ArcGIS Online

The use of ArcGIS Online software allows any Harvard affiliate to:

  • Create interactive maps and apps and share them easily among collaborators or with the public (blogs, social media posts, etc.), quickly and easily with nothing to install or setup.
  • Access a rich collection of basemaps, demographic maps, image services, and data. These maps are a great foundation for your work and are created only from the authoritative content from commercial data providers and the GIS user communities around the world.

How to Access Harvard's ArcGIS Online (AGOL) Community

Harvard affiliates may log into Harvard AGOL with your HarvardKey at: 

https://harvard-cga.maps.arcgis.com. Users of the Harvard AGOL are required to follow the ArcGIS Online Credit Policy and the ArcGIS Online Content and User Management Policy as outlined below.

ArcGIS Online Credit Policy: ArcGIS Online is a software application Harvard purchases access to every year. Credits are the currency used in ArcGIS Online, and Harvard is allocated a specific amount of credits each year. Credits are consumed by transactions such as geocoding or spatial analysis, and storage of data in ArcGIS Online. To ensure all Harvard affiliates have equal access to ArcGIS Online, the following policies apply to credit usage:

  1. Transactional Credits: Each Harvard ArcGIS Online user is given 250 transactional credits for analysis at the start of the fiscal year, July 1. If a user runs out of transactional credits, they may request more via filling out the CGA Request Form. In the "Additional message" portion of the form please 1) Enter "ArcGIS Online Credit" and 2) Enter how many more credits you are requesting and for what type of functions / analysis. Credit amounts for an account can be checked by logging into ArcGIS Online, then clicking the username in the upper right, then click My Profile > My settings > Credits. 

    To be mindful of using transactional credits, 1) Do the analysis in ArcGIS Pro which does not consume credits for most operations, or QGIS, Python, or R which do not consume credits at all.  2) If ArcGIS Online is the only solution, always click the ‘estimate credits’ button to see how many will be used before proceeding.

  2. Storage Credits: All data uploaded or mapped in ArcGIS Online uses storage credits on a daily basis. Storing data layers that are large in geographic extent or contain fine-grained, complex geometry use the most storage credits. Each year users are allowed 100 storage credits each. Users with high storage credit usage will be asked to remove these layers from ArcGIS Online, and archive them if desired.

To be mindful of using storage credits, 1) Publish only essential data for your teaching or research purpose, 2) Minimize the geographic extent of the data you are publishing, 3) Generalize the geometry of the data being published. Please contact the CGA with technical questions regarding performing any of these.

ArcGIS Online Content and User Management Policy

Our policies toward content and users on Harvard's ArcGIS Online system are as follows:

  1. Content for users that are inactive for over one year will be deleted
  2. Users that are inactive for over one year will be deleted.
  3. Content transfer. As a user, when your Harvard ID expires, you won't be able to access your AGOL account anymore, but your content will remain for 1 year, after which it will be deleted. You have the following options:
    1. Download a copy of your content to your local computer or external disk drive. Please contact the CGA if you have questions about this process.
    2. Transfer ownership of your content to another Harvard user before your Harvard ID expires. Using the ArcGIS Online Assistant, login to your account, select the content to be transferred, pick "Copy Items", and have the new owner login to complete the copy. This can also be used to transfer your content to a user in another organization.
    3. Request that your items be stored in the CGA AGOL Archive. All of these items must be shared publicly, with the full metadata filled out in the Item Description tag, including relevant dates and locations, contact info including your name and a non-Harvard email address, and course info, instructor, or other relevant information, such as if this was for a capstone, thesis, etc. Please contact the CGA if you want to pursue this option.
    4. You may also wait until when you settle into your new organization and activate your new AGOL account to activate a transfer. Then contact the CGA and ask us to change content ownership to your new account outside of Harvard. This assumes that your new organization also has an organizational account of AGOL. Please note that the free, personal AGOL accounts can't receive content transferred from organizational AGOL accounts.
    5. Abandon the content to let CGA staff purge them after 1 year of inactivity.

For any questions regarding these policies, please contact the CGA.

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