Create a distributed collaboration

To share content in a distributed collaboration with other organizations, create a collaboration and collaboration workspace, link a group to the workspace, and invite participants to the collaboration. The organization that creates the collaboration is the host, and other participating organizations are guests. Creating the collaboration establishes trust between the participating organizations so that content can be shared among them.

Creating a distributed collaboration involves multiple administrators: one administrator for each of the participants. As a collaboration administrator, you may take on multiple responsibilities during the collaboration setup. If you are not the administrator of all the participants, you must work with the administrators of each of the other participants to complete the collaboration setup. Additionally, as the host of the collaboration, you are responsible for managing the collaboration and its workspaces.

Considerations for creating a collaboration

• The collaboration host is responsible for creating and managing the collaboration. The ArcGIS Online organization must be the collaboration 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 can create a collaboration that includes ArcGIS Enterprise participants using both built-in and web-tier authentication.
• 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:

1. Sign in to the host (ArcGIS Online) organization as a member of the default administrator role or a custom role with administrative privileges to manage the organization's collaborations.
2. At the top of the site, click Organization and click the Settings tab.
3. Click Collaborations on the left side of the page.
4. Under the Distributed section, click Create a distributed collaboration.
5. In the Create a distributed collaboration window, fill in the Collaboration Name and Collaboration Description text boxes for the collaboration, and click Next.

   Keep in mind character limitations when naming and describing a collaboration. The Collaboration Name text box can contain up to 100 characters and the Collaboration Description text box can contain up to 250 characters.

6. Fill in the Workspace Name and Workspace Description text boxes for the first workspace associated with the collaboration, and click Next.

   Keep in mind character limitations when naming and describing a collaboration workspace. The Workspace Name text box can contain up to 100 characters and the Workspace Description text box can contain up to 250 characters. You can create more collaboration workspaces after the collaboration has been created, if necessary. See Manage collaborations for details.

7. Choose an existing group or create a group that will be linked to the collaboration workspace. Click Next.

   A group can only be associated with one collaboration workspace. The host organization will be configured with the Send and receive access mode option.

   • If you create a group for the collaboration, it will be a private group to which all group members can contribute content. You can change the status and contribution settings after the group is created as needed. See Create groups for more information about these settings. When you create a group for a collaboration, you must specify tags for the group to proceed.
   • If you choose to link an existing group, the drop-down menu shows a list of all the groups in the organization, including private groups.

   Note:

   Each ArcGIS Enterprise guest in the collaboration controls the schedule at which group item content and feature layer edits are synchronized; the host (ArcGIS Online) does not control the sync schedule.

8. Choose one of the following to specify how hosted feature layers will be sent to the collaboration workspace:
   • References—Collaboration participants have live access to feature layers. If the item is secured (not shared with everyone), users must sign in to the origin organization to access the item.
   • Copies—Collaboration participants receive a copy of the feature layer, and updates from the origin feature layer are synchronized at a scheduled interval defined by the guest.

     Note:

     If you choose this option, the collaboration guest must set a sync interval in the collaboration workspace, and sync must be enabled on each item in the collaboration. A copy of the feature layer and its data are extracted and published as an item in each recipient's organization. Once the item is created, subsequent synchronizations will only sync updates of that item.

   • Allow two-way sharing of feature service edits to eligible participants—If you choose the Copies option, the owner and recipient of a feature layer can make and share edits between them. Once enabled on a workspace, this option cannot be disabled. To be eligible for the two-way sharing of edits, all ArcGIS Enterprise collaboration participants must be using a version of Enterprise that is 10.9 or later, with the collaboration workspace also having been created at version of 10.9 or later, and guests must have Send and Receive access to the collaboration workspace. Eligible feature services must be configured to use the ArcGIS Pro service runtime and support replica tracking and bidirectional sync.
   • If unable to share as copies share as references—If you choose the Copies option when setting up workspace sync settings, and errors occur while sharing feature layers or views as copies, affected items are shared as references instead. The If unable to share as copies share as references option is enabled by default. If the option is unchecked, feature layers and views will not be shared if an error occurs. This option can be updated when editing your workspace. For more information, see Manage distributed collaborations.
9. Click Save or Save and Invite to create the collaboration.
   • Clicking Save creates the collaboration. The new collaboration can be viewed in the table on the Collaborations page.
   • Clicking Save and Invite creates the collaboration and opens the Invite Guest Organization window.

Invite a guest to the collaboration

Once you have created the collaboration and workspace, you can invite one or more ArcGIS Enterprise organizations to the collaboration as guests.

1. Sign in to the host (ArcGIS Online) organization as a member of the default administrator role or a custom role with administrative privileges to manage the organization's collaborations.
2. At the top of the site, click Organization and click the Settings tab.
3. Click Collaborations.
4. Under Distributed on the Collaborations page, do one of the following:
   • If no guest organization exists, click Invite Guests.
   • If there are already guest organizations in the collaboration, click View Guests and click Invite Guest.

   The Invite Guest Organization window appears.

5. In the Invite Guest Organization window, provide the URL of the organization in the Guest Organization URL text box.

   Ensure that the URL is specified as HTTPS in the format https://webadaptorhost.example.com/<webadaptorname>.

6. To define the type of access that the guest organization will have to the collaboration, choose one of the following for the Guest Organization Access to Workspaces option:
   • Send Content
   • Receive Content
   • Send and Receive Content

   For information about these options, see Access modes for workspaces.

7. Click Send Invitation to save the invitation file.

   Note:

   Invitation files expire 24 hours after they are created.

8. 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 collaboration guest accepts the invitation to collaborate, you must import the invitation response file to complete the collaboration setup.

1. Sign in to the host (ArcGIS Online) organization as a member of the default administrator role or a custom role with administrative privileges to manage the organization's collaborations.
2. At the top of the site, click Organization and click the Settings tab.
3. Click Collaborations.
4. On the Collaborations page, find the table entry for the collaboration whose invitation response you will import. Click the name of the collaboration. Click View Guests.

   You will see a list of participants in the collaboration.

5. Click the Action button for the guest organization and click Accept Guest Organization.
6. In the Accept Guest Organization window, browse to the invitation response file.

   Information about the guest organization, including the contact person and organization URL, appears when you choose the file.

   1. If the guest organization requires web-tier authentication, select the Yes option, provide the credentials for the guest's web authentication, and click Accept Guest Organization.
   2. If the guest organization is secured using PKI client certificate based web-tier authentication, click Choose File and browse to a PKI user certificate in a .pfx file format. Click Accept Guest Organization.

      The user credentials contained in the client certificate must successfully authenticate against the PKI client certificate challenge from the guest. The user does not need to be a named user in the guest organization.

Note:

If the collaboration host does not trust the certificate on the guest organization, an error message appears. The certificate must be trusted before the invitation response can be accepted.

The guest organization's Status now shows as Active. The guest organization's administrator receives a notification that they have joined the collaboration.

The collaboration is ready for use. New items shared with groups participating in the collaboration, as well as updates to existing items, will be sent to participating organizations at a scheduled sync interval specified by collaboration guests.