ArcGIS Hub leverages artificial intelligence (AI) in the ArcGIS Hub assistant (beta) search agent.
Note:
AI capabilities and assistants are in beta. Your ArcGIS Online administrator needs to configure assistants before you can access AI capabilities in ArcGIS Hub. You must also have the privilege to use AI assistants. For beta capabilities, your administrator must turn off the Block Esri apps and capabilities while they are in beta setting.
Credits
Using the Hub assistant (beta) search agent does not consume credits while in beta.
Security and privacy
The Hub assistant (beta) search agent aligns with the following principles:
- Prompts are stored for 30 days.
- Prompts are used as part of the conversation history for follow-up requests.
AI transparency cards are available with more security and privacy details..
Limitations and bias
An ArcGIS Online organizational account with a Hub Premium license is required to access Hub assistant (beta) search agent. Other account types, such as public and community accounts, are not currently supported.
Suggestions generated using artificial intelligence can be misleading or inaccurate. To avoid potentially reinforcing any unintentional biases in the AI models used by the Hub assistant (beta) search agent, human judgment should be applied to interpreting and acting on the assistant's outputs.
Get started with the ArcGIS Hub assistant (beta) search agent
The ArcGIS Hub assistant (beta) search agent 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) search agent 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:
An ArcGIS Online organizational account with a Hub Premium license is required to access the Hub assistant (beta) search agent. Other account types, such as public and community accounts, are not currently supported.
Site editors can enable the Hub assistant (beta) search agent within a site's workspace in Hub.
To enable the Hub assistant (beta) search agent for a site, complete the following steps:
- Open the site in your user workspace.
- Click Settings and click the Hub assistant (beta) pane.
- Under Availability, click Enable the Hub assistant (beta) to turn on the Hub assistant (beta) search agent.
- For Access, choose whether the search agent will be available only to the site owner, the organization, or the public.
Before deploying the Hub assistant on a site, you can test it within your organization by limiting access to a specified group of people.
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.
If Public is chosen, Allow unauthenticated access if public access is enabled will be turned on automatically. This setting allows site visitors to use the search agent without signing in to an ArcGIS account.
Note:
Usage rate limits are automatically applied to anonymous public users.
- Turn off Allow unauthenticated access if public access is enabled if public access is enabled and you do not want anonymous users to access the search agent.
- For Group access, click Select groups and select one or more groups that will have access if necessary.
- Under Details, configure the following settings:
- Title—The name of the search agent. The title appears in the welcome message when the search agent is opened.
- Description—Text explaining how to use the search agent. The text appears below the welcome message.
- Default location—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.
- For 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.
- For 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?.
- For Workflows, customize the default
workflows and add new
ones, if needed.
Two types of workflows can be configured: search or respond. The default search workflow option directs the assistant to look for answers using the data available on your Hub site. The two default respond workflows options include guardrails to directly respond with a preconfigured 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 more workflows.
Note:
The two default respond workflows may need to be customized to reflect local information, such as emergency numbers.
- Click Save.
Use the Hub assistant (beta) search agent
To use the Hub assistant (beta) search agent, complete the following steps:
- Open the live view of a site and sign in to ArcGIS Hub if necessary.
Signing in is not necessary when the search assistant is configured for anonymous public access.
- Click the Hub assistant button
in the lower corner of the site. - Select a suggested prompt to build your query or type 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. - Optionally, in the Map pane
, under Sources, add more datasets. You can turn this pane on and off from the menu next to the Chat window.
- To learn more about the assistant, click About from the menu next to the Chat window.
- To clear your query history and start over, click Clear history
at any time.
Guidelines
The following guidelines can improve your experience using the Hub assistant (beta) search agent:
- Select a suggested prompt or type 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.
Feedback
You can provide feedback about the ArcGIS Hub assistant (beta) search agent in the Esri Early Adopter community.
To provide feedback about a specific response, click the thumbs up button 
or thumbs down button 
. When you submit a survey, your feedback may be used to guide future development of Esri products and documentation.
Resources
Use the following resources to learn more: