- What is a Hub community?
- What can community members do?
- How can I obtain a community account?
- How do I activate a Hub community?
- Are community accounts free to the public?
- What are the requirements for authenticating a community account?
- Is my organization required to make community accounts available to the public?
- How can new members be added or invited to the community organization?
- Where are community accounts administered?
- How can staff share content with community members?
- What items can staff share with community members?
- What can community members view?
- What can community members edit?
- Where can community members sign in to view private content that has been shared with them?
- Can a community member share a URL to a private item?
- Who can view community member profiles and content?
- Can community members share their own content with the public?
- Can community members view other community members' content?
- Can community members create events?
- Do I need a community account to respond to a survey?
- Do I need an account to download open data?
- Do I need an account to share public site content (pages, apps, surveys, and so on) through social media?
- Where can I find ideas and inspiration for using a Hub community?
A Hub community is composed of members who are not affiliated with your organization and who are not paid contractors or staff members. Members of the community organization can include the general public, representatives from non-profits and advocacy groups, business partners, and anyone who has a stake in contributing, reviewing, or updating content for a site.
With a community account, community members can sign in to any public site or page or to a site or page that has been shared with them privately. Based on the privileges assigned to them within the community organization, they can create and share their own content such as maps, join groups, and collaborate with you in designing sites and pages.
To activate a community in ArcGIS Hub, you must upgrade to ArcGIS Hub Premium. This upgrade includes a community organization and a defined number of community accounts you choose at the time of licensing. You must also have an existing ArcGIS Online subscription (an employee organization) for your staff and paid contractors to securely manage your hub's official content. For more information, see ArcGIS Hub Pricing or contact your customer sales representative.
Yes. Community accounts are free on behalf of the organization providing them. When an organization licenses ArcGIS Hub Premium, they determine how many community accounts and credits to purchase. Community administrators can track the number of community accounts created over time by signing in to the community organization in ArcGIS Online. Refer to Manage the community organization for more information.
This depends on how the organization has configured its Hub community settings. These settings allow community administrators to require new members to use an email address or a Facebook, Apple ID, Google, or GitHub account when creating a new account. Your organization can also configure the community sign-in prompt with their SAML providers, custom terms and conditions, and additional text, such as a welcome message or next steps.
No, an organization does not have to make community accounts available to the public. Instead, you can offer community accounts to partners, students, volunteers, and other stakeholders. Administrators can create community accounts individually or upload a .csv file of all member details to add or invite multiple new members at one time.
A community administrator must have a valid email address for each person they want to add or invite. When adding new members, the administrator defines the username and temporary password for each account. New member details are immediately added to the Hub community, which allows staff to begin sharing content with them. The administrator or a staff member is responsible for providing the community member with their username and temporary password. When an administrator invites new members, an email is sent to each new member with an account activation link. The new member must activate this account before their information is made available to staff.
Community accounts are ArcGIS accounts and are the same type of accounts that your organization's staff and contractors use. Community accounts are managed in a community organization, separate from the employee accounts that are managed in an employee organization. Both of these organizations are ArcGIS Online organizations, each with their own ArcGIS Online home page and administrators.
Your staff can share content with community members through groups as you would with other ArcGIS organization accounts. With the privilege to join external groups, community members can collaborate outside the community organization. To learn more about groups in Hub, refer to Use groups.
Staff can share any supported item type that belongs to the employee organization with community members by using groups or making the content publicly accessible.
Community members who have access to view a group's private content can sign in as usual on a public site. Once signed in, they can view internal items that have been shared on the site using private rows, pages, and menu links. For example, members of site edit groups can set the visibility of a site's row to group members only. Any items shared with the group that are displayed in the row are visible to signed in group members. A group member can also add pages to a public site and display internal items on the page layout. Site editors can use menu links to provide navigation from the site's header to the page. Menu links that link to private items—including pages, apps, and surveys—are not visible to the public and can only be used by those with whom the item is shared (when signed in). If all site content is shared internally, the site's creator must use email to add the new group members and share relevant web addresses with them.
Private items, including items shared only to a group or with their respective organization, require authentication when opening the item in a browser. Only those with whom the item has been shared can sign in to view the item, ensuring that the item remains inaccessible to anyone other than its intended audience.
Anyone with access to the community member's profile and content can view it. As a community administrator you can ensure your community members' profiles are private, including whether they are only accessible to each other or just administrators. Learn more about managing member profiles.
No. You do not need an account to view, filter, or export open data that has been made available through a site. You can, however, sign in and save your favorite datasets to your user profile. You can also use your community account to configure your own items, such as maps and stories, using open data.
Do I need an account to share public site content (pages, apps, surveys, and so on) through social media?
No. Anyone can help expand the reach of content made publicly available by sharing a link on social media. Site editors can encourage this by enabling the share button, a mobile-friendly button that provides fast options for sharing content to several social media platforms.
View the Hub Gallery and browse examples by sectors such as local governments, non-profits, and universities. You will find a range of hubs, from those gathering public input through surveys, open data, and research, to others built by stakeholder contributions, such as a network of internal community members contributing to the public-facing side of their hub.