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Open, Save, Save As tools included but disabled?

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20 comments

  • Permanently deleted user
    Hi Nicole, 

     

    Is your site set to one of these settings:

     

    To use the Save and Save as tools, the user must be signed in to the viewer. If the user is not signed in, the Save and Save as tools are grayed out in the I Want To menu.

     

    The Open tool is grayed out if:

     

    - You are running a version of Essentials that is older than 4.5. Or

     

    - The Data Store policy is set to Deny Public Read Access and the user is not signed in.

     

    If you go to the HTML5 Admin Guide under the Section 15.51 Project Module, it will provide you with more information as to how to resolve this.

     

    I hope this helps.

     

    Regards, 

     

    Carmen
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  • Permanently deleted user
    Hi Carmen. I had tried this signed in as various users with no luck and we're on Essentials 4.5. I opened a ticket and the problem ended up being very obscure; the data store was not functioning whatsoever so we had to fix the elastic search host role within the Geocortex Core service. The problem was resolved by restarting the core service, but that was an odd solution since we do that almost weekly as part of a scheduled server reboot. Danny worked with me and could probably give a better explanation!
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  • Permanently deleted user
    Carmen,

     

    You make it sound like it is possible to enable project saving without users logging in, but when you look at the Project Module, it says to go look at configuring data store policies, and there it says you should always Deny Public Read access, unless you have completely public data and you are on an intranet.  So for us, there really is no way to enable project saving.

     

    There is another older post on this same subject, but just to say again, this is a MAJOR drawback for us.  I do not have Active Directory turned on, and I did not want to, but now it seems like I must...
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  • Permanently deleted user
    Danny,

     

    Yes, that was my original impression - that you needed to be logged in to use Saved Projects.  So after reading, it does sound that you can actually use, but not edit/create projects. 

     

    My complaint is that in Silverlight, you did not have to log in to create and edit them as well, but in HTML5 you now do have to log in.  I'm not using Active Directory, and I'm not about to create log ins just so folks can create saved projects, so this funtionalitiy is now lost to my users.  This will mean MANY complaints when we do the switch!

     

    Just because you guys think that ArcGIS Online is the future, doesn't mean you should require us all to have log ins - even in AGOL, they don't require everyone to have a log in to access applications created there...
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  • Permanently deleted user
    Hi Nichole and Mike,

     

    I deleted my previous reply because I was getting your case confused with someone else's Nichole, sorry for the confusion there!  In your case, the Core roles had started up in the wrong order, which causes one of the Core components to incorrectly think that Elastic Search was unavailable.  This is an issue that should be resolved in the next version of Core.

     

    If you’re still having trouble opening and saving projects, and Carmen's comment doesn't help, please open a case so we can have a look!

     

    Mike, I believe what Carmen is referring to is that you can open projects that other users have saved without being signed in.  You still need to be signed in to save projects.  There's no way around that.

     

    Thanks, and sorry again for the confusion on my part!

     

    Danny
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  • Permanently deleted user
    Hi Mike,

     

    I completely understand your frustration.  I know that this was present in GVS, and its absence from GVH should have some explanation.  Ryan Cooney has an excellent explanation in the “In the Hallway” video from the GUC (at the 9:00 minute mark if you want to check it out), but I will do some paraphrasing here:

     

    In GVS, the saved project files were written in such a way that they could not be tampered with, and didn’t provide a security risk to your servers and applications.  In GVH however, the saved project files are basically just JavaScript and HTML applications.  It would not be difficult for an anonymous user to modify a saved project to do something malicious, which was not the case in GVS.  In GVS, it was not possible to modify the project files to contain executable code.

     

    While it is true that currently you need to sign in with an AD account, or an AGOL account, one of the things that we see in the future, is a way to enable social media integration, so that you don’t need to worry so much about where the account comes from (IE, you don’t need to make an account for each and every user that visits your site), but they will still be able to authenticate, and save projects.

     

    I hope this helps to clear things up.  If you have any follow-up questions, please feel free to ask, we’re happy to assist!

     

    Thanks,

     

    Danny
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  • Matt Taylor
    Danny, thanks for the reasoning behind this.  Can you provide any rough timeline on social media integration as it relates to opening or saving a project, or add me as a stakeholder?

     

    Thanks,

     

    Matt
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  • Permanently deleted user
    Hi Matt,

     

    No problem, I hope it helped!

     

    I'm afraid we don't have a timeline for this yet.  It's still being researched, and at the moment, there's no filed improvement to add you as a stakeholder to either.  I've saved this post however, and when something gets added to our bug tracker, I will be sure to add you!

     

    Thanks,

     

    Danny
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  • Permanently deleted user
    Hi Danny, we've now had two unplanned incidents in which the server rebooted and the core roles started in the wrong order, which is easy to resolve (restart the Core service again) but problematic because all of my saved projects disappear each time this happens. When does the new version of Core that you mentioned become available?
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  • Permanently deleted user
    Hi Nicole,

     

    We're targeting the end of August for the general availability of Essentials 4.6, which will include Core 3.0.

     

    Thanks!

     

    Danny
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  • Permanently deleted user
    Hi 

     

    I've just installed GE 4.5.1 and HTML 2.6. We are currently using Silverlight Viewer and before we start using html 5, we need to make sure that all the funtionality and the user experience is preserved.

     

    We are an organisation with a staff of 700, where almost half of the employees is using Geocortex on a weekly basis. Us not being allowed to save projects online or locally when needed is a big drawback. I cant tell all the users to log in everytime they need to save a project. Please provide us with a better solution to this issue. Or else we will be stuck with Silverlight for yet another year.

     

    Maybe you have some workaround solutions?

     

    Kind regards

     

    Mats Hallén
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  • Permanently deleted user
    If you are an internal shop, and everyone is happy with IE as your browser, and you don't plan to upgrade your browser in that year, then there should be no problem sticking with Silverlight for a year.

     

    We have both internal and public sites, so we felt we had to make the switch.  We did it in stages.  First the public sites, where we have no control of user browser, and then I created a simpler Parcel Viewer to let internal folks get used to HTML5.  Then I created the replacement for our main internal site.  For most of these, I started by cloning my original Silverlight sites and used that as the starting point for the new HTML5 sites.  Yes, LG says that you can hang multiple viewers off of the same site, but I found that there were just too many differences between the two, and I did not want to disrupt my current Silverlight users while I was working on the new site.  I will be turning off my last Silverlight site the end of August.  Yes, not all functionality is there, or works the same, but the new technology has some advantages too.  My users love the Aerial Slider to view different years.  Being able to search one-to-many joined tables. etc.
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  • Permanently deleted user
    I appreciate your answer. Unfortunately we can not "downgrade" important funtionality because of a modern look or other finesse, as much as I want to. And it is time consuming creating unique log-in credentials for each and everyone of our users. 

     

    The silverlight viewer's big advantage is that you may save a local copy if you dont want anyone else to play around with your project. That is the ideal solution and there have to be a workaround to preserve this great funtcionality.

     

    When it comes to silverlight, the majority of our users prefer firefox or chrome......and we cant tell users to stick with IE for some applications and Chrome or Firefox for others. This need to be seemless.

     

    Regards

     

    Mats 

     

     
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  • Permanently deleted user
    Hi Mats,

     

    If your users are all internal, as is your map, you could configure Windows authentication, and SSO (Single Sign On).  If you did that, and disabled anonymous access to your sites, the change would be transparent, but users would be able to save their projects (to the server).  

     

    If the map is also accessed externally, you could enable both windows and anonymous access, but your internal users would need to remember to sign in to access their saved projects.

     

    The nice thing about this approach is that you don't need to configure the user accounts yourself, you would pass that responsibility off to active directory.  

     

    I hope this helps!

     

    Thanks,

     

    Danny
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  • Permanently deleted user
    Thank you for the follow up. 

     

    The service will be accessed by different users, external and internal. I just want anonymous access.

     

    I am currently sitting on an amazon instance and are not very skilled at working with Windows Authentication and SSO. I have currently installed GE 4.5.1 and HTML viewer 2.6.1. Can you provide me some description about best practice regarding "anonymous user access", which doesnt require log-in credentials? Your help is very appreciated.

     

    Regards

     

    Mats
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  • Permanently deleted user

    Hi Mats,

     

    I would suggest reviewing section 44 of the Essentials Administrator guide.  It covers everything you need to know about Essentials security.  

     

    When you ask for "best practice regarding anonymous user access", I'm assuming that you're still speaking in the scope of saving projects (please correct me if I'm misunderstanding that).  As I mentioned in my previous replies in this thread, that is not possible.  

     

    If we're not talking about saving projects, then anonymous access can be enabled by simply enabling the Anonymous Access security provider, in Essentials manager, and allowing guest access to your site through the site permissions.  

     

    I hope this helps!

     

    Thanks,

     

    Danny
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  • Permanently deleted user
    Thank you Daniel. I will give it a go

     

    /Mats
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  • Permanently deleted user
    Hi Danny, Now that I have Single Sign-On, I'm starting to play with the Save/Open Projects.  So far, seems very nice (I just wish I had known how easy using SSO was earlier...).  I'm not sure if it makes sense to revive this post, or to start a new one, but I had a question - in Silverlight, the saved projects did not seem very stable if changes were made to the site being used.  Is this still the case in HTML5, or have you figured a way around that?
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  • Permanently deleted user
    Another question.  Just set up a public site with both Anonymous Access and Windows, and it works okay at first.  But if someone from the public tries to log on, however, they get into a bad loop.  It's not too likely they would do that, but certainly some will try. 

     

    That being said, this should allow my internal users to create projects that they can then turn around and make available to the public, which will be nice.

     

    https://maps.srcity.org/Html5Viewer/Index.html?viewer=publiccity
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  • Permanently deleted user
    Hey Mike,

     

    Sorry for the delay getting back to you, the notification I flagged got lost in my inbox!

     

    I'm not sure if you ever got an answer to these, but to answer your questions, yes, I'm afraid you will still see projects behave oddly if the sites undergo changes (like map services being removed).  The saved projects assume that the site never changes.  This is being tracked and corrected in a number of ongoing improvements, but at the moment, changing your site and loading a project that relies on missing content can result in some unexpected behaviour.  

     

    I tried to look into your second issue, but wasn't able to replicate the behaviour your described.  Can you please let me know the steps you took to produce the loop you described?

     

    Thank you!

     

    Danny
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