Managing customer-deployed installations of VertiGIS Studio with the VertiGIS Studio Application Information document

With customer-deployed VertiGIS Studio applications it is possible to customize your install locations and have different versions of VertiGIS Studio apps installed. Unfortunately, this can break features that require links to be created between the applications or knowledge of another application's featureset.

If this is the case you can address these issues by creating a VertiGIS Application Info document.

1. Creating the Document

The Portal item must have certain characteristics to be read as a global Application Info document:

a) The document must have the exact name "VertiGIS Studio Application Information".

b) The type of the document can be anything valid that JSON content can be attached to. Running the linked workflows will result in a document of type "Web Mapping Application" being created.

c) There must be a "VertiGIS Studio" type keyword added to the document.

d) It must be created by a Portal user with the "org-admin" role and then shared with the entire org.

We recommend using the following workflow to create this document automatically,

Application Info Creator - ADMINISTRATOR workflow

This workflow can be run directly from a Studio Web option in the Workflow Designer Sandbox (e.g. VertiGIS Studio Web (WebMap). 

TROUBLESHOOTING TIPS: If you experience any issues running this Workflow try these optional steps.

• Install the ArcGIS Maps SDK for JavaScript activity pack in your Workflow Designer. This is not required, but will remove the warning shown on the Send ArcGIS Request activity.
• Instead of running the workflow from the Workflow Designer Sandbox, run it from within a VertiGIS Studio Web application.  

Once the portal item has been created by the workflow, don't forget to share it with your organization.

The document content can be filled out in the workflow, or updated later using a tool such as VertiGIS Studio Item Manager.

2. Filling out the Document

The document content is a JSON object containing an array of application info objects. It should look like this:

{
    "applications": [
        {
            "id": "web",
            "url": "https://my.custom.web.location,
            "version": "5.xx"
        },
        {
            "id": "workflow",
            "url": "https://my.custom.workflow.location"
        },
        {
            ...
        },
        ...
    ]
}

Each application info item has an "id" property and optionally a "url" and "version". You shouldn't fill out any information that isn't necessary to fix a specific problem you have. Please contact support if you are unsure.

The possible ids for VertiGIS Studio applications are as follows:

 inline    mobile    printing    reporting    search    web    workflow 

Not all applications necessarily have features that require this fix or have enabled support if they do. Currently only `web` and `workflow` are supported by this system.

NOTE: The server where a VertiGIS Studio application is installed must have CORS enabled for requests, or failed connections can still occur.

Sample JSON configuration (actual example, won't work for you)

{
  "applications": [
    {
      "id": "web",
      "version": "5.32",
      "url": "https://bsmith.latitudegeo.com/vertigisstudio-changed/web/"
    }
  ]
}

3. Advanced Configuration

It is possible that you may wish to temporarily override some of this configuration. For example, you may have created a staging or test environment where you have installed new versions of applications at different URLs than in production.

To support this, anyone with the "create-item" permission in Portal may configure their own private version of the Application Information document with custom overrides. This document is valid *only* for the person that creates it and will cease to be read if it is shared. To remove the custom overrides later simply delete the document.

Use the developer version of the workflow available here:

Application Info Creator - DEVELOPER workflow