Work with offline jobs

Disponible avec une licence Workflow Manager.

Offline jobs allow you to utilize workflow management capabilities when disconnected from your organization's network. When you take a job offline, all the necessary configuration elements required for the job to work in the offline mode are taken offline as well. The offline jobs are still displayed by the queries in an enterprise environment. Although the offline jobs are visible in the enterprise environment, they can only be viewed in read-only mode and cannot be edited or executed unless brought back online. Offline jobs have almost all of the functionality that is available with online jobs.

The benefit of working with offline jobs is that tasks can be completed when in the field or off of the network. For example, a data collection field crew can take the jobs assigned to them offline and work through the workflow as they go about completing the data collection steps in the field. In another case, an analyst who is going to work from a remote location for a few days can take the jobs offline and work on them when disconnected from the organization's network. Offline jobs are also useful for locations that do not have a reliable network connection, for example, if there are contract technicians working from a location that does not have a reliable network. The head office location can take jobs offline and send the project to the contract technicians to work through the jobs.

Taking jobs offline and bringing them back online are privilege-based activities. To take the jobs offline, the ArcGIS Workflow Manager (Classic) user must have the CanTakeJobsOffline privilege, and to bring jobs online the user must have the CanBringJobsOnline privilege. A job must be brought online by the same user who took it offline. An administrator can also bring a job online even if they did not take it offline, so that if the person who took the job offline is unavailable the job can be brought online.

The jobs can be taken offline, and the project with offline jobs can be shared with whoever is going in the field. Once the jobs are taken offline and the project is opened when it's disconnected from a network, the queries return only the offline jobs.

Required preparation and considerations

You may want to design your workflows in such a way that the workflow follows the path where the steps do not reference network locations when a job is offline, or you may also want to designate certain workflows that should not be taken offline.

There are several considerations to be kept in mind before jobs are taken offline.

1. The license for ArcGIS Pro must be checked out before disconnecting the project from the network.
2. The repository name should not be changed after taking jobs offline. Changing the repository name will result in failure when bringing jobs online for that repository.
3. Steps referencing network locations to open files, and so forth, do not work when disconnected from the network.
4. Jobs can be created in offline mode, though only from the job types that are offline. These jobs will be added to the enterprise repository when the other offline jobs are brought back online.
5. Notifications using the network SMTP settings may not work. However, if notifications are set using other email clients such as Gmail, they may work if Internet access is available.