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Configure the portal to support ArcGIS Navigator

Once you have purchased ArcGIS Navigator licenses, follow the steps below to configure your portal to support the Navigator app.

  1. Assign licenses to portal members.
  2. Download mobile map packages from My Esri or create custom mobile map packages in ArcGIS Pro. Host them on a web server.
  3. Register the mobile map packages with the portal.

Members can then sign in to the portal with the Navigator app, download map packages for their work, and navigate offline. See the ArcGIS Navigator help for details.

Manage mobile map packages

Navigator users who are signed in to your portal see the mobile map packages that you have made available for download. You can obtain map packages created by Esri from My Esri or create your own map packages in ArcGIS Pro and upload them to your portal. To make mobile map packages available to Navigator app users, you must register them with your portal.

ArcGIS Enterprise portals come with a Navigator Maps group owned by esri_nav. This group is prepopulated with items created by Esri. You can browse the contents of the Navigator Maps group to see each item's description, thumbnail, and other information.

Follow these steps to access the items in the Navigator Maps group:

  1. Sign in to the portal.
  2. Open Groups > My Organization's Groups.
  3. Click the Navigator Maps group.

    This opens the item page for the group.

  4. To see all items in the group, click View All Group Content.
  5. You can click any of the items to open its detail page.

When the portal is first created, these items are not linked to any map packages. To populate the items with content or update an item's content, download map packages from My Esri, host them on your own web server, and register the hosted packages with the portal.

Use the mobile map package tool (managemmpks) that is installed with Portal for ArcGIS to register these packages. You can also use this tool to update, unregister, and list the mobile map packages in your portal as needed.

Note:

To use ArcGIS Navigator, portal members must have Navigator licenses assigned to them.

Download mobile map packages provided by Esri

To download the mobile map packages provided by Esri, follow these steps.

  1. Log in to My Esri and click My Organizations > Downloads > Data and Content.
  2. Type Navigator in the search text box and choose the sort option you want from the Sort By drop-down list.
  3. Scroll through the list of mobile map packages to find the files you want.
  4. Click Download for each mobile map package you want to provide to Navigator app users. Download the files one at a time.
  5. Place the downloaded map packages in a location that is web accessible. For example, if you're using IIS as your web server, you can place the downloaded files in the c:\inetpub\wwwroot\ folder or another location that is configured as a virtual directory.

    The URL to the web server where you place map package files is the base URL you will provide when using the managemmpks tool to register and manage packages.

  6. Enable the .mmpk extension as MIME type. For example, if using IIS as your web server, follow these steps.
    1. Open IIS Manager.
    2. In the Connections pane, select your server in the tree view and double-click MIME Types.
    3. In the Actions pane, click Add.
    4. For File name extension, type .mmpk.
    5. For MIME type, enter application/mmpk.
    6. Restart your web server.

Register mobile map packages

Once you have acquired mobile map packages and hosted them on a web server, register them with your portal. Any updates to the mobile map packages must also be communicated with the portal. Your portal includes a portal item for each mobile map package. Registering your mobile map packages updates these portal items to reference the URL of the .mmpk files on your web server.

You can register and manage mobile map packages with the managemmpks tool. This tool is installed with Portal for ArcGIS in the <Portal for ArcGIS installation directory>\tools\managemmpks directory. You will be prompted for the portal administrator user name and password when you run the managemmpks tool.

The managemmpks tool allows you to register one or more mobile map packages at a time with your portal. The tool takes the portal item names as input, not the names of the map packages. Therefore, you need to know the names of the existing portal items before you register. To get this list, you can use the --preinstalled command with the managemmpks tool, or browse the contents of the Navigator Maps group.

Type managemmpks --help to get help with the tool syntax.

Once you know the item names you want to register, follow these steps to register the map packages hosted on your web server:

  1. Log in to the machine where Portal for ArcGIS is installed.
  2. Open a command prompt window using the Run as administrator option.
  3. From the command line, browse to the tools\managemmpks folder of the Portal for ArcGIS installation directory.
  4. Run the following managemmpks tool with the --register command to register all mobile map packages listed in a text file, comma separated values file, or as comma separated list of package item names: managemmpks --register --url <base_URL> {--file <package_names_list.txt> | --packages <package_name1,package_name2>}.

    The following example uses a list of mobile map package portal item names to register mobile map packages accessed through the URL http://mapcdn.esri.com/navigator/mmpk:

    managemmpks --register --url http://mapcdn.esri.com/navigator/mmpk --packages Alabama,Czech_Republic

    When you use the --packages command, you must insert underscores (_) to replace the spaces in portal item names that contain multiple words, as shown for the Czech Republic item in the previous example.

    In this example, a text file—us_states_package_list.txt—containing a list of the portal item names is provided for mobile map package (.mmpk) files accessed through http://mapcdn.esri.com/navigator/mmpk.

    managemmpks --register --url http://mapcdn.esri.com/navigator/mmpk 
    --file us_states_package_list.txt

    When you use a text or comma separated values (CSV) file to register the mobile map packages, you do not need to replace spaces in item names with underscores. For example, the file could contain the following entries:

    Alabama
    Czech Republic
    South America Southern Cone Region

Navigator app users can download map packages for navigation.

Update mobile map packages

Esri updates the mobile map packages on My Esri on a regular basis. You can also update the mobile map packages you generate in ArcGIS Pro. After you obtain these updated files and place them in the mobile map package file directory you access through the base URL, use the managemmpks tool with the --refresh command to update the package contents. You can provide a text or CSV file containing the mobile map package names or a comma-separated list of item names. The syntax is managemmpks --refresh {--file <package_names_list.txt> | --packages <name1,name2>}.

In this example, updated farmland and pop_density mobile map packages were placed where the base URL can access them.

managemmpks --refresh --packages farmland,pop_density

Update the content for the items in the Navigator Maps group whenever new .mmpk files are available, but do not change their associated base URL. Once you run the --refresh command, Navigator app users will see that the files have been updated and can download the updated files.

Unregister mobile map packages

To unregister mobile map packages, use the --unregister command with the managemmpks tool. You can specify a text or CSV file list of packages using the --file command or include a comma-separated list of item names using the --packages command.

In this example, the Albania mobile map package is unregistered.

managemmpks --unregister --packages Albania

When you use the --packages command, you must insert underscores (_) to replace the spaces in portal item names that contain multiple words, such as Czech Republic.

The following example shows unregistering the mobile map packages listed in the text file, package_list.txt:

managemmpks --unregister --file package_list.txt

When you use a text or comma separated values (CSV) file to unregister mobile map packages, you do not need to replace spaces in item names with underscores. For example, the file could contain the following entries:

Alabama
Czech Republic
South America Southern Cone Region

List all mobile map packages

Use the --list command with the managemmpks tool to generate two lists: one of registered mobile map packages and one of unregistered mobile map packages. Use the --dir command to specify an output directory in which to create text files of these lists. The file name is autogenerated by the managemmpks tool. You can then use these text files as input for registering and unregistering .mmpk files.

In this example, the list of mobile map packages is output to the C:\temp directory.

managemmpks --list --dir C:\temp

Two files are created in the directory you specify.

  • registered-<YYYMMDD-hhmmss>.txt—This file contains the names of registered items.
  • unregistered-<YYYMMDD-hhmmss>.txt—This file contains the names of unregistered items.

List installed mobile map packages

Use the --preinstalled command with the managemmpks tool to list the mobile map packages that come with your portal. You can output a text file containing this list. You can then use the text file as input for registering and unregistering .mmpk files.

To return a list of the map packages in your command prompt or terminal, specify the --preinstalled command as shown in this example.

managemmpks --preinstalled

If you want to output the list to a file, specify a file name as shown in the following example:

managemmpks --preinstalled > myoutputfile.txt