WAB app functionality after retirement

DerekMStrout

Hello,

Last week's ArcGIS Blog article stated that apps built with WAB would no longer work or be accessible at the point of retirement next year.

The ArcGIS Developer site states the opposite, though noting that you won't be able to create new apps or edit existing ones and Esri support will end. Esri chat support just confirmed that apps will indeed continue to work after retirement with those same caveats.

Discussion does not appear to be enabled on the blog article, so I figured I'd post here in hopes someone can point out what I'm missing or maybe we could get the blog article revised to clarify?

Thanks!
Derek

HelenCooper

Also keen for clarification here!

SteveCole

I wonder if it depends on whether you are using WAB in AGOL or on-site with Portal. In our case with Portal, WAB was removed from Portal when we migrated to v11.1 from 10.8. Obviously WAB would no longer function because it's gone.

AndrewVentham

I'm not sure what you mean @SteveCole?
"The ArcGIS API 3.x for JavaScript will be retired on July 1, 2024. ArcGIS Web AppBuilder, built off of the ArcGIS API 3.x for JavaScript, will continue to be a part of Enterprise until the first half of 2025, at which point it will be retired and no longer released in new versions of Enterprise. Existing versions of Enterprise will continue to be supported in accordance with the ArcGIS Enterprise product lifecycle."
https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/arcgis-enterprise/announcements/whats-new-in-arcgis-enterp...

SteveCole

In our org, we had a Portal migration (changing servers and from 10.8 to 11.1) and when I copied my previous WAB apps over using ArcGIS Assistant, the WAB apps would not open at all inside the 11.1 environment. I'm not on the GIS admin side of things so I assumed that WAB had been removed (I know it had been deprecated back in early 2023).

Brian_Wilson

You can still download "WAB, Developer Edition" (it's tucked away now but still available) and migrate projects from the formerly built-in version. We did this when the upgrade to 10.8 broke all our apps and Esri could not help us fix them. With WABDE, the apps generated are stand-alone, they install in any web server. Generally, you can treat them like a bunch of HTML files. Configs are just JSON files, so you can tweak them with a text editor. Of course they still rely on whatever ArcGIS services you put in the map.

I suppose in an upcoming "upgrade" that the "classic" map editor will go away and that will be the end of it forever. I've looked at the map files and decided it was not worth the work to modify them in a text editor.

Because we've been running WABDE since 10.8 we did not even notice WAB is not in 11.x!

If there were a Public Notification widget for EXB we would have migrated a year ago. But here we are.

I am retiring before WABDE !!! NOT MY PROBLEM !!! 🙂

DerekMStrout

Thanks all. We leverage AGO as our portal, and I've switched to ArcGIS API 4.x app builders a while ago. We have around 50 public-facing WAB apps within AGO and a couple dozen developed with WAB Dev Ed that are hosted on our ArcGIS Server instance.

@Brian_Wilson, your point about the server-hosted apps just being files and that they'll continue to work makes some sense, and I guess that's confirmed by the Developer site's FAQs.

Though that still doesn't explain the discrepancy between the blog's statement and the Developer site's statement about AGO versions.

DerekMStrout

Based on my chat with Esri support, it seems I was incorrectly lumping WAB apps in with traditional 'configurable apps', which I took to mean any apps built on ArcGIS API for JavaScript 3.x.

Esri documentation remains valid, including the assurance that WAB apps will continue to function after retirement, as detailed on the developer site, unlike the configurable apps which will not.

Since many of our org's public StoryMaps were built with 'classic' StoryMaps templates, and were identified using this script, it's probably worth mentioning here that at the same time (Q4 2025), classic StoryMaps templates may begin to be retired and that "stories created with a retired template would no longer be available."

Hope this helps!
Derek