A GIS administrator must share an imagery service with another ArcGIS Enterprise. The administrator sets up a distributed collaboration with the other ArcGIS Enterprise and shares the service as a reference. The users in the other organization keep being prompted for credentials. Which action should the administrator perform?

When an item is shared as a reference in an ArcGIS Enterprise-to-Enterprise distributed collaboration, the URL still points to the source service. Members of the receiving portal must supply credentials that are valid in the source portal each time they open the layer. The only way to remove the repeated credential prompt is to share the layer “as a copy,” which republishes the data to the receiving ArcGIS Enterprise so that it is accessed locally with the user’s own portal token and no cross-portal authentication is required.

B. Saving viewer credentials is not a capability of distributed collaborations; credentials cannot be embedded in, or passed through, the collaboration workspace.
C. Send-and-receive workspaces control flow direction, not authentication; they do not eliminate cross-portal sign-in requirements.
D. Enabling anonymous access would require making the imagery public on the source portal, which defeats security policy and is not necessary when collaboration can share a copy.

1. Esri, “Share content across collaborations,” ArcGIS Enterprise 11.2 Help, section “Share items as copies or references,” para. 3–4: “Items shared as references require users in the receiving organization to sign in to the source. To avoid this, share the item as a copy.”

2. Esri, “Best practices for distributed collaboration,” ArcGIS Enterprise 11.1 Help, “Authentication considerations,” para. 2.

3. Esri, “Understand collaboration workspaces,” ArcGIS Enterprise 10.9 Help, section “Send-and-receive workspaces,” clarifies they affect direction, not security.