ExB Single App vs Multiple Apps

GiantToro

Good afternoon all,

I'm hoping to get some people's opinions on single ExB application with lots of pages/views vs creating multiple ExB applications in AGOL. I am building an application for data editing and visualisation for my organisation. There are several stages to this, each with different web maps, widgets and various arcade operations. Currently I have achieved this in several ExB applications with one application linking out to all the others.

I wondered about moving this all into one application using menu's etc. for navigation, reducing number of items involved. However a few things spring to mind that could be affected - application load speed (will this be significantly impacted by numerous pages), risk of single point of failure for all operations and manageability.

I am doing a fair bit of my own research around this, but thought I would also see if there is anyone who would be willing to share any experience on this if you have done something similar. Or indeed if you can see anything I have failed to consider. Any thoughts or advice are much appreciated!

Many thanks

D_Atkins

I cannot imagine trying to put too many "different apps" into one Experience Builder.

The biggest limitation I see is sharing and editing privileges. Even with a single ESRI Solution, you'll typically see several different apps: one for 'viewers', one for 'editors', maybe a dashboard for 'admin'. These can't be reasonably merged, assuming you don't want your viewers accidentally moving things around the map.

The second issue I see is performance, as you raise. At least it was the case that all Maps in the ExB load on startup? This could slow users down quite a bit.

The third issue is actually managing the build: all those message actions, data actions, and more. If you're really careful about naming every Window, Widget, Pane and Row in your app, it might be easier — in our team, we usually try and get everything buttoned down from the Service to the Web Map, then throwing a Map and Edit widget in an ExB becomes a trivial step with very little effort put towards naming or organization within the ExB.

I'd say you're already on the right track with multiple independent apps that are then all listed on a Hub Site or similar. Then adding or removing applications to the 'gallery' remains straightforward, as does administrating user-privileges to each separate app.

(On the other hand, I've seen some really nice ExBs — so what works for one team, may not for the other.)