Full bidirectional federation between ATAK and ArcGIS Enterprise or ArcGIS Online portals. Browse portal content, download layers to DuckDB, queue offline edits, and push delta updates back to the enterprise — all without leaving ATAK.
Tactical AI DuckDB implements a full ArcGIS Portal federation engine that allows ATAK operators to browse, sync, and contribute to enterprise GIS infrastructure. Whether your organization runs ArcGIS Enterprise on-premises or ArcGIS Online, field teams can work with live portal content and push updates back when connectivity is available.
An EOC GIS administrator maintains authoritative feature layers in ArcGIS Enterprise. Field teams browse the portal from ATAK, download relevant layers for their operational area, add observations offline, then push those edits back to the enterprise portal when they return to connectivity — keeping the enterprise COP synchronized with ground truth.
The in-app Portal Layer Browser lets operators authenticate to any ArcGIS Enterprise or ArcGIS Online portal and explore available content without leaving ATAK. Items are displayed with metadata, type, and extent before any data is downloaded.
The portal sync engine downloads portal layers to DuckDB tables with full geometry and attribute support. Subsequent sync operations perform delta comparisons — only changed features are downloaded, minimizing bandwidth on constrained networks.
| Sync Operation | Description | Offline Support |
|---|---|---|
| Initial Download | Full paginated download of all features to DuckDB | ✓ Stored locally |
| Delta Sync | Fetch only features modified after last sync timestamp | ✓ Merge into DuckDB |
| Edit Queue | Queue local feature additions/modifications for upload | ✓ Persistent queue |
| Push Edits | Upload queued edits to portal FeatureServer when online | Online only |
All field edits are stored in the portal_edit_queue DuckDB table as ordered JSON payloads. When connectivity is restored, queued edits are replayed in sequence against the FeatureServer REST API. Failed edits are flagged for manual review.
A survey team operates for 72 hours without connectivity. Each observation they record is written to the local edit queue. Upon return to the FOB, a single “Push Edits” action uploads all 340 queued features to ArcGIS Online in under two minutes.
The esri_portal AI agent tool exposes portal federation to the conversational AI engine. Operators can ask the AI to list portal content, trigger a layer sync, or push pending edits using natural language commands.
esri_portal