Manage web tools

As the owner of a web tool or an organization administrator, you can manage the tool's settings and stop and start the service exposed by tool from the item page. If you published a tool with the WPS capability enabled, you can also set WPS properties.

Note:

If your service is published on a federated server secured with web-tier authentication (such as Integrated Windows Authentication (IWA), lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP), or client-certificate authentication), you cannot configure service and layer settings through the portal. In such cases, you must use ArcGIS Server Manager on the federated server to manage service and layer settings.

Start and stop services

Starting and stopping services are common actions you'll need to perform when administering web tools. For example, you may stop a service to update its properties and start it for your changes to take effect.

Start a service

Starting a service makes it available for client access. When you start a service, the server initiates the minimum number of instances you specified. As clients request the service, the server returns an available instance. If none are currently available, the server initiates more instances to meet demand until the maximum number of instances is reached. At this point, any new clients that make a request for the service are placed in a queue for the next available instance.

To start a service, follow these steps:

1. Sign in to an organization as the item owner with publishing privileges or as an administrator.
2. Open the item page for the tool.
3. Click the Settings tab and scroll to the Tool section.
4. Click the Start button.

   The service you selected in the module starts.

Stop a service

When you stop a service, the server immediately removes all instances of that service from the server. This frees up any machine resources that were dedicated to the service. Clients that were using the service may fail to work properly because the service is no longer available.

To stop a service, follow these steps:

1. Sign in to the organization as the item owner with publishing privileges or as an administrator.
2. Open the item page for the tool.
3. Click the Settings tab and scroll to the Tool section.
4. Click the Stop button, and click the Stop service button in the pop-up window.

   The service you selected in the module stops.

Manage web tool settings

To manage the web tool, complete the following steps:

1. Sign in to the organization as the item owner with publishing privileges or as an administrator.
2. Open the item page for the tool.
3. Click the Settings tab and scroll to the Tool section.
4. Choose to update any of the following settings:

   Setting	Description
   Upload	Controls whether a client can upload a file to the server to use as input for the web tool. The upload operation is typically used by web clients that need a way to send a file to the server for processing. The upload operation returns a unique ID for the file after the upload completes, which the web app can pass to the web tool. This option is turned off by default. Allowing uploads to the service can possibly pose a security risk. Turn this on only if needed.
   Execution mode	Specify how the client interacts with the web tool and gets the output. When a web tool is set to Synchronous, the client waits for the task to finish. Typically, a synchronous service runs quickly (within a few seconds). When set to Asynchronous, the service usually takes longer to run, and the client must periodically check the server to determine whether the service has finished and, if it has finished, get the result. A web app using an asynchronous service must have logic implemented to check the status and handle the result once it is finished running. The default is Asynchronous
   View output in map image layer	If you set the Execution mode to Asynchronous, you can choose to view the ouput as a map image. The map image is created on the server and transported back to the client as an image (a .tiff file with style information). Symbology, labeling, transparency, and other properties of the map image are the same as the output layer from the ArcGIS Pro session when originally published. Consider the following when using this parameter: If the tool outputs a large number of features that the client must symbolize and draw, it will be faster for the client to receive a map image. For data distribution reasons, you don't want to send the client any features, only a map image. The result of the tool is a dataset that is not transportable, such as a network or topology. The only way to send output to the client is using a map image. The default is unchecked.
   Message level	Return messages of the following levels to the client that ran the web tool as follows: None—No geoprocessing messages are returned to the client, only an indication of whether the operation was successful or failed. This is the default. Error—Only tool messages that produce an error are returned to the client. Warning—All tool error and warning messages are returned to the client. Info—All tool messages from the operation are returned to the client. Note: Any message, regardless of level, may contain dataset paths and names, which may pose a security risk. The Info level is detailed and typically contains references to dataset paths and names. In general, return messages at Info or Warning level in development and testing environment, and use the None or Error level in a production environment. The default is None.
   Maximum number of records returned by the server	The maximum number of results the service can return to a client. Setting this value to a large number means the GIS server can handle sending many individual records or features to the client. To return no features, set this value to 0 (zero). The default is 1000.

5. Click Save.