Frequently Asked Questions

The GIS Facility provides assistance to students, staff, faculty, and Iowa citizens in several ways.

• Drop-in help for GIS questions from one of our analysts in the ISU GIS Facility. See 213, 215, or 219 Durham.
• Short-term GIS consulting with GIS analysts. Please email gissupport@iastate.edu to make an appointment.
• Long-term, fee-based consulting on GIS projects. Call the GIS Facility manager at 294-6990.
• GIS project contracts call the GIS Facility manager at 294-6990.

Visit our consulting page for current consulting fees.

Please visit our How to Install Pro page that contains instructions.

The University is licensed for all extensions except Indoors, Reality, and StreetMap Premium. However, extensions are turned off by default. To turn on the extensions, follow these steps from Esri.

The general terms of the Esri Education Institution License cover functionally unlimited use for university-related academic purposes (teaching and research). Use for university-related administrative purposes is covered as well, but under slightly more restrictive terms (please contact jobrecht@iastate.edu for more details.)

Our license covers nearly all products included in the Esri ArcGIS platform. It also covers installation on personally owned devices, as long as you are using it for university-related business, including self-education.

Additional information on permitted use can be found in the Rubric for Determining Permitted Uses under the Esri Education Institution License Program.

If you have any questions or concerns regarding licensing, for any component of the Esri ArcGIS platform, please contact jobrecht@iastate.edu.

Not through ISU. You can obtain your own ArcGIS for Personal Use organization for professional development purposes, and it includes licensing for Pro, as well as other ArcGIS components.

See the ArcGIS for Personal Use website for details.

Sometimes you may encounter data that does not have an assigned coordinate system. You can follow these steps to set it.

1. In ArcGIS Pro, click Analysis to open the Analysis tab and click Tools.
2. Go to Data Management Tools/Projections and Transformations/Define Projection.
3. For the input dataset, choose your lat/long shapefile or geodatabase. Once it is shown in the top input line, the word “Unknown” should show up in the Coordinate System line.  That just means there is no *.prj file associated with your data and therefore the software doesn’t know what the coordinate system is.  If other text shows up in that line, you need to evaluate if it is correct before proceeding. If it shows one of the geographic systems and you believe the data provider is correct, then leave it. If a projected system is named in that line or you suspect the information is wrong, then click the icon to the right of the text line. This will bring up a box that allows you to choose the correct spatial properties of the data as it is right now.
4. Click the Select … box and then the Geographic Coordinate Systems folder. Choose World and at the bottom of the list is WGS 1984. Add that and click OK. You are back at the main Define Projection window.
5. Click Run to apply the coordinate system; the command should complete in about 2 seconds.

1. In ArcGIS Pro, click Analysis to open the Analysis tab and click Tools
2. Go to Data Management Tools/Projections and Transformations/Project.
3. For the input dataset, choose your lat/long shapefile or feature class. Once it is shown in the top input line, text should show up in the Coordinate System line below the selection.
4. ArcGIS creates an output filename for you in the Output Dataset line but you will probably want to change it to something meaningful. To do that, click the folder icon to the right of the line.
5. The Output Coordinate System line is blank and this is where you fill in the projection that you want your data to be once the command is finished. Most Iowa data uses UTM.  If your needs are different, just choose another Output system.
6. Click the icon to the right of the Output Coordinate System line and navigate to Projected Coordinate Systems/UTM/North America/NAD 1983/NAD 1983 UTM Zone 15N. Add that one after highlighting it. Click OK to get back to the main Project window.
7. The Geographic Transformation parameter is optional. When no geographic or datum transformation is required, no drop-down list will appear on the parameter, and it is left blank. When a transformation is required, a drop-down list will be generated based on the input and output datums, and a default transformation will be applied.
   1. For example, a geographic transformation is not required when projecting from GCS_North_American_1983 to NAD_1983_UTM_Zone_12N because both the input and output coordinate systems have the NAD_1983 datum. However, projecting from GCS_North_American_1983 to WGS_1984_UTM_Zone_12N requires a geographic transformation because the input coordinate system uses the NAD_1983 datum, while the output coordinate system uses the WGS_1984 datum.
8. Click Run to run the Project command. This will create a new dataset that actually moves and changes the original data to fit the selected coordinate system. Depending on the number of features, the command may go quickly or take a few minutes.

All accounts and information are subject to removal once their ISU login credentials have been suspended. These are suspended according to the policies in place by the University:

Students: When you graduate or leave ISU your Net-ID remains active for one semester. After this, your Net-ID is in suspension for another semester before it expires. An e-mail is sent to notify you when your Net-ID is about to be suspended.

Faculty & Staff: When you leave ISU your Net-ID is suspended following your last day of work. An e-mail is sent to notify you when your Net-ID is about to be suspended.

Your access is tied to your role at Iowa State University. As long as you have at least one role as an active student, staff, faculty, or sponsored affiliate, then your ISU account will remain authorized to use ArcGIS.

The content you have stored in the ISU ArcGIS Online organization, such as Web Maps, StoryMaps, Feature Layers, etc., will not be deleted immediately when you leave the University.

While we cannot guarantee your content will be kept at all after you leave the University, our plan is to only delete content when:

• Content owner has not logged in during the last year and no one has viewed the content in the last 2-years.
• Content owner has not logged in during the last 2-years and no one has viewed the content in the last year.
• Content owner has not logged in during the last 3-years.

Please contact jobrecht@iastate.edu for assistance.

Ask an ISU faculty or staff member collaborating with you on the project to sponsor you for access. They can request a Sponsored Net-ID through Service Now for you at no cost.

You may only use your access to ArcGIS as a Sponsored Affiliate for the purposes of working on ISU projects.

You will still be able to access content, if you shared that content publicly with Everyone, even after you can no longer login.

You will not be able to access content whose sharing is limited to private or with a group.

Yes, if you shared content with a group, then other members of the group will still be able to access that content as they were before, as long as they remain active members of the University.

Yes, anyone can access publicly shared content without having to login.

Please use the ArcGIS Online Ownership Transfer Request form to indicate what content needs to be transferred and to whom it should be transferred. You can organize your content in a folder in ArcGIS Online to simplify identifying what content needs to be transferred.

If you need assistance transferring content to a Personal Use organization, please contact jobrecht@iastate.edu.

Most ArcGIS Online content can be transferred using ArcGIS Online Assistant, however there are exceptions including ArcGIS StoryMaps. For assistance with content that cannot be transferred via ArcGIS Online Assistant, please view this helpful document.

If you need assistance transferring content to another ArcGIS Online organization, please contact jobrecht@iastate.edu. You may also need to contact the administrators of the destination organization.

Most ArcGIS Online content can be transferred using ArcGIS Online Assistant, however there are exceptions including ArcGIS StoryMaps. For assistance with content that cannot be transferred via ArcGIS Online Assistant, please view this helpful document.