When I recently asked ESRI how to distribute all my settings for ArcGIS Pro (2.8.1) to all our users, they pointed me to the documentation regarding silent installs at: https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/latest/get-started/arcgis-pro-installation-administration.htm
…and told me that for all other settings, we should use Project Template files and that users should open a project template to have the settings as desired.
Well that was not good enough for me. People should not be required to open a particular project template to get the organisation's default settings. Some settings should be configured by default even if opening ArcGIS Pro without any template.
In our case I required the following groups of settings to be configured by default.
This first group can all be done using the silent install options, as per the link above:
- License Type: Concurrent Use License
- License Level: Basic
- License Manager: (our licensing server host)
- Check for Update: OFF
The following items cannot be done using silent install options (as far as I can tell):
- Layout Import Gallery Path
- Spatial Reference – Horizontal
- Spatial Reference – Vertical
- Servers
- Database connections
- Folder connections
- Custom Toolboxes
Best Answer
I have figured out how to do this by distributing TWO configuration files to all users. If other people have better ways of achieving this, I'd be interested to hear of them.
Firstly, I had to get my own ArcGIS Pro settings just right (mostly in the 'Options' panel in ArcGIS Pro), so that I could use my own configuration as the source for these two files. Then copy and install the following TWO files to all users. I actually copy these files to a network share, where they are now the "master" files, and they can be copied to other users from there.
Depending on how your organisations PCs are configured, the correct path for these may be slightly different. In particular, you may need to look in "local" instead of "Roaming".
user.config
C:\Users<USERNAME>\AppData\Roaming\ESRI\ArcGISPro.exe_StrongName_yhpsrysqpn4fvmb0spwbakt5o5e50din\2.8.0.0\user.config
(Yes, the bizarre directory name does appear to be consistent across all users/machines, as far as I can tell.)
This includes many settings that were not in my required list, but the ones I needed for this one are:
This results in all our users having the same set of layouts to select from when they click on "Import Layout" in the ribbon. It also ensures that everyone uses the same spatial reference system in all projects and maps.
Favorites.json
C:\Users<username>\AppData\Roaming\Esri\ArcGISPro\Favorites\Favorites.json
There are a few tricks with getting these settings just right.
Firstly, choose whether you want each item to be automatically added to every new project (I did select this option for each favourite). If you do not select this, the items are still available, but the user would have to click on the "Favorites" item in their Catalog view to see them, instead of just finding them in their project already.
Secondly, for some other items, including database connections (eg, ".sde" connection files), when you add them to Favourites, ArcGIS Pro creates a copy of the file in your own account and the favourites configuration references that copy. This is of course useless to share with other people. So before distributing the Favorites.json file, you MUST check carefully and hand-edit some of the entries to make sure that they point to the original source files (eg, on a network share) not to user-local copies. Then copy the Favorites.json file back to your account (after backing up the original! - and while ArcGIS Pro is not running) to test and make sure that they all work OK.
From my original list, the Favorites.json distribution takes care of the following making the same set available to all users in all projects, whether created from a template or just using the option to "start without a template":
UPDATE:
I have since communicated this method to ESRI (Australia) support and asked them if this was a reasonable way to manage these settings and if they had any better solutions.
They agreed that this was a good way to do it and they did not offer any alternatives or improvements.