Our Admin tools for ArcGIS Online has been tremendously popular with ArcGIS Admins all over the World. One of the most popular capabilities of the Tools (Pro) is the ability to clone your organization – keep in mind, for those users performing an organizational clone for the first time, we suggest you contact us for a little assistance and some first timer tips!
The original intent of our clone tools is to perform much smaller transfers of items that do not require item ownership or sharing to be preserved. However, for those wishing to push the limits a little and clone an entire organization we do support this and are able to help.
Cloning User Scenario
Imagine this, you have a need to build a Story Map in ArcGIS Online. Now, perhaps you already have created some great maps and your latest project is similar to a project you completed last year. Why not clone your Story Map, giving yourself a duplicate copy to edit accordingly, building it out in similar design as your previous project. Cloning, perhaps one of the most popular tools in Admin Tools (Pro) is indeed very handy and can be a huge time saver. Now don’t get this confused with a simply “Copy” function. Cloning is much more handy and likely what you need. The difference is also explained HERE in our KBase.
Clone Example
This tool creates brand new items, with its dependencies configured automatically, and no longer pointing to the original data source it was cloned from. This is a very useful tool for moving content into a new organization. The Clone tool is available in the Pro version of Admin Tools. The process is relatively simple and fast. Launch Admin Tools (Pro), then select from the “Workflows” menu item (far right).
From the Clone menu, select “Clone Items to Organization”.
Enter your portal url you can find this by logging into AGOL and visiting your content home page. Select your webmap of interest and point to a new destination – your Story Map will be cloned completely from your user content location, into a location in your Org account where it can then be moved and accessed by any user you select.
You can then start editing your Story Map accordingly, using your original story map as a template.
Note, in this example we simply cloned one Story Map to create a duplicate within the organization. The Clone Tools can also be used to clone your entire organization! Imagine replicating one user account and all data, maps and apps to another or many accounts – EDU users love this!
Some considerations
- The size of your data in regards to credit consumption and overall time the operation will take. Larger hosted datasets will consume credits in the target organization once they are cloned and may cause the clone to appear to “hang” or stop working while it is processing the large datasets.
- Tiled data is only supported if the service has the corresponding Service Definition that was used to publish it. Moving tiled services without a Service Definition is currently not supported. Instructions on the best way to handle tiled data without a Service Definition can be provided, but it is not supported as part of a “one click” clone and will take a little preparation to accomplish the clone. Please note that in addition to traditional raster / tiled data types, this limitation also applies to hosted feature layers that are subsequently published as tiled layers.
- The relationship between your items can sometimes cause more data to move than initially realized. It is recommended to use the “View Item Dependencies” tool on any items that will be cloned so a full picture can be had of every item that will will be moved as part of a clone.
- See Considerations Regarding Cloning for important details before cloning for the first time
Cloning is a Tool provided with Admin Tools Pro – learn more HERE
Admin Tools provides some 60+ tools (90% of these tools are bundled in the Free version) that greatly simplify routine tasks for ArcGIS administrators. These include tools to perform the following tasks:
Are you having difficulty managing your ArcGIS users? Consider adopting our Admin Tools to be more productive and efficient. The GEO Jobe Knowledge Base is a public, community resource where users and those interested in GEO Jobe’s enterprise solutions, particularly Admin Tools for ArcGIS Online and the geo powered cloud solution, can access help resources, answers to frequently asked questions, articles, support documents, and more via a friendly, easy to use, helpful web site.
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