The ArcGIS Hub assistant (beta) is an in-app productivity tool that uses generative artificial intelligence to make open data more accessible, understandable, and actionable. It is designed to help site visitors find answers to their questions using the curated, public datasets available on your Hub site.
When a user poses a question, the Hub assistant (beta) analyzes it and searches through relevant, public datasets from your site. It then provides simplified answers to help users find the information they need.
Note:
The Hub assistant (beta) is available with an ArcGIS Hub Premium license.
Get started
Site editors can enable the Hub assistant (beta) within a site's workspace in Hub.
To enable the Hub assistant (beta) for a site, complete the following steps:
Note:
Your ArcGIS Online administrator needs to configure assistants before you can access Hub assistant (beta), including turning off the Block Esri apps and capabilities while they are in beta setting.
- Open the site workspace.
- Select Settings and select the Hub assistant (beta) pane.
- Select Hub assistant (beta) to turn on the Hub assistant (beta).
- Configure the following settings:
- Availability—Set the access level and select groups, if applicable. Before deploying the Hub assistant on a site, you can test it within your organization by limiting access to a specified group of people. Even for public-facing sites, members must sign in to access the assistant.
Note:
Assistant access can be set no higher than the site access. For example, if the site access is set to the organization only, the highest sharing permission (access) on the assistant is also organization only.
- Details—Customize the assistant description text, optionally including a disclaimer statement. Set the default location to help the assistant complete partial addresses so that if a user adds a street address such as 15 Main Street, the assistant will first search for matching addresses in the default location.
- Personality—Define characteristics to determine the style and tone of the assistant's conversation. Provide these definitions in the form of a system prompt to guide the assistant to respond to requests in a particular way, such as "Speak in a casual manner", "Be upbeat and positive", or "Speak at an 8th grade level."
- Prompts—Provide suggested prompts to display when a user initializes the assistant. Example prompts should be relevant to the available data in the Hub site catalog, such as "When is my recycling day?", or "Which park has the most trees?".
- Workflows—Customize the default
workflows and add new
ones, if needed. Two types of workflows
can be configured: search or
response. The
default
Search
workflow directs the assistant to look for
answers using the data available on your Hub site. The
two default
Respond
workflows include guardrails to directly respond with
a pre-configured
message, rather than
searching the data catalog,
if
prompted
with
questions
related
to
risk-associated
behaviors.
These three
workflows represent a
baseline
best practice that can
be modified, or you can add additional workflows.
Note:
The two default response workflows may need to be customized to reflect local information, such as emergency numbers.
- Availability—Set the access level and select groups, if applicable. Before deploying the Hub assistant on a site, you can test it within your organization by limiting access to a specified group of people. Even for public-facing sites, members must sign in to access the assistant.
- Select Save.
To use the Hub assistant (beta), complete the following steps:
- Open the live view of a site and sign in to ArcGIS Hub.
- Select the Hub assistant button
from the lower corner of your site. - Select a suggested prompt to build your query or enter a question that includes a topic and location of interest.
Note:
The assistant returns an answer to your question in the Chat window
, a map displaying related spatial data under Map 
(if applicable), additional datasets used under Sources 
, an explanation of the process under Reasoning 
, and additional suggested prompts. - The assistant window also includes a Map pane
where you can add additional datasets found under Sources. You can toggle this pane on and off from the menu next to the Chat window. - To learn more about the assistant, select About from the menu next to the Chat window.
- To clear your query history and start over, select Clear history
at any time.
Guidelines
The following guidelines can help you be successful in using the Hub assistant (beta):
- Select a suggested prompt or enter your own prompt to generate suggestions.
- Use the prompt suggestions as a resource for forming your own search queries.
- Construct queries that are short and direct; long or complex queries take more time for the assistant to process.
Credits
Using the Hub assistant (beta) does not consume credits while in beta.
Security and privacy
The Hub assistant (beta) aligns with the following principles:
- Prompts are stored for 30 days.
- Prompts are used as part of the conversation history for follow-up requests.
Report any security or privacy concerns to the ArcGIS Trust Center.
Limitations and bias
Suggestions generated using artificial intelligence can be misleading or inaccurate. To avoid potentially reinforcing any unintentional biases in the AI models used by Hub assistant (beta), human judgement should be applied to interpreting and acting upon the assistant's outputs.
An ArcGIS Online organizational account is required to access Hub assistant (beta). Other account types, such as public accounts, are not currently supported.
Resources
Use the following resources to learn more: