer is created. You can see the map tiles and tile package in My Content.

Publish large tile packages

To build and share large amounts of data, Esri recommends that you use the Tile Cache toolset instead of using the previous workflow. These tools can take advantage of multiple processing cores to improve tile generation and publishing performance.

In ArcGIS Pro, execute geoprocessing tools.

1. Either run the Create Map Tile Package geoprocessing tool to create the tile package in one step, or run the following geoprocessing tools in the following order:
   1. Run the Generate Tile Cache Tiling Scheme tool to define the tiling grid and image format.
   2. Run the Manage Tile Cache tool to build the tiles.
   3. Run the Export Tile Cache tool to create the tile package.

   To generate cache at specific extents or levels of detail, use the three tools listed above.

2. Run the Share Package tool (in the Package toolset) to upload the tiles to ArcGIS Enterprise.
3. When your tile package has finished generating, sign in to your organization using the same account you used when you created the tile package in ArcGIS Pro and click Content > My Content.
4. Click your tile package to display its item details page.
5. Click Publish.
6. Type a title and tags.
7. If your organization administrator configured content categories, click Assign Category and select up to 20 categories to help people find your item.

   You can also type in the Filter categories box to narrow down the list of categories.

8. Click Publish.

The tiles are unpacked and a hosted tile layer is created. The layer appears in My Content.

Publish from a service definition file

Publishing tiles and building a cache can use a lot of server resources. If you need to publish a large number of tile layers, your map authors can create service definition (.sd) files in ArcGIS Pro that contain the data, symbology, and other information needed to publish a tile layer to the portal. You can then use a script to upload and publish the service definition files to your portal after business hours. The resultant tile layers are hosted on the hosting server.

Load the service definition and publish

Once you obtain the service definition file from the author, you can either manually upload it to your portal and publish a tile layer or schedule a script to upload and publish the file.

Upload and publish in the portal

Sign in to the portal website to add and publish the service definition file to your portal.

1. Sign in to your portal as a member with privileges to create content and publish hosted tile layers, and click Content > My Content.
2. Click New item.
3. Choose Your device.
4. Choose the service definition file.
5. Choose Add service definition and create a hosted feature layer.
6. Click Next.
7. If your portal administrator configured content categories, click Assign categories and select up to 20 categories to help people find your item.
8. Optionally, type tag terms separated by commas.

   Tags are words or short phrases that describe your item and improve its findability. Federal land is considered one tag, while Federal,land is considered two tags.

9. Click Save to add the service definition file and publish the tile layer.

   The tile layer is published to your portal's hosting server, and both the service definition and the tiles are added to My Content.

10. When the tile layer finishes publishing, click Start building tiles to create the tiles.

By default, only you have access to the service definition file and hosted tile layer. You can share the file and tiles with others in your organization or specific groups.

Run a script to upload and publish

To upload and publish a service definition file after hours, use the arcpy.UploadserviceDefinition and arcpy.managemapServerCacheTiles ArcPy functions in a script, and schedule your script to run when your portal usage is lowest.

See the following help pages for more information:

• Introduction to arcpy.sharing
• Manage Map Server Cache Tiles
• Schedule geoprocessing tools
• ArcGIS Server and ArcPy