You can publish your maps and data as hosted layers to your ArcGIS Enterprise portal. Web, desktop, and mobile apps can access your hosted layers through the internet if you choose to allow it.
Hosted layers allow you to easily share maps, features, and imagery with other members of your organization.
Prerequisites to publish hosted layers
You must have privileges to create content and publish hosted layers. If the option to publish is not available, check with your organization administrator to confirm that you're a member of a role that has been assigned the correct privileges to publish hosted layers.
Types of hosted layers
You can publish the following types of hosted layers:
Feature layers
Hosted feature layers support vector feature querying, visualization, and editing. Hosted feature layers are most appropriate for visualizing data on top of your basemaps. In web apps, hosted feature layers are drawn by the browser and support interactive highlighting, queries, and pop-ups.
See Publish hosted feature layers for more information.
Once you publish a hosted feature layer, you can create views of the data in the feature layer. Hosted feature layer views reference the same data as the hosted feature layer used to create the view, but you can apply different editing, sharing, and other settings to the view. See Create hosted feature layer views for more information.
Feature layer views
If you have publishing privileges and need a different view of your hosted feature layer beyond changing its style and presentation—for example, you want to apply different editing capabilities or share the data with different groups—you can create a hosted feature layer view from your hosted feature layer. A hosted feature layer view is similar to a copy of a layer but is more powerful because it allows you to control more than just how the layer is displayed. For example, you might create a hosted feature layer view when you need to support different editing capabilities for different groups of people. Many organizations need to share data with the entire organization and simultaneously allow members within a specific group keep that data up to date. Hosted feature layer views provide a direct way to do this. When you publish your hosted feature layer, you can share it with a group or groups whose members need to edit the layer. Then, for the rest of the organization, you can create a hosted feature layer view that references the original hosted feature layer but with editing disabled. Because the two layers share the same data, as group members edit the original hosted feature layer, the rest of the organization sees those changes immediately.
WFS layers
Hosted WFS layers are read-only, OGC-compliant views of hosted feature layers. A hosted WFS layer and the hosted feature layer from which you publish it share the same data and initial metadata.
See Publish hosted WFS layers for more information.
Tile layers
Hosted tile layers support fast map visualization using a collection of predrawn map images, or tiles. These tiles are created and stored on the server after you upload your data. Hosted tile layers are appropriate for basemaps that give your maps geographic context.
You can publish map tiles, vector tiles, or hosted feature layers as a tile layer.
See Publish hosted tile layers for more information.
Vector tile layers
A vector tile layer references a set of web-accessible tiles containing 2D and 3D content and the corresponding style for how those tiles should be drawn. The combination of tile access performance and vector drawing allows the tiles to adapt to any resolution of the display, which may vary across devices.
See Publish hosted vector tile layers to learn more.
WMTS layers
Hosted WMTS are OGC-compliant views of hosted tile layers. All hosted tile layers that are shared with the public can be accessed using the OGC WMTS protocol. The publisher of the hosted tile layer does not have to perform any special operations to enable WMTS. To access a hosted tile layer using the WMTS protocol, open the layer's details page and open the URL for the tile layer. The page that opens contains a WMTS URL link to the WMTS capabilities document that can be used to access layer tiles in apps that support WMTS.
Scene layers
Hosted scene layers support fast map visualization of three-dimensional data using a collection of cached tiles. Caches are generated from 3D data stored in scene layer packages that you generate from ArcGIS Pro.
See Publish hosted scene layers for more information.
Hosted layer dependencies
Hosted layers have dependencies on the items from which you create them. For example, if you publish a hosted feature layer from a shapefile you uploaded, deleting the shapefile will prevent you from performing such operations as overwriting the hosted feature layer. If you publish a hosted feature layer from ArcGIS Pro, a service definition file is created and added to My Content. If you delete the service definition file, you cannot overwrite the service by republishing from ArcGIS Pro.
Similarly, if you publish other hosted layers from a hosted feature layer, you create a dependency between the layers. You can publish all of the following from a primary hosted feature layer:
- Hosted tile layer
- Hosted WFS layer
- Hosted feature layer view
- Hosted map image layer (Can only be published from ArcGIS Pro)
These dependent hosted layers have a relationship with the hosted feature layer from which you create them.
- Hosted WFS and feature layer views reference the data in the hosted feature layer used to publish them; therefore, they are entirely dependent on the hosted feature layer for access to the data.
- Hosted tile layers are dependent on the hosted feature layer for certain functionality such as pop-ups.
- Dependent layers and their primary hosted feature layer must have the same owner. Organization administrators must reassign ownership of the primary hosted feature layer first. When the administrator does that, ownership of all dependent layers (and the file used to generate the primary hosted feature layer) will be owned by the same organization member.
- You must delete all dependent layers before you can delete the hosted feature layer from which you created them.
These dependencies extend to layers you publish from hosted feature layer views. You can publish a hosted tile layer, hosted map image layer, or hosted WFS layer from a hosted feature layer view. These dependent hosted layers are related to both the view and the hosted feature layer from which the view was created. You must delete dependent hosted tile, map image, and WFS layers before you can delete the hosted feature layer view.
Hosted feature layer views have an additional restriction; you cannot set a definition on a hosted feature layer view if it has a dependent hosted tile layer.
The Created from value under Details on the hosted layer's item page tells you which layer or file was used to publish the hosted layer. The Published as and Other Views values indicate what other hosted layers have been published or views created from the hosted feature layer.
Clients that can use hosted layers
Hosted layers communicate through the well-known GeoServices REST Specification and can consequently be used by Esri and third-party apps. An easy way to view your services is through Map Viewer, but you can also make your own app using ArcGIS Runtime SDK, ArcGIS Configurable Apps templates, or ArcGIS Web AppBuilder. Other supported client apps include ArcGIS Collector, ArcGIS Explorer, and ArcGIS Pro. See Common clients of ArcGIS Enterprise for additional clients.
Access to hosted layers
By default, hosted layers are private when published and are only accessible to the person who published them. Hosted layers do not appear in search results and aren't part of any group by default. You can make your hosted layers available to specific groups in your ArcGIS Enterprise organization, all members of your organization, or you can even make them available to anyone who can connect to your organization. See Share items for more information.