Using the ArcGIS Solutions Deployment Tool for ArcGIS Pro

Whether your organization is in government, business, utilities or emergency management, you likely have information to collect or share within your organization or with the public. Did you know that you can easily do this with the ArcGIS Solutions Deployment Tool? It provides a set of pre-configured feature layers, maps and apps to store, analyze and share your important data with relevant stakeholders.

The ArcGIS Solutions Deployment Tool allows you to browse a catalogue of ArcGIS Solutions and deploy them to your ArcGIS Online organization or Portal for ArcGIS. ArcGIS Solutions are pre-configured sets of layers, tables and apps designed for specific industries.  It provides you the tools to publish your web services and corresponding web maps and web applications with only a few clicks. With the knowledge of the common verticals that our clients use, Esri has collected hundreds of industry-specific standardized workflows. Rather than manually configuring the setup for your layers, setting up domains, relationship classes and configuring an app, the ArcGIS Solutions Deployment Tool will do a lot of the heavy lifting for you.

What solutions are available?

There are hundreds of solutions ready to use for your ArcGIS Online deployment, with more being added in every release! Each solution is designed with an industry-specific use case in mind. They are categorized by the following industries: Local Government, State Government, Electric, Gas, Water, Telecommunications, Emergency Management, Defense, Business, and Intelligence.

The online Solutions Gallery lists all the available templates, many of which have samples so you can see it in action before giving it a try.

A few examples…

The Damage Assessment solution is a configuration of Survey123 for ArcGIS and Operations Dashboard for ArcGIS that can be used by field inspectors to conduct initial damage assessments immediately following an incident or natural disaster.

The Local Events Calendar solution can be used by the public to discover festivals, shows, concerts and other events occurring in a community. Citizens can check out the calendar of events, where each event is located, how far away from their home it is, and then schedule a visit or trip.

The Snow Common Operational Picture solution is a configuration of Operations Dashboard for ArcGIS that can be used by operations managers to monitor snow event responses and determine which streets are not getting attention. The application leverages ArcGIS GeoEvent Extension for ArcGIS Server to visualize the location of vehicles and other assets used in your snow response plan.

How can I access the ArcGIS Solutions Deployment Tool?

To begin, you will need to have ArcGIS Pro (2.2 or higher) installed, along with an ArcGIS Pro license (any level will do). You will also need an ArcGIS Online subscription or an ArcGIS Enterprise with managed data store (10.5 or higher, Standard or Advanced) in order to publish services and host maps and apps. Note that if you’re using ArcGIS Online, you will require a Creator or GIS Professional User Type, as well as a user role that includes publishing (content creation) privileges.

When you’re ready, navigate to the ArcGIS Solutions Deployment Tool web page and select Download. From the downloads page, select ArcGISSolutionDeploymentTool.zip to download the installation file. Navigate to the directory in which it was downloaded, unzip the file, and double click the file titled SolutionDeployment.esriAddInX to launch the installer. Once the Esri ArcGIS Add-In Installation Utility window launches, select Install Add-In.

Get started using the ArcGIS Solutions Deployment Tool

Once you launch ArcGIS Pro, you’ll see that a new icon labelled ArcGIS Solutions has appeared in the Share ribbon.

Once opened, you’ll see that the ArcGIS Solutions Deployment Tool workflow comprises four main steps: Sign In, Deploy, Configure, and Load Data.

The ArcGIS Solutions Deployment Tool works with Tasks. Tasks in ArcGIS Pro are a pre-configured set of steps to carry out a workflow. They can be a great guide through a workflow such as this, as the standardized workflow can accomplish many processes in the background with limited publishing experience. 

Learn more about Tasks in ArcGIS Pro

Step 1: Sign in

A panel will be launched, which will prompt you to log in to your ArcGIS Online organization or Portal for ArcGIS. Ensure that you are logged in to your ArcGIS Online organization or Portal account to which your feature layers and apps will be published. Note that your account must have a user type and role that allows for publishing content. The currently logged in account is listed in the upper-right corner of ArcGIS Pro.

Step 2: Deploy

All the available solutions are categorized by their industry within the Task pane, and the Search bar can be used to narrow down to a specific need such as ‘3D’ or ‘Park’. Select a solution and hit ‘Deploy’.

Quite a few steps will now be completed in the background. Feature layers to store the solution’s data will be published to your selected portal, and web maps and web applications will be created using those layers.

In the example below, I deployed the Damage Assessment Solution from the Emergency Management category. My ArcGIS Online Content now contains a hosted feature layer to store the information about the damage caused by the natural disaster, which has been divided into three damage assessment sublayers (Residential Buildings, Commercial Buildings, and Public Facilities).

Additionally, a Hosted Feature Layer view of the layer with specialized visualization and sharing settings was created. From there, three web maps were created to analyze residential, public and commercial damage separately.  Finally, one comprehensive dashboard was created to summarize the information from all the above contents into one page (as shown above).

Step 3: Configure your solution 

It is now time to customize the feature layer to meet your organization’s needs to store and collect the attribute information that is important to you and your project. You will be walked through a two-step process of adding fields and modifying domains on your feature layer. The Input Layer or Table parameter will be your new feature layer that was published in the previous step.

Step 4: Load data

By default, the feature layers for your solution are empty to ensure that your maps and apps are uniquely yours. The final step of running the ArcGIS Solutions Deployment Tool is to load in your own datasets from your organization’s file geodatabases, enterprise geodatabases or shapefiles. 

Once this step is complete, you are all set! The data you’ve loaded will be ready to view and analyze on the web from your web maps and web applications. 

For more information, including help articles and tutorials, see the Esri documentation on ArcGIS Solutions Deployment Tool. Also, view What’s New in ArcGIS Solutions Deployment Tool for the latest updates on new templates and improvements in the tool. Please refer to the What's New page for each industry-specific ArcGIS Solution to see recently added solutions and updates.