Point Haiyz at a portal layer instead of uploading a file — and freeze a hard copy the day you need one.
Most data items are files you uploaded. A linked item is a window onto a layer that lives in someone else's GIS service.
What Haiyz pulls is stored as an ordinary version of an ordinary data item — which is why nothing downstream needs a special case. A linked item downloads, shares, pins, opens in Hyz Workspace, joins a data room and becomes a map layer exactly like a file. On /data/items it is marked Live, with its provider and last sync state in place of a kind chip.
A portal connection is one registered external service, and it is the audited object: the address is vetted once, the credential sealed once, and members then pick layers without handling either.
A connection belongs to an organization — registered only by an admin or the owner, because it hands the server a host to fetch and a credential to present — or to a person, for pointing Haiyz at a service of your own. Four kinds are supported:
| Provider | What it is | Can become a data item |
|---|---|---|
| Esri REST | A layer on an Esri REST endpoint | Yes |
| OGC WFS | A web Hyz Features | Yes |
| OGC WMS | A web Haiyz service — rendered images, not features | No: browsable only |
| GeoJSON endpoint | Any https address that answers with GeoJSON | Yes |
The address must be https, carry no credentials in the URL, and be publicly resolvable — checked when you save it and every time it is used. The credential is stored encrypted and never shown again. Test probes reachability, TLS and the credential by reading the service's own describe endpoint, never a data layer.
Browse lists what is inside a connection: an Esri REST root lists services and a service lists layers, so you drill in, while a WFS lists its feature types flat. Create data item on a layer registers it as a linked item, with a title, a URL and a visibility like any other.
Field names and types come from the service's own schema, without transferring a single feature — which is what lets the dashboard builder offer real columns for a source nobody has downloaded.
A linked item is owned by whoever owns the connection, not by whoever created the item. A layer registered against an organization's connection is the organization's data item.
Syncing pulls the layer and stores the result as a new version. It runs manually or on a schedule, at an interval you set with a floor so a mistyped number cannot hammer someone else's portal. Three outcomes, all reported plainly:
Snapshots count against your storage allowance — see Plans and limits. (A pulled version is called a snapshot here in the everyday sense; it is an ordinary upload-kind version. The Snapshot pill in a version history means something else: a frozen state of an editable layer.)
Do not switch editing on for a linked item that still syncs. A sync is not held back by editing, and the next pull builds a fresh Hyz Layer from the portal's data, so the edited rows stop being the item's current data. Freeze first, then edit the hard copy. See editable or not.
Every dashboard widget has a Freshness setting: Auto (live, else snapshot), Live only or Snapshot only.
A live answer is only possible where the service can compute it itself. Esri and WFS answer counts, extents, statistics, distinct values, rows and geometry; a GeoJSON endpoint answers none of them and always reads the snapshot. Statistics beyond count, sum, average, minimum and maximum — a median, a percentile — are snapshot work, as is anything with a second series or a time bucket.
The widget frame says which it used, and a snapshot answer says how old it is. Live answers are cached briefly, keyed by the question rather than the viewer, so twenty people opening one dashboard are one request to the portal.
Freeze copies the newest clean snapshot into a new file data item, owned by you, with no connection and no refresh. You can ask it to sync first; if that pull fails the freeze still happens against what is stored, and the result says whether it refreshed.
Freeze when the bytes must stop moving: before a demo, or before a report you will have to defend in six months. The copy records what it was frozen from and when, and is then simply a data item — no special kind, no special rules.