Configure routing services

Routing services allow you to perform several types of spatial analysis on transportation networks, such as finding the best route across a city, finding the closest emergency vehicle or facility, identifying a service area around a location, or servicing a set of orders with a fleet of vehicles.

Default administrators and those with the appropriate privileges can configure ArcGIS Enterprise to use routing services to perform various tasks. The routing services can be configured in ArcGIS Enterprise using one of three methods:

Once configured, the routing services can be used with various applications, such as ArcGIS Pro, or to get directions and perform analysis in Map Viewer. You can also use the routing services to include network analysis capabilities in your own custom applications. In addition, you can use SDKs and APIs with the routing services, such as ArcGIS Maps SDK for JavaScript, ArcGIS REST API, or the various native ArcGIS Maps SDKs.

Learn more about the various APIs to access routing services

Configure routing services

To configure routing services in ArcGIS Enterprise, follow the steps below.

  1. Sign in to your organization as an administrator.
  2. At the top of the site, click Organization and click the Settings tab.
  3. Click Utility services on the left side of the page.
  4. Click Directions and Routing on the right side of the page.
  5. Click Configure routing services and choose one of the three methods to configure routing services.
    Configure routing services dialog box

Use routing services from ArcGIS Online

You can configure ArcGIS Enterprise with routing services from ArcGIS Online. To do so, you must have an ArcGIS Online organizational account. The account must have credits associated with it and the appropriate permissions to use the routing services.

  1. On the Configure routing services dialog box, select the ArcGIS Online option, and click Next.
  2. Enter the credentials for the ArcGIS Online account to be used for the routing services, and select the folder or create a folder where the corresponding items will be created in ArcGIS Enterprise.
  3. Click Save.

Once it succeeds, it will show that the routing services in ArcGIS Enterprise are coming from ArcGIS Online. It will also show the ArcGIS Online user account that is used to set up the ArcGIS Enterprise routing services. This is the account from which credits will be deducted when you use routing services in ArcGIS Enterprise.

Publish a network dataset

If you have a network dataset that models your street data, you can use it as a source for your routing services. To do so, you can publish it as routing services and configure it for your organization. This process creates a set of routing services based on your network dataset and registers them as utility services in your organization for various applications to discover and use.

The network dataset you use to publish routing services must first be added to the organization where it will be hosted. You can do this in a few ways:

Learn more about data stores in ArcGIS Enterprise

Caution:

If you have specified ArcGIS Enterprise maximum token duration to be less than 120 minutes, you may run into issues since this process could take a while. It is recommended that you set the ArcGIS Enterprise maximum token duration to be more than 120 minutes before running this process and reset it to your desired value after the process.

  1. On the Configure routing services dialog box, select A network dataset that I'd like to publish, and click Next
  2. In the Network dataset section, do the following:
  3. From the Data store item containing the network dataset drop-down menu, select the data store item that contains your network dataset.
  4. From the GIS Server site to host your routing services drop-down menu, select the server site or organization that will be used to host your routing services. The drop-down menu only includes sites or organizations at versions 11.0 and later that have access to the data store item.
  5. The Network dataset relative path is the path to the network dataset in the data store. For example, if the catalog path of the network dataset in a file geodatabase is C:\data\streets\NorthAmerica.gdb\Routing\Routing_ND and the data store item is referencing C:\data, the value for the network dataset relative path is /streets/NorthAmerica.gdb/Routing/Routing_ND.

    Note:

    You must provide the network dataset relative path using forward slashes.

  6. In the Service properties section, complete the following steps:
  7. For the Service folder parameter, specify a name for the server folder where the routing services will be published.
  8. For each Service types parameter, use the toggle to indicate whether the type should be enabled or disabled.
    Note:
    Some out- of- the box client applications may have functionality disabled. To make use of all or the needed services, ensure they are enabled in the Configure routing services dialog box.
  9. In the Advanced properties section, optionally, upload a routing services properties file to specify certain properties for the routing services such as the minimum and maximum number of service instances.
  10. If you don't specify a properties file, the default properties will be used.
    Before publishing, ensure all the parameters are entered correctly.
  11. Click Publish Routing Services.

    Once the process begins, a progress indicator appears. Since it can take a while to run the process, you can continue with other tasks and return to the progress indicator page to determine whether the process has finished.

  12. When publishing is complete, you will receive a URL confirmation of the server site or organization where your routing services and network dataset are published.

If you are using StreetMap Premium data to publish routing services, and if the data is set up to use live traffic, you will also see the traffic data service item indicating your routing services have live traffic configured from ArcGIS Online.

Once you've configured routing services successfully, a few service items are created in the organization:

  • A Network Analysis Service tool
  • Map Image Layer item

Learn more about configure item details and settings

Note:

You can edit additional properties on routing services using the ArcGIS Enterprise Administrator Directory.

Note:
The process of configuring routing services using your own network dataset configures standard routing services by default. If you want to publish custom routing services, see the custom routing services topic in ArcGIS Pro.

Troubleshoot

If you run into issues while publishing, you will see warning messages or error messages. Learn more about warnings and errors when publishing routing services.

When you have more than one warning or error message, you can see them all by clicking View publishing routing services warnings or View publishing routing services errors. By clicking Detailed messages from publish routing services, you can open the raw JSON messages returned from publishing routing services REST API, which could contain more information.

Use existing routing services

If you have existing routing services on a stand-alone server, you can configure them with your organization. By doing so, you can enable various applications to discover and use these routing services.

  1. On the Configure routing services dialog box, select Existing routing services (Advanced).
  2. Construct URLs to the existing routing utility services. You don't need to specify a URL for all the services.
  3. Click Save.

Once you've configured routing services using one of the three methods mentioned above, you can view, update, or delete them.

View or update routing services

To view or update a routing service URL or item, do the following:

  1. From the Directions and Routing section of the Utility services page, click the Options Options button.
  2. Click View routing services details.
  3. To view or update the service, such as its item details, sharing settings, and so on, click the launcher Launcher button for each respective service.

Delete routing services

To delete a routing service, do the following:

  1. From the Directions and Routing section of the Utility services page, click the Options Options button.
  2. Click Delete routing services.

    If you configured routing services with routing utility services URLs, you can directly edit each utility service by clicking the Options button and clicking Edit routing services.

You could also delete existing routing services and configure them again from scratch. The benefit of doing so is that the existing service items and routing services on hosting site or organization are deleted and cleaned. If your routing services source is Custom, you only have the Remove routing services option, which only removes the utility services from ArcGIS Enterprise.