Publishing a hosted feature service to to ArcGIS Online using an ArcMap document

Subscription:

Publishing hosted services requires an account that is part of an ArcGIS Online organization. See Getting started for more information.

From ArcMap, you can publish a feature service to be hosted on ArcGIS Online. The service will expose all vector datasets included in the map document.

An Internet connection is required to perform these steps. The speed and bandwidth of your connection affect how fast the service will be published.

Also note that web browsers cannot display some of the more complex cartographic symbols you might have originally used when you authored the map in ArcMap. Most symbol types are available, but in some cases the symbols may be downgraded when you publish them. See Authoring feature services in the ArcGIS for Server Help for more details about what symbols are supported, then make any required changes to your map symbology prior to publishing.

Steps:

1. Start ArcMap and open the map you want to publish.
2. Click File> Sign In.
3. Type your name and password for ArcGIS Online and click Sign In.
4. Click File > Share As > Service.
5. Choose Publish a service and click Next.
6. In the drop-down list of connection types, choose My Hosted Services. Then type a name for your service and click Continue.
7. In the left pane of the Service Editor, click Capabilities, then check Feature Access to expose your service as a feature service. You can optionally also check Tiled Mapping, although in most scenarios, you would use a different set of layers and a different map document for publishing your tiled map.

   You can click the subitem Feature Access in the left pane of the Service Editor to set advanced properties relating to what clients can do with the service. To learn how to adjust the types of edits that end users can make to your feature service, see Editor permissions for feature services.

8. Set other properties that you want for your service. Here you can choose what users can do with your service and take fine-grained control of how the server will expose your service.

   For information on how to best configure your services for deployment, see Tuning and configuring services. Some of the service properties referenced in that topic apply only to ArcGIS for Server and are not applicable when working with hosted services. For example, with ArcGIS Online hosted services, there is no option to set the minimum and maximum number of instances of the service, because Esri handles the service scaling for you.

   Tip:

   If you close the Service Editor during this session, you'll be prompted to save your work as a draft service. Draft services allow you to come back to your service configuration work at a later time. By default, draft services are saved in the Drafts folder of your connection to My Hosted Services. For more information, see About draft services.

   There are a few additional properties you must set that are specific to hosted services. These are detailed in the following steps.

9. In the left pane of the Service Editor, click Item Description and enter a summary and tags for your service. You'll need to enter this information before you can publish the service. For more information, see Setting map service properties.
10. In the left pane of the Service Editor, click ArcGIS Online and choose who the service should be shared with. By default, your service is private, meaning it is only accessible to you. Your service will always be visible in My Content, but you can also choose to share it with everyone or just members of certain ArcGIS Online groups.
11. In the Service Editor, click Analyze. This examines your map to see if it can be published as a service. You must fix the Errors in the Prepare window before you can publish your map as a service. Optionally, you can fix the warnings and informational messages to further improve the performance and appearance of your service. For more information about resolving these issues, see Analyzing your GIS resource.
12. Optionally, in the Service Editor, click Preview. This can give you an idea of how your service will look when viewed on the web.
13. Once you've fixed the errors and optionally any warnings and messages, click Publish.
    Note:

    Your data is copied to the server at this point. The size of the data and your Internet connection speed and bandwidth will impact the time it takes to publish.

Once your service is published, you'll see it when you expand the My Hosted Services node in the Catalog window.