Organization administration

Portal administrators have the following new capabilities and options in this release:

• The New Member Defaults tab allows administrators to set a default user type and role for new members. At 10.8.1, you also can set add-on license assignment and group membership defaults for new members. The defaults specified are automatically assigned to new members who create their own built-in accounts and members added by an administrator or through automatic account creation.
• Two new options are now available for default administrators creating groups in the organization. An administrator can protect the privacy of members of groups by hiding the list of group members on the Members tab of the group page. They can also restrict members from leaving the group, which ensures that members remain in the group unless they are removed by the group owner or a group manager.
• At 10.8.1, you can assign groups to members in bulk from the Members tab of the organization page.
• Parcel Fabric and Utility Network functionality are now licensed as user type extensions. User type extensions can be included in a user type or assigned as an add-on license.
• As of 10.8.1, a new help source option determines whether your organization's access to help topics is derived from https://enterprise.arcgis.com or an installed source. By default, the source is set to the local, installed source. When internet access is available, enable this option to deliver help from https://enterprise.arcgis.com.
• Portal administrators can now use the importlicense command line utility to import a license file containing licensed apps and user types.
• Administrators can now place ArcGIS Enterprise in read-only mode through the portal. When read-only mode is turned on, most content and settings in the portal, any federated servers, and ArcGIS Data Store cannot be created, modified, or deleted. Read-only mode does not prevent normal access to the portal. This can be useful in preventing downtime and data loss when making system updates and when upgrading ArcGIS Enterprise.
• Administrators can configure a custom access notice that is displayed to users who access your organization. When enabled, a message will appear upon accessing the portal, and users can only proceed to access the site if they accept the terms of the notice. At 10.8.1, you can specify a separate access notice for organization members and for all users who access the organization.
• Administrators can configure a custom information banner to appear at the top and bottom of your Enterprise portal to display important information to your users. Examples of the information banner in action include informing users who access your organization about the status of the organization or alerting them to upcoming maintenance. The information banner is configured in the organization settings of the portal, so you no longer need to use the classificationBanner property in the configuration file. At 10.8.1, the information banner can also be configured to show on sites created with ArcGIS Enterprise Sites.
• An enhanced security privilege model enables portal administrators to restrict or grant access to a subset of administrative tasks in the Portal Admin API based on a member's assigned privileges. For example, administrators can limit the ability for some administrators to interact with portal settings pertaining to the portal's look and feel. They may also restrict access to manage federated servers or update security settings such as password policy updates. This allows organization administrators to delegate specific administrative tasks without granting full access to the Portal Admin API. At 10.8.1, administrators can also restrict or grant access to a subset of administrative tasks in the federated Server Admin API.
• New webhook trigger events are available that allow administrators to monitor changes made to their organization's roles, such as being notified when a role is created or when an existing role has been updated. As well, administrators are also now able to subscribe to more encompassing trigger events. Previously, the webhook trigger events allowed administrators to be notified to changes to a specific item, group, or user. For example, a trigger event could have been set to trigger whenever a specific user signed in or out of the portal or when a specific item had been updated. Now, organization administrators can subscribe to events that allow them to monitor all activity for users, items, and groups, such as seeing when any item in their organization is added or deleted.
• At 10.8.1, the Storyteller user type is available for users to create stories using ArcGIS StoryMaps. Storytellers can create stories using maps, scenes, and apps created and shared by members of their organization, or create embedded maps on the fly.
• At 10.8.1, you can configure your portal to send emails by integrating with your organization's SMTP server. This will enable new email-driven workflows and notifications such as forgot password, password policy, and license expiration notifications.
• A new version management privilege is available for custom roles at 10.8.1 that allows role members to manage branch version locks and to view, alter, and delete branch versioned data accessed through ArcGIS Server feature services. By default, enabling the new privilege also enables the feature edit and edit with full control privileges, which allows version administrators to make corrections in a version when completing quality assurance reviews before posting edits.
• At 10.8.1, administrators have the option to install and configure Map Viewer Beta for your organization. This allows your organization members to try out the next generation of Esri's web mapping capabilities. To get started with Map Viewer Beta, see the Map Viewer Beta in ArcGIS Enterprise 10.8.1 blog post.
• At 10.8.1, when you set the language for your organization, you can now specify a number and date format for three additional languages—French, German, and Italian. Individual organization members and those with public accounts can also change the number and date format through their profile page. For example, if the language is set to French, you can display dates and numbers using the formats defined in the Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR) for France and Switzerland.

User experience

• The user profile and settings experience has been redesigned, allowing you to view and update account settings and profile information.
• At 10.8.1, access ArcGIS Enterprise Sites, ArcGIS StoryMaps, and ArcGIS Experience Builder from the Create menu on the content page as a quick way to start creating sites and apps from the portal.

Data management

• New options in ArcGIS Server Manager allow you, the portal administrator, to create data store items for existing database and file share data stores that were registered directly with a federated server. This replaces the 10.7.1 workflow.
• The workflow for updating the contents of a hosted vector tile layer is improved. The Replace Layer interface allows you to replace the content of the current hosted vector tile layer with the content in a replacement layer. It also allows you to choose how to archive the current content and preview the styles that are applied to the layer. It alerts you when the current and replacement layer don't match, so you can correct problems before you replace content.
• When preparing web maps for offline use, you can now draw a polygon to define the area of data included in the map when users take it offline. This provides you more control over the data that is taken offline. You can also schedule updates for read-only clients to allow them to download prepackaged updates.
• To help people determine how to use, style, and edit the data in the hosted feature layers you share with them, add descriptions and define the types of values that should be stored in each field.
• You can take advantage of more complex symbology by publishing hosted map image layers from your hosted feature layers and hosted spatiotemporal feature layers using ArcGIS Pro 2.5. These hosted map image layers are rendered on the ArcGIS Enterprise machines and can provide faster drawing times for large volumes of data. Hosted map image layers also provide read-only access to the data, which means you can share the hosted map image layer with a wider audience.
• Hosted feature layers now include system-maintained fields that store length and area values for line and polygon features.
• REST feature layer queries can return results in RFC7946 GeoJSON.
• If you need to alter the fields that track editors' logins for hosted feature layers, you can disable the Keep track of who created and last updated features setting on the layer, access the feature layer table from the Data tab of the hosted feature layer's item page, edit the values in the fields, and reenable Keep track of who created and last updated features. You might do this if you use the values in this field to control who can see features in the hosted feature layer or to control who can edit features. For example, if editor1 leaves your organization, no other editors can see or edit the features that editor1 created. In this case, you can replace the editor1 value in the field that tracks who created a feature with the login name of the person who will take over editor1's work.
• When you publish a hosted feature layer from ArcGIS Pro or ArcMap, you can define a datum transformation to allow your data to draw properly when viewed against ArcGIS Online basemaps.
• You can publish a hosted building scene layer from ArcGIS Pro 2.6 to a 10.8.1 portal and include an associated feature layer. this allows you to edit and update the building scene layer. See Building scene layer in ArcGIS Pro help for more information on this type of scene layer.
• At 10.8.1, there are new ways to update the contents of hosted scene layers:
  • If you published the scene layer from a scene layer package, you can replace the layer's contents using a second scene layer. When you replace the layer, you maintain the current scene layer's item ID, which means the scene layer remains accessible from existing scenes and apps.
  • If you published a point or 3D object scene layer from ArcGIS Pro and you edit the features in the layer, you can rebuild the scene layer cache to include only attribute updates. Updating only attributes takes less time than rebuilding the entire cache.
  • If you published a building scene layer from ArcGIS Pro 2.6, you can rebuild the entire scene layer cache to include edits made to the features, or pull in only attribute edits.
• When you synchronize bulk-published layers with their data source in 10.8.1, updates to layer schemas are propagated to the web layers. You also have the option to update the bulk-published layers' details with changes made to the source layer metadata.
• At 10.8.1, the size limit for files uploaded to the portal has increased from 200 GB to 500 GB.
• At 10.8.1, the import and export group content operations can be used to move content from one ArcGIS Enterprise organization to another. These operations are useful when moving content from a development to a staging environment or across disconnected environments. The import and export operations are available in the REST API and similar functionality is available in the ArcGIS API for Python API's GroupMigrationManager.

Mapping and visualization

• At 10.8, Esri vector basemaps are enabled by default in the basemap gallery for new organizations. Existing organizations that upgrade to 10.8 will maintain the basemap settings configured in the portal.
• You can now customize the style of vector tile layers directly in Map Viewer.
• Map Viewer has three new symbol sets to support the utilities community: Water, Sewer, and Stormwater. There are also new symbols included in the Public Safety symbol set.

3D GIS

• New smart mapping styles in Scene Viewer provide complete styling capabilities for lines and polygons. You can now create attribute-driven 3D extrusions from building footprints and color them by usage type, for example. Additionally, new line profiles allow you to create visualizations with 3D tubes, squares, walls, and strips in your scene.
• Isolate each level of a building interactively with the new floor picker in the Building Explorer tool. Explore and gain better insight into BIM buildings published from ArcGIS Pro with predefined filters that allow for custom views.
• Add animated water visualizations to your scenes. Whether you're looking at an ocean from far away or a lake close-up, the new Water polygon style allows you to create realistic views, such as sunlight reflections off the water.
• Scene layer performance continues to improve. Scene Viewer loads integrated mesh, 3D objects, and buildings up to four times faster with the new I3S specification version 1.7. In addition, new client-side caching helps reduce areas without data when exploring the scene.
• The Esri-provided gallery in Scene Viewer includes new 3D models, such as bicycles and fire hydrants, to further customize your scenes. Additionally, Infrastructure and Recreation web styles are new in the gallery, automatic level of detail has been added to 3D models of schematic trees to maintain strong performance in scenes, and Scene Viewer now supports the CGCS 2000 coordinate system.
• Define the visibility range of layers in a scene using the new scale range slider in the layer properties. Create a scene that alternates between layers showing countries, cities, and buildings while zooming in, for example.
• You can now display pop-ups on point cloud scene layers. Select individual points to inspect properties, such as the classification or elevation.

• Performance improvements: 3D scene layers now load up to twice as fast. Vector tile layers have increased rendering performance when navigating in scenes.

• Visual improvements: A new lighting and shading model adds contrast and definition to your 3D content when you choose Quality in the Settings tool. Additionally, Scene Viewer has improved transparency rendering for edges and adjacent extruded polygons.

• At 10.8.1, the Building explorer tool has improved the building visualization when the level picker is used; the bottom levels now appear semitransparent for added visual context. In addition, if your building attributes contain construction phase data, a new filter allows you to choose the construction phase to display.
• At 10.8.1, you can drape feature layers onto integrated mesh scene layers for better 3D visualization. Set the elevation mode to On the ground for point, line, and polygon feature layers.
• At 10.8.1, you can now label 3D object scene layers based on an attribute, such as the building name or address.

Sharing and collaboration

The following are new in sharing and collaboration:

• You can now share items with a group you own or manage directly from the group page.
• The portal has an improved experience for inviting large numbers of members to groups.
• At 10.8.1, from your content page, you can quickly see who can access your items and the groups with which they have been shared. You can also search for groups by name when sharing items with a group, and use filters to help you find specific groups with which to share your content. For example, choose the Special Groups > Shared Update filter to display only shared update groups or find other types of groups such as administrative or featured item groups. You can also filter by owner or group creation date.
• At 10.8.1, you can now embed videos in the portal when a rich text editor is included. This allows you to provide additional information, context, and instructions about your items or groups, and further customize your organization's description and banner.
• At 10.8.1, Viewer credentials can be stored on a workspace level to allow recipients to access services shared as reference without requiring credentials from the originating portal. Viewer credentials added to the workspace must be a built-in member and must have access to the collaboration workspace. This functionality is available for both collaboration hosts and guests.
• Starting at 10.8.1, collaboration hosts and guests will be able to update the collaboration's authentication information after the collaboration has been created.
• At 10.8.1, when creating or editing a collaboration, hosts can specify if items that are unable to be shared as copies should, instead, be shared as references.

ArcGIS Notebook Server

A new application, ArcGIS Notebook Server Manager, is now available in the portal if you have an ArcGIS Notebook Server site federated and configured with the portal. Manager is an intuitive interface for common administrative tasks and resources in ArcGIS Notebook Server sites. You can view and modify settings, query logs, and manage notebook containers.

Learn more about ArcGIS Notebook Server

Analysis

Apps

There are new features and enhancements for apps in the portal.