This workflow explains how to modify the default configuration of a web feature layer. To begin the sharing process, set general properties, and finish sharing, see Share a web feature layer.
You can configure a web feature layer to allow users to edit the underlying data, sync changes back to the database, and export data to other formats. A number of service level parameters can also be configured.
The properties that can be configured depend on whether you are sharing to ArcGIS Online or ArcGIS Enterprise. If you are sharing to ArcGIS Enterprise, configurable properties also depend on your software version and whether your web feature layer references registered data or copies all data to the server. If the following steps don't match your experience exactly, use the table at the bottom of the page to see which properties are configurable for the portal to which you are sharing.
Configure layers
- If necessary, open the Share As Web Layer pane.
On the General tab, confirm that Feature is selected.
- Click the Configuration tab. If necessary, click the Configure Layers tab
below it.If you are sharing query layers from a cloud data warehouse as a read-only web feature layer, the configurable parameters display immediately.
- Under Layer(s), next to Feature, click the Configure Web Layer Properties button
. - Under Operations, check the Approve for Public Data Collection check box to allow public editing on a web feature layer that copies all data.
If the web layer is shared with everyone, you must approve the layer for public data collection before you can enable editing.
This option does not appear when you share a web feature layer that references registered data or share to an ArcGIS Enterprise 10.8.1 or earlier portal.
Caution:
If editing is enabled on a layer that is shared with the public, anyone can edit it without signing in to your organization. For optimal performance and to prevent data loss or corruption, disable editing or share the layer only with your organization. For more information, see Allow or prevent editing on public layers.
- Check the Enable editing and allow editors to check box to enable web feature layer editing.
If you are sharing a web feature layer that references registered data to ArcGIS Enterprise, editing is enabled by default. If you are sharing a web feature layer that copies all data to ArcGIS Enterprise, or if you are sharing to ArcGIS Online, editing is not enabled by default.
If you are sharing to ArcGIS Online, referencing registered data to an ArcGIS Enterprise portal, or copying all data to an ArcGIS Enterprise 10.8.1 or later portal, choose which editing operations are permitted from the following table:
Option Description Add Editors can add feature geometry and provide attribute values when they create the feature. This option is enabled by default. Once features are created, the Update option must be enabled for editors to modify features or their attributes.
Delete Editors can delete features. This option is enabled by default.
Update When this option is enabled, the Attributes and geometry option is enabled by default, allowing editors to update feature geometry and attributes. Choose Attributes only to allow editors to update attributes for existing features only. They cannot modify feature geometry.
Note:
For ArcGIS Enterprise 10.8 or earlier portals, the editing operations are different if you are sharing a web feature layer that copies all data.
ArcGIS Enterprise version Options ArcGIS Enterprise 10.6.1 through 10.8
- Add, update, and delete features
- Add and update features
- Add features
- Update features
- Update attributes only
ArcGIS Enterprise 10.4 through 10.6
- Add, update, and delete features
- Update feature attributes only
- Add features only
Caution:
If you share a web feature layer that references registered data, editing operations cannot be modified through the website for your ArcGIS organization; use ArcGIS Server Manager instead. For more information, see Edit service properties in Server Manager in the ArcGIS Enterprise help.
- Check the Enable Sync box to allow users to work with a local copy of the data when they are offline and to synchronize changes when they are online.
- Check the Export Data check box to allow others to export the data to different formats.
- Under Properties, optionally uncheck the Allow update of true curve check box.
This option is enabled by default to allow web clients to update the true curve geometry of a feature with densified geometry. This option appears only when you share a web feature layer that references registered data to ArcGIS Enterprise. The option is not checked by default when sharing to Portal for ArcGIS 10.4.1 or earlier.
- The Only allow true curve updates by true curve clients check box is enabled by default to only allow clients that support true curves, such as ArcGIS AllSource, to update true curve geometries.
This option does not appear when sharing to Portal for ArcGIS 10.4.1 or earlier.
- The Only allow true curve updates by true curve clients check box is enabled by default to only allow clients that support true curves, such as ArcGIS AllSource, to update true curve geometries.
- Check the Apply default to features with z-value check box to allow editors to add or update features through clients that don't allow a z-value to be given.
- Specify a value for Default z-value when inserting or updating features.
- Check the Allow geometry updates without m-value check box to allow geometry updates to m-enabled features without specifying an m-value.
- Optionally, check the Preserve editor tracking info check box.
This option does not appear when you share a web feature layer that references registered data to ArcGIS Enterprise.
Not checked
Editor tracking information is not preserved. Attribute values in editor tracking fields are overwritten with the account credentials (user name) of the user sharing the web layer and the web layer publishing timestamp. This is the default.
Checked
Editor tracking information is preserved. Attribute values are not overwritten.
Note:
Features created before the layer is shared may store names in editor tracking fields that don't match user names in your ArcGIS organization. For example, they may store a user name from a desktop computer or database. When you subsequently manage the web layer in your portal, you may want to restrict editing privileges so that editors can edit only features they have created themselves. (On the web layer's item details page, on the Settings tab, this option is called What features can editors edit?) If you make this restriction, and if you also chose to preserve editor tracking information, no one in your organization—except administrators—can edit existing features in the web layer because no one is recognized as the creator of those features. This is the main reason to consider not preserving editor tracking information.
- If you are sharing branch versioned data with a topology layer that references registered data, Include topology layer is checked by default. Optionally, uncheck the box to not include the topology layer in the web feature layer.
This option does not appear when you share to an ArcGIS Enterprise 10.8 or earlier portal.
- Optionally, choose a Sync option. Additional sync options are available if you checked the Enable Sync check box and are sharing a web feature layer that references registered data to an ArcGIS Enterprise 10.8.1 or later portal. A default selection is provided based on the data's versioning type.
Create a version for each downloaded map
Create a version from the published version each time a map is taken offline. This is the default if your data's versioning type is traditional.
Create a version for each user
Create a version for each user who downloads the map.
None
No version is created when the map is downloaded. This is the default if branch versioned data is present.
The following table shows valid sync options for each versioning type. Choose the sync option that best suits your offline work.
Branch
- Create a version for each downloaded map
- None
Traditional
- Create a version for each downloaded map
- Create a version for each user
- At the top of the pane, click the Back button
to return to the list of layers and additional layers. - Optionally, under Additional Layers, check the WFS box to create a WFS layer.
This option is not supported when sharing catalog layers as a web feature layer that copies all data.
Note:
Include a WFS layer when an Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)-compliant layer is needed to serve features with geometry and attributes that clients can use in any type of geospatial analysis. If you share a web feature layer that references registered data to ArcGIS Enterprise, there are additional requirements for WFS layers.
For a list of WFS properties that can be configured, see Available WFS service properties in the ArcGIS Enterprise help. If you share a web feature layer that copies all data to ArcGIS Online or ArcGIS Enterprise, Enable transactions cannot be set. Also, the service properties are set by the metadata of the content being shared and cannot be changed.
You may also configure a web feature layer when you configure a web map, web scene, or web link chart. The information in this topic applies in those situations also.
Follow these steps to configure operations and properties for your web feature layer:
Configure parameters
- At the top of the pane, under the Configuration tab, click Configure Parameters
. - Under Properties, specify a value for Maximum records returned by server.
This property appears if you are sharing to ArcGIS Enterprise. It specifies the number of records that can be returned by a user query. A large number may result in slower performance. The default value is 2,000.
- Optionally, under Date Fields, click the Time zone of the data drop-down arrow and choose the time zone in which your date values are stored.
If your feature layer contains date fields, specifying the time zone allows date and time values to be converted correctly when users interact with the web feature layer. This setting does not appear when you share a web feature layer that copies all data to an ArcGIS Enterprise 10.5 or earlier portal.
Note:
If you don't specify a time zone, date values are assumed to be stored in UTC.
If you are publishing data with date fields from a cloud data warehouse, the web feature layer returns date and time values in UTC. If you are publishing data with database field types (time, date, and datetime) that are not in UTC, modify the query layer to exclude these fields. A database field type of timestamp is already in UTC.
- If you choose a time zone other than UTC (coordinated universal time) and you want the time zone to account for daylight saving time, check Adjust For Daylight Saving.
- If you selected a time zone other than None (Assumed UTC), optionally click the Preferred time zone for display drop-down arrow and choose a time zone for ArcGIS AllSource to use when displaying queries from the web feature layer.
ArcGIS AllSource will display date fields in UTC if no preferred time zone is specified. This setting does not appear when you share a web feature layer that copies all data to an ArcGIS Enterprise 11.0 or earlier portal.
- If you choose a preferred time zone other than None (Assumed UTC) and you want the preferred time zone to account for daylight saving time, check Adjust For Daylight Saving.
- Optionally, under Settings, uncheck the Ensure map is set to allow assignment of unique IDs check box.
If the box is checked (the default), the map is analyzed to confirm that the Allow assignment of unique numeric IDs for sharing web layers option in Map Properties is enabled. If the box is unchecked, the analyzer is skipped. If the option in Map Properties is not enabled, unique IDs are automatically assigned to layers and tables when the web layer is published.
Note:
Checking the check box does not automatically enable any option in Map Properties. Authoring the map with assigned layer and table IDs ensures they remain static if the contents or layer ordering in your map change. When overwriting the web layer, assigned IDs must match existing service sublayer IDs to maintain references to them in web maps.
Learn more about assigning layer IDs - Optionally, check the Use symbol types compatible with all clients check box to convert ArcGIS AllSource symbols to web symbols that can be rendered by all applications, including most older clients.
When the box is not checked, 2D point, line, and polygon symbols are preserved as ArcGIS AllSource symbols, also known as Esri Cartographic Information Model (CIM) symbols. Alternate symbols used in feature layers are also preserved. Uncheck the box if your web layer will be used in newer client applications that support rendering CIM symbols, such as ArcGIS API for JavaScript 4.x. CIM symbols appear downgraded in older clients, such as Map Viewer Classic.
This option is checked by default when sharing to ArcGIS Enterprise 11.0 or earlier.
This option does not appear when sharing to ArcGIS Enterprise 10.8 or earlier. For these portal versions, ArcGIS AllSource symbols are automatically converted to web symbols.
- If you are publishing data from a cloud data warehouse, additional settings may be available in the pane.
Under Data Source, choose an option that determines how the service will access the data.
- Select Create a materialized view or access data directly if you want the service to access data stored in the data warehouse. When this is selected, two options may be available for each query layer from a cloud data warehouse:
Option Description Materialized view Generates a materialized view, a database view containing precomputed query results for the service. This improves query performance because the service will access the materialized view rather than running the SQL query every time you work with the query layer.
This option is only available for query layers added from the New Query Layer dialog box. This is the default option for query layers from data in Google BigQuery and Amazon Redshift, and materialized view query layers from data in Snowflake. See Create a query layer for data in a cloud data warehouse for more information.
Caution:
If you are sharing data from Snowflake, there are some limitations on creating materialized views to be aware of before you share the web layer.
Access data directly References data directly from the database. This is the only available option for the following:
- Query layers for tables accessed by adding or dragging it onto the map from a data warehouse connection
- Bin-enabled feature layers
Depending on the size of the table, you may want to add the query layer again using the New Query Layer dialog box to use the materialized view option.
These options are available only if you are sharing query layers from the following cloud data warehouses to the corresponding portal versions:
- Google BigQuery—ArcGIS Enterprise 11.0 or later
- Snowflake—ArcGIS Enterprise 11.1 or later
- Amazon Redshift—ArcGIS Enterprise 11.2 or later
- Select Create a snapshot for query layers to generate a snapshot of the data when continuously updated data is not needed. The snapshot is stored locally with the relational data store on the hosting server, resulting in better rendering performance for the service. When an update is needed, the snapshot can be refreshed from the web layer's item page on the portal.
The table lists each query layer from a data warehouse and whether it supports creating a snapshot. Snapshots are only supported for query layers added from the New Query Layer dialog box. They are not supported for the following:
- Query layers for tables accessed by adding or dragging them onto the map from a data warehouse connection
- Bin-enabled feature layers
Depending on the size of your data, you may want to add the query layer again using the New Query Layer dialog box to use the snapshot option.
This option is available only if you are sharing query layers from Google BigQuery or Snowflake to ArcGIS Enterprise 11.1 or later, or Amazon Redshift to ArcGIS Enterprise 11.2 or later.
These options are not supported for query layers with parameters which cannot be shared as a web feature layer.
- Select Create a materialized view or access data directly if you want the service to access data stored in the data warehouse. When this is selected, two options may be available for each query layer from a cloud data warehouse:
Complete the following steps to configure parameters for your web feature layer. For more information, see Service parameters.
Configurable web feature layer properties
| Active portal | ArcGIS Online | ArcGIS Enterprise 10.9 and later | ArcGIS Enterprise 10.8.1 and later | ArcGIS Enterprise 10.8 and later | ArcGIS Enterprise 10.5.1 through 10.8 | ArcGIS Enterprise 10.5.1 through 10.7.1 | ArcGIS Enterprise 10.5 | Portal for ArcGIS 10.4 and 10.4.1 | Portal for ArcGIS 10.3.1 or earlier | ||
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Data Type | Copy all data | Reference registered data | Copy all data | Reference registered data | Copy all data | Reference registered data | Copy all data | Reference registered data | Copy all data | ||
Approve for Public Data Collection |
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Enable Sync |
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Export Data |
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Allow update of true curves |
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| Only allow true curve updates by true curve clients |
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| Apply default to features with z-value |
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| Default z-value when inserting or updating features |
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Allow geometry updates without m-values |
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| Preserve editor tracking info |
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Include topology layer |
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Sync Options |
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