# Published GIS services
Serve your Civillo project data to third-party GIS and web applications over open standards.
Civillo projects normally keep their spatial data inside Civillo. Publishing as a GIS service takes an individual layer and exposes it through the web services portal at pub.civillo.com (opens new window), where it can be consumed by GIS applications like QGIS (opens new window), ArcGIS Online (opens new window), ArcGIS Pro (opens new window), or construction planning applications such as Aphex (opens new window), or any other application that can consume one of the supported open standards.
Publishing does not move or copy your project. The published service is generated from the current layer data, and it is refreshed automatically whenever the layer is revised.
# What gets published
| Layer type in Civillo | Published as |
|---|---|
| Vector layers (e.g. CAD, shapefile, CSV, BIM and other vector uploads) | OGC API - Features and an ESRI Vector Tile Service |
| Uploaded imagery layers | WMTS |
Other layer types cannot be published. In particular, terrain layers and online imagery service layers (e.g. WMS/WMTS/XYZ layers that Civillo itself consumes from a third party) are not eligible, and neither are layers that arrive in the project through a project link as a destination layer - those are published from the source project instead.
# The service URL
Every project that has at least one published layer gets a single service URL. The Publish GIS services administration page shows it, and links straight to each service - see Publish a layer as a service. Copy it from there rather than trying to build it yourself.
The three service types hang off that URL:
{service URL}/oapif
{service URL}/arcgis/rest/services
{service URL}/wmts
WARNING
Published services are read-only but unauthenticated. Anyone who has the service URL can read the published data without signing in to Civillo. The URL is long, randomly generated, and is neither listed nor searchable, but it should still be treated as a shareable credential: only publish layers you are comfortable exposing outside Civillo, and only pass the service URL to parties who are entitled to the data.
# Before you start
To publish a layer you need:
- The Publish layers feature enabled on the project. This is a per-project feature flag; contact Civillo support or your project administrator if the Publish GIS services page is not in your project administration menu.
- Project administrator rights, or membership of a group that has the Layer create/edit role.
# In this section
- Publish a layer as a service - publishing, revising and unpublishing.
- Available services - the endpoints, service names and query parameters.
- Using published services in other applications - QGIS, ArcGIS Online, Aphex, web code, Python and file export.
- Limitations and troubleshooting - what the services do not do, and what to check when something looks wrong.