Notes on working with portal projects

Recommendations for using specialized functionality or tools with portal projects are provided below.

Notebooks in ArcGIS Pro

Collaborators in a portal project that includes a notebook should be aware that if the notebook is modified by multiple users—for example, if the contents of a cell are changed or cells are repositioned—there will be a conflicting state of the shared notebook file that must be resolved.

When saving changes and a conflict exists, Jupyter lab's built-in conflict resolution dialog box appears. This is different from the portal project Project Conflicts dialog box. Portal projects do not manage conflicts for notebooks or other resources external to the .aprx file. You can cancel (don't save changes and defer choosing until later), revert (revert local changes to state on disk), or overwrite (overwrite state on disk with local changes). In the case of revert, local changes are overwritten by the common state on disk. In the case of overwrite, the common state on disk is overwritten with your local changes.

Tip:

It is recommended that you contact your project collaborators before making changes to a notebook.

Sensitive or personal data entered into or output from ArcGIS Notebooks is visible to others with access to the portal project. For example, the arcpy.SignInToPortal function requires credentials such as a username and password, or a token, for authentication. Storing these credentials in plain text makes them visible to anyone with access to the notebook, which may violate your organization’s security policy. There are several ways to avoid this problem, including the following:

• A function may offer alternative authentication mechanisms that don’t require credentials within the notebook. For example, arcpy.SignInToPortal also offers PEM and keyfile or IWA authentication. Not all mechanisms offer the same level of security; it is important to consider each approach.
• The default ArcGIS Pro Python environment, arcgispro-py3, ships with the keyring package. This package allows retrieval of a password from a credential manager on the user’s machine.

  

• The Python standard library includes the getpass module, which allows you to prompt a user to enter a password without storing it. This way, the password cannot be retrieved by someone using the portal project on a different computer.

  

Note:

The examples above show usernames displayed in plain text, which may not conform to your organization’s security policy.

Take a map offline

The ability to take a map offline is disabled for portal projects. This avoids the risk of layer data sources being broken for users in a collaborative environment.

If a web layer or web tile layer in a portal project is needed for offline use, the recommended workflow is to save the portal project as a local project. In the local project, the map that contains web feature layers or web tile layers can be taken offline using the Download Map button . The portal project continues to provide access to web layers for collaborators who are not working offline.

Toolboxes and their contents

Toolboxes, including Python toolboxes (.pyt) and ArcGIS toolboxes (.atbx), are files that are referenced by a project but stored outside of the project file.

Toolboxes may appear in folder connections or in the Toolboxes container of the Catalog pane or a catalog view. In the portal project environment, a project toolbox is available to multiple users working on a collaborative project or to a single user accessing the portal project on more than one computer.

Note:

In a portal project, the default toolbox must be an ArcGIS toolbox.

File-based items stored outside the project file are not suitable for use by multiple editors at the same time. This applies to toolboxes and their tools. If multiple edits are made to a toolbox’s properties, a tool’s properties, a model’s contents, and so on, the last saved change is persisted to the toolbox file.

For example, a toolbox in a collaborative portal project includes a model tool. If the model is modified by multiple users—for example, if tools are added or model elements are repositioned—there is no conflict resolution procedure to reconcile the edits. Instead, the last saved modification is persisted to the file on disk, and previously saved edits are lost.

Tip:

You may want to contact your project collaborators before making changes to a toolbox or its contents.

To see changes made to a toolbox, model, or tool by another user, right-click the toolbox in the Catalog pane or a catalog view and click Refresh . To see toolboxes added to the project by other users, save the project or get updates.