Explore content

You can find and explore public content by visiting any public site. Depending on a site's purpose, content can be discovered and explored in the following ways:

• Links and pages—Select to open links to pages and other items on a site's header or layout.
• Search bar—Search using global navigation or a search card, or by exploring site contents.
• Apps and maps (layout cards)—Displays a single app, such as an app or map. Depending on its configuration, selecting the item may open in a new browser tab or its content view.
• Categories (layout card)—Displays groups of related content to help narrow search results by using organization categories, item tags, or organization groups. Select a category's icon to view its items.
• Gallery (layout card)—Displays individual items using their thumbnail image and description.
• Events (layout card)—Displays one or more upcoming events in various formats. Select an event to view its details.
• Connected content—The full details page of a public item shows connected content within an organization to support managing, discovering, and learning about content items. The See this dataset in action section shows content of various types connected to that item. For example, for a feature layer, this section may show web maps or applications that are built with that dataset.
• Related content—The full details page of a public item shows related content within an organization to support managing, discovering, and learning about content items. The You may be interested in section shows related content by comparing certain metadata fields (as the search function does) to identify other items that are syntactically similar. Quality of results (number, variety, relevancy) relies heavily on the item being viewed and the array of content items available in the organization.
• Discussions—Have private content-based discussions within groups (requires ArcGIS Hub Premium license).

  Learn how discussions work

Explore and download data and documents

Use a site's search bar to find content that's available to explore and download. You can also search for public (open) data at hub.arcgis.com/search.

Note:

You do not need an account to download public data.

Open the item's preview page for content you find through a site's search results, links, or layout cards. To find private content, ensure that you are signed in and have access to view the item.

Note:

If someone has shared a URL to an item's preview page with you, open the URL in a new browser tab. If the data is filtered by a given attribute, the page will automatically open to this filtered view. You can adjust filters before downloading the data for your own use.

To use spatial content in the explore view, do the following:

• Click the Filter data button , and set Filters or Styling to display map features based on an attribute table. String (text) values are visualized with categorical symbolization. Numeric values are visualized with graduated symbolization.
• Use the Select tool to select and access attributes for a particular map feature. Use the Draw point, Line, or Area tools to draw a feature on the map.
• To create an enlarged area around a drawn feature and contain data of interest, choose Filter to this point (line, or area). Filters by area will include features that are inside or that intersect the polygon. In the Location Filter setting, enter a Distance radius, and select a Units value.
• To download filtered versions of spatial or tabular data, click the Filter data button , which shows the number of features for download. You can also select attributes in table view or on map view to filter specific data.

  Note:

  You can download filtered data for items that are backed by a service and shared publicly.

• Services with Time info enabled in ArcGIS Online will automatically display the Time slider tool, which allows you to animate and filter the service's data by the time attribute.
• Click the Download button on the side panel to download a file or view download options. Select Toggle filters for your subset of features.

  Learn more about data downloads

  Note:

  For items backed by a feature service, only features displayed (based on geographic or other filters) are downloaded; otherwise, all features within the bounding rectangle of the filtered area are downloaded.

Explore attribute tables

The about view for tables and feature layers includes an attribute table in which certain fields display a chart icon. If selected, the icon generates a chart or table based on that field. The following conditions must be met for a field to be eligible for charts:

• The field must be of string (text), numeric, or date type. For string fields, the count of unique values must be less than 20. For date fields, the service must support SQL expressions.
• The field must not be a virtual column. It must not be a coded value belonging to a domain table.
• The field must have statistics generated.

Note:

In the about view of a dataset, the attribute list supports Field value types.

Create a map, scene, or story

Public feature layers or layers that have been shared with you have the options to create a map, 3D scene, or ArcGIS StoryMaps story when accessed on a Hub site.

To create a map, scene, or story from a feature layer, complete the following steps:

1. Open the explore view for a feature layer.
2. Click the Information button to open the side panel.
3. Click I want to use this, and choose one of the following options:
   • Create a Map—Open 2D layers in Map Viewer and 3D layers in Scene Viewer.

     Note:

     In Map Viewer, you can browse and add other data from the site catalogs of recently visited Hub sites.

   • Create a Scene—Open 3D layers in Scene Viewer.
   • Create a Story—Open layers in ArcGIS StoryMaps.

     Note:

     If you are not signed in, you will be prompted to sign in with an ArcGIS Online account or create a community account with the organization hosting the data. The story is saved to this account.

Access the API explorer

For service-backed items, ArcGIS Hub provides shortcuts on a content view page to the underlying service REST API serving the data. These services reflect updates in near real time.

To access the API explorer, complete the following steps:

1. Open the explore page for an item.
2. Click the Information button to open the side panel.
3. Select I want to use this, and select View API resources.
4. Select Open in API explorer.
5. Adjust your query such as filtering by attribute on the Where parameter and selecting Get response.