Set up location sharing

Available with the ArcGIS Indoors Maps extension.

The Location Sharing service is an ArcGIS organization-wide capability that records where members are and where they have been. The following sections describe how to set up location sharing in your ArcGIS organization.

Enable location sharing

As an administrator of your ArcGIS organization on Enterprise, you can enable location sharing for your members as follows:

Your Enterprise portal must have the spatiotemporal big data store configured (one of the types of data stores available through ArcGIS Data Store).

1. Sign in as an administrator.
2. At the top of the site, click the Organization tab and click Settings.
3. Click Organization extensions on the side of the page.
4. Click Enable Location Sharing.

Learn more about configuring location sharing

Manage location sharing

Once location sharing is enabled in your Enterprise portal, it is important to configure the duration for which the tracks should be retained. The default is 30 days, but you can choose a different duration based on your organization’s needs.

The location sharing service can also be paused or disabled after it's enabled.

Learn more about managing location sharing in your ArcGIS organization in Enterprise

Create a viewer custom role

Only administrators can view data in the location sharing service by default. To allow members to find the current location of others who are sharing their device location, assign them a custom role with the privilege to view location data.

Follow these steps to create a custom role:

1. Sign in as an administrator.
2. At the top of the site, click the Organization tab and click Settings.
3. Click Member Roles on the side of the page.
4. Click Create Role.
5. Type a name and description for the role.
6. Set the appropriate privilege compatibility based on your needs.
7. Turn on the View location tracks privilege in the Content group in the General Privileges section.
8. Click Save role.

Create views and add members

You can create views using the Track Viewer app. Administrators can add members to allow them to post track locations and control who can view them.

1. Sign in as an administrator.
2. At the top of the site, click the Organization tab and click Settings.
3. Click Organization extensions on the side of the page.
4. Click Open Track Viewer to launch the Track Viewer for ArcGIS web app.
5. In the app, click Create view and provide a name.
6. Click Create view.
7. To allow members to share locations, add them to the Mobile Users tab.
8. To allow members to view shared locations, add them to the Track Viewers tab.

   Note:

   Only members who were assigned the custom role created in the previous section can be added to this group.

View device location and tracks

You can view location information with the following apps:

• Indoor Viewer
• Track Viewer
• Map Viewer
• ArcGIS Indoors for iOS
• ArcGIS Indoors for Android

Viewer

With Viewer, you can take advantage of the last known location information provided by the Location Sharing service, if enabled on both the ArcGIS organization and individual devices, in both browser and kiosk modes of Viewer. Location information in Viewer is limited to those signing into the app using an ArcGIS organization named user account that has been granted permissions to view device location tracks.

If a user who is sharing their device location is found in Viewer through search, explore, or related items, the info panel includes an option to identify that user’s last known location.

To view a user’s last known location:

1. Find the user using the Search, Explore, or Related Items functionality.

   Once the info panel opens to focus on that user, the last known location is shown as an option in the info panel.

2. Click the See location option at the top of the info panel to view that user’s location.

   The See location option includes the date and time of the last known location.

   Options appear in the info panel to route or recenter the map to the last known location.

Track Viewer

The historic tracks and last known locations can be viewed in the Track Viewer app in your ArcGIS organization. You can access the Track Viewer app from your ArcGIS organization by clicking Organzation, clicking the Settings tab, and clicking Organization extensions.

Enterprise Map Viewer

The historic tracks can be viewed by creating a web map with the location tracking layer. The settings configured by the administrator determine who can view the map and which tracks are available to view.

ArcGIS Indoors for iOS and ArcGIS Indoors for Android

The current location (if a member is actively sharing location) or last known location (if a member has stopped sharing location or is offline or outside the tracking zone) can be viewed in the Indoors mobile app by other members if they have the required permissions and are part of the appropriate views and groups.

Learn more about app settings and usage for Indoors for iOS and Indoors for Android.