ArcGIS provides access to apps and capabilities to users primarily through user types, a type of license that aligns to the user’s primary workloads and defines their level of access to ArcGIS tools and applications. For most organizations, managing user types and assignments are processes that involves GIS manager or administrators along with organizational IT management and governance policies. For an overview of User Types refer to the Esri documentation pages. This section of the architecture center will provide best practices and recommendations for how to effectively deploy, assign and manage user types for your organization.
User Types include a standard set of defined types, as described in the documentation. The Creator, Professional and Professional Plus user types include access to ArcGIS Pro at different license levels, and other user types are designed for use by mobile workers, editors, or other specialist roles in the organization.
User Types are a licensing concept that applies to ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Enterprise in slightly different ways. For ArcGIS Online, each ArcGIS Online subscription includes a set of user types that are purchased during the initial setup of the organization or added at a later point in time. There is only one set of user types and counts available at a time, and any changes to those user types must be coordinated with Esri account management or customer service teams. An organization may have multiple ArcGIS Online subscriptions that they manage and use for different purposes, and each subscription will include a separate set of user types that are assigned to members in that organizations.
For organizations using ArcGIS Enterprise, the available user types and respective levels of access are based on that specific release of ArcGIS Enterprise, and are documented accordingly. User types are deployed through a license file that is applied to an ArcGIS Enterprise deployment. This generally means that an organization will have a pool of User Types available in My Esri, and can obtain a license file that draws down on that pool of licenses and are applied to an individual deployment of ArcGIS Enterprise. For organizations with multiple ArcGIS Enterprise deployments, this means that they can design and deploy license configurations through User Types by splitting available user type licenses across these organizations, depending on their intended use and member population. To make any changes to the User Types deployed to an ArcGIS Enterprise organization, a new license file must be generated in My Esri and applied to the system, which replaces the existing user types. It may be necessary to cancel the existing license file before creating a new license file to ensure that enough user types are available in My Esri to apply to the system.
User types are assigned through the Organization tab of an ArcGIS Online subscription or ArcGIS Enterprise deployment. Organizations can define a default user type for new members (if, for example, automatic account creation is enabled). User types can also be set during the invite workflow, where an administrator or user with appropriate permissions can invite one or multiple users, setting their user type during the process.
User type assignments can also be changed after the user is invited, or changed for an active user. This can be changed in the Organization view, where a new user type can be selected and assigned to a user (if sufficient licenses are available). When assigning a new user type, be sure you understand the implications for that user’s access, i.e., if they are changed from a Creator to a Viewer, they would lose access to ArcGIS Pro as well as other mobile data collection applications such as Field Maps.
To review the currently available user types, use the Licenses tab of the ArcGIS Online or ArcGIS Enterprise Organization page, which will display information about available user types as well as add-on licenses.
User type assignments can also be made through the REST API, using the updateUserLicenseType endpoint on the /self resource for an organization. The ArcGIS API for Python includes a update_license_type method on the User object which can be used to update the user type for a specific user.
When working with user types, follow these best practices to balance flexibility and management burden: