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Geovonic Connect – Prerequisites

This article describes the prerequisites required for using Geovonic Connect. The requirements are slightly different depending on whether you are using ArcGIS Online or ArcGIS Enterprise in your organisation.

ArcGIS Enterprise

1) Access Rights

When setting up Geovonic Connect, the first user must be an ADMINISTRATOR for the ArcGIS Enterprise organisation. Non-administrators will not be able to setup Geovonic Connect. Additional Geovonic Connect admins can be added later by adding them to an ArcGIS Enterprise user group.

2) Firewall Access

If your ArcGIS Enterprise is not available on the internet, the Geovonic Connect server will need to be given special access to your environment. There are a couple of options for this: –

  • [PREFERRED] Install and run the Geovonic Relay Service.The relay service runs as an agent to initiate a connection from inside the network to the Geovonic Connect server. This is a common model for providing secure access between SaaS applications and business systems running inside the firewall.Refer to this help article for installing the Geovonic Relay Service.
  • [ALTERNATE] Open up access to your network from the Geovonic servers.
    You will need to work with your network adminstrators to plan for this access. Some common options include IP Whitelisting and/or an API Gateway running in the DMZ.Note: The Geovonic server requires access to any business system you intend to pull data from to display alongside the map or include in reports. The Geovonic Relay Service can provide access to all internal business systems; using the alternate approach  may require network configuration for each system running inside the firewall.

3) Organization Security Settings

Some security settings on your ArcGIS Enterprise account can block access to Geovonic Connect.

  • Allow origins – Limit the web application domains that can connect via Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) to the ArcGIS REST API.If your organization restricts the domains that can connect via CORS, you must add https://connect.geovonic.com to the list of allowed origins.
    See this FAQ for more information.
  • Approved apps – Members can only sign in to external apps that are approved.If your organization limits the external apps that can be accessed, you must Geovonic Connect to the list of approved apps.
    See this FAQ for more information.

ArcGIS Online

1) Access Rights

When setting up Geovonic Connect, the first user must be an ADMINISTRATOR for the ArcGIS Online organisation. Non-administrators will not be able to setup Geovonic Connect. Additional Geovonic Connect admins can be added later by adding them to an ArcGIS Online user group.

2) Experience Builder Developer Edition

Experience Builder widgets cannot be installed into the ArcGIS Online shared environment. Because ArcGIS Online is shared by hundreds of thousands of different subscribers, custom widgets such as Geovonic Connect need to be installed in a local version of Experience Builder running within your environment.

  • Getting Ready

    Experience Builder can be installed to run either on your own local machine or on a server in your organisation. If multiple people in your organisation are going to be authoring their own Experience Builder applications, you should identify a server that can host the application.

    Experience Builder runs inside a Node.js server application. If you are running on Windows, Experience Builder includes the Node.js runtime as part of the install. If you are using Linux or Mac, you will need to ensure that Node.js has been installed before starting.

    Applications that you build using Experience Builder developer edition, are then downloaded, and copied to your web server. The web server could be the same used to host your ArcGIS Enterprise portal or a separate one specifically for custom apps.

  • Installing Experience Builder Developer Edition

    A separate help article provides the steps for installing Experience Builder Developer Edition.

  • Deploying an Experience Builder App

    After you have created apps using Experience Builder, you need to deploy them to a web server where they will be accessed by your users.

    From Experience Builder, select Download. Unzip the download file and copy the contents to your web server. Your application can now be accessed by your users.

For further information and full instructions, refer to the ArcGIS documentation.

3) Firewall Access

The Geovonic Connect server requires access to any business system you intend to pull data from to display alongside the map. If your business systems are not available on the internet, the Geovonic Connect server will need to be given special access to your environment. There are a couple of options for this: –

  • [PREFERRED] Install and run the Geovonic Relay Service.The relay service runs as an agent to initiate a connection from inside the network to the Geovonic Connect server. This is a common model for providing secure access between SaaS applications and business systems running inside the firewall.Refer to this help article for installing the Geovonic Relay Service.
  • [ALTERNATE] Open up access to your network from the Geovonic servers.
    You will need to work with your network adminstrators to plan for this access. Some common options include IP Whitelisting and/or an API Gateway running in the DMZ.Note: The Geovonic Relay Service can provide access to all internal business systems; using the alternate approach  may require network configuration for each system running inside the firewall.

4) Organization Security Settings

Some security settings on your ArcGIS Online account can block access to Geovonic Connect.

  • Allow origins – Limit the web application domains that can connect via Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) to the ArcGIS REST API.If your organization restricts the domains that can connect via CORS, you must add https://connect.geovonic.com to the list of allowed origins.
    See this FAQ for more information.
  • Approved apps – Members can only sign in to external apps that are approved.If your organization limits the external apps that can be accessed, you must Geovonic Connect to the list of approved apps.
    See this FAQ for more information.