Common clients of Portal for ArcGIS
Portal for ArcGIS is designed to expand the use of maps and GIS applications within organizations. As an administrator of Portal for ArcGIS, you need to understand the wide variety of end-user applications that people in your organization may use to interact with maps and other items in your portal.
Portal for ArcGIS website
Many users in your organization will only log in to the Portal for ArcGIS website. You can configure this site with your own look and feel, feature maps and apps in the front page, and organize them into galleries and groups. The Portal for ArcGIS website also includes a map viewer that authenticated users can use to create and use web maps. By configuring your Portal for ArcGIS with a hosting server, users whom you assign to the publisher role will also be able to create feature services from their own shapefiles and CSV files from the portal website.
ArcGIS for Desktop
ArcGIS for Desktop is the most sophisticated application in ArcGIS. It includes advanced capabilities to author, edit, and analyze geographic data. Users of ArcGIS for Desktop can sign in to Portal for ArcGIS and use its web maps. Additionally, users of ArcGIS for Desktop can publish GIS services such as map, geoprocessing, locator, imagery, and other services that provide the foundation for much of the work performed in Portal for ArcGIS.
Esri Maps for Office
Esri Maps for Office provides mapping capabilities in Microsoft Office through a Microsoft Add-in. You can use this add-in with Microsoft Excel to create web maps in Portal for ArcGIS that show data from your spreadsheets. Additionally, an add-in for PowerPoint lets you embed these web maps into your presentations.
You can download Esri Maps for Office from the Esri website.
Operations Dashboard for ArcGIS
Operations Dashboard for ArcGIS allows decision makers, operations managers, and section leaders to monitor activities and events, track their field workforce, and assess the status of daily operations. The Operations Dashboard app creates and manages operation views within your portal. When your users open an operation view from the portal, it downloads and installs the app on their PC. As the Portal for ArcGIS administrator for your organization, you need to configure the ability for users to install the Operations Dashboard for ArcGIS.
For information on configuring Operations Dashboard for use with your portal, see Make Operations Dashboard available from your portal.
Collector for ArcGIS
Collector for ArcGIS is a field data collection and editing app for smartphones and tablets. It is designed to help your field staff rapidly collect and update data in the field using maps that you create and share using Portal. Refer to the Collector for ArcGIS documentation to understand how you can create and share maps with your field workforce.
Your field workforce can download Collector for ArcGIS from the iTunes App Store (for iPhone) or Google play (for Android).
Esri Maps for SharePoint
Esri Maps for SharePoint provides mapping capabilities in Microsoft SharePoint through a map Web Part for SharePoint pages. You can use this to display content from Portal for ArcGIS in your SharePoint pages. It also includes a workflow that allows you to spatially-enable SharePoint lists that contain address data, and a workflow to connect to, map-enable, and enrich your external data warehouse through Business Connectivity Services (BCS) support and Esri Geoenrichment.
You can download Esri Maps for Office from the Esri website.
Other mobile applications
In addition to the Collector application, there are other mobile applications and developer toolkits that you can use with Portal for ArcGIS:
- ArcGIS App for Android, iOS, or Windows Phone
- ArcGIS for Windows Mobile
- ArcGIS Runtime SDK for Windows Mobile
- ArcGIS Runtime SDK for Android, iOS, or Windows Phone
ArcGIS Explorer Desktop
ArcGIS Explorer Desktop is a free GIS viewer for visualizing and sharing GIS information. You can access basemaps, layers, and web maps from your portal to be used in ArcGIS Explorer maps.
Additional clients
For information about other clients and APIs that work with Portal for ArcGIS, use the ArcGIS Applications and APIs shortcuts available from the Start menu where you have Portal for ArcGIS or ArcGIS for Server installed.