Create a distributed collaboration
To share content with ArcGIS Enterprise organizations, create a distributed collaboration and workspace, link a group to the workspace, and invite participants to the collaboration.
Creating a distributed collaboration involves multiple administrators: one administrator for each of the participating organizations. As a collaboration administrator, you must work with the administrators of each of the other participating organizations to complete the collaboration setup. Additionally, as the collaboration host, you are responsible for managing the collaboration and its workspaces.
Considerations for creating a collaboration
The host is responsible for creating and managing the collaboration. The ArcGIS Online organization must be the host.
Only one ArcGIS Online organization can participate in the distributed collaboration.
Any ArcGIS Enterprise organizations participating in the collaboration must be running a supported release of ArcGIS Enterprise.
When inviting a guest organization to be part of a collaboration, its URL must be specified as HTTPS.
The guest organization doesn't need to be publicly exposed to participate in the collaboration. It can be behind a firewall, in a local intranet, and still join the collaboration as long as the guest organization can access ArcGIS Online over HTTPS (port 443).
You must enable pop-ups in your browser to allow invitation requests and responses to be downloaded.
Create a collaboration and workspace
To create a collaboration and workspace, complete the following steps:
Sign in to your organization as a member of the default administrator role or a custom role with administrative privileges to manage the organization's collaborations.
At the top of the site, click Organization and click the Settings tab.
Click Collaborations on the side of the page.
Under the Distributed section, click Create collaboration.
The Create collaboration window appears.
Provide a collaboration name and description.
Note:
Members of groups linked to a collaboration workspace can view collaboration details on the Overview tab of the group page, including the collaboration name. The Collaboration name text box can contain up to 100 characters, and the Description text box can contain up to 250 characters.
In the Item retention policy section, specify what happens to collaboration items when the collaboration or any of its workspaces is deleted.
For Items sent from my organization, choose one of the following options:
Remove from participants—Items sent from your organization are removed from all collaboration participants.
Let participants decide—Collaboration participants decide whether to keep the items sent from your organization.
For Items received by my organization, choose one of the following options:
Remove from my organization—Items received by your organization are removed.
Keep if permitted by contributing participants—You can keep the items received by your organization until the sending participants revoke permission to retain them.
Note:
The item retention policy is configured at the collaboration level and applies to all associated collaboration workspaces.
Click Next.
Provide a workspace name and description.
Note:
The Workspace name text box can contain up to 100 characters, and the Workspace description text box can contain up to 250 characters.
Choose an existing group or create a group that will be linked to the collaboration workspace.
A group can only be associated with one collaboration workspace. To learn more about groups and workspaces, see Understand distributed collaborations.
Note:
Members of groups linked to a collaboration workspace can view collaboration details on the Overview tab of the group page, including the collaboration name.
Choose one of the following to specify how hosted feature layers and views are sent to the collaboration workspace:
References—Collaboration participants receive a new item that references the original feature layer. Data edits are accessible in real time. If the item is secured, users must sign in to the origin organization to access the item.
One-way copies—Collaboration participants receive a copy of the feature layer. Only edits from your organization are synchronized at a scheduled interval defined by the guest.
Two-way copies—Collaboration participants receive a copy of the feature layer. Edits from your organization and participating organizations are synchronized at a scheduled interval defined by the guest.
Note:
When sharing feature layers as copies in a distributed collaboration, field names greater than 63 characters are truncated and will not be synchronized. For more information, see Schema changes.
Optionally, if you selected One-way copies or Two-way copies, turn on the Share as references when unable to share as copies toggle button to share feature layers and views as references if an error occurs while sharing them as copies.
Click Create distributed collaboration.
Invite a guest to the collaboration
Once you have created the distributed collaboration and workspace, complete the following steps to invite one or more ArcGIS Enterprise organizations to the collaboration as guests:
Sign in to your organization as a member of the default administrator role or a custom role with administrative privileges to manage the organization's collaborations.
At the top of the site, click Organization and click the Settings tab.
Click Collaborations on the side of the page.
Under the Distributed section, find and select the collaboration to which you want to invite a guest, using the filter and search options as needed.
The collaborations window appears.
In the Guest organizations section, do one of the following:
If no guest organization exists, click Invite guest.
If there are already guest organizations in the collaboration, click Invite.
The Invite guest organization window appears.
Provide the URL of the organization you want to invite to the distributed collaboration in the Guest organization URL text box, then click Next.
Ensure that the URL is specified as HTTPS in the format
https://organization.example.com/enterprise.Choose one of the following workspace access modes from the drop-down menu:
Guest can send content to this workspace—Guest can send but not receive content.
Guest can receive content from this workspace—Guest can receive but not send content.
Guest can send and receive content from this workspace—Guest can send and receive content.
Click Prepare invitation to save the invitation file.
Note:
Invitation files expire 24 hours after they are created.
Click Download invitation file.
Share the invitation file with the administrator of the guest organization.
You must share the file outside of ArcGIS Online; this can be done by email or another method you have arranged.
The administrator of the guest organization must now accept the invitation to collaborate. For more information about this process, see the ArcGIS Enterprise documentation.
Import invitation response
Once the guest accepts the invitation to collaborate, you must import the invitation response file to complete the collaboration setup. To import the invitation response file, complete the following steps:
Sign in to your organization as a member of the default administrator role or a custom role with administrative privileges to manage the organization's collaborations.
At the top of the site, click Organization and click the Settings tab.
Click Collaborations on the side of the page.
Under the Distributed section, find and select the collaboration to which you want to import the invitation response, using the filter and search options as needed.
The collaboration window appears.
Note:
If a collaboration has pending invitations, the number of pending invitations is displayed on the collaboration card.
In the Pending invitations section, click Upload response.
The Upload response window appears.
Click Choose file, then browse to the invitation response file.
Click Upload response file.
The guest organization is now listed in the collaborations window Guest organizations section. The guest organization's administrator receives a notification that they have joined the collaboration. The collaboration is ready for use.