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Cannot figure out how to get Timeline Widget to work in Experience builder

ScottDBjelland

Hello, I am trying for the first time to get a Timeline Widget to work in an Experience Builder project. It's not working, and I feel I must be missing something elementary.

The data is the Anti-Shipping Activity Messages (Piracy) data published by ESRI's John Nelson: https://services.arcgis.com/nGt4QxSblgDfeJn9/arcgis/rest/services/NGA_ASAM/FeatureServer

It is a feature service published by an ESRI employee: I'm pretty sure the data integrity is good. Basically it's hundreds of points representing occurrences of piracy around the world's oceans over several decades. Each point has a day/month/year associated with it. I have enabled time on on the feature.

I just want to be able to move the Timeline slider and see the points change across the globe as I scroll through the years. In Experience Builder I am able to successfully select the data, configure the time, etc. But regardless of how I change the settings, when I preview the Experience and move the Timeline slider, nothing happens.

I feel I am missing something elementary here, but as the options for configuring the Timeline and its data are pretty simple, I can't imagine what it is I'm missing. Again, as I said, this is my first time working with the Timeline Widget.

Thanks in advance for any help.

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Accepted answers

TonghuiMing

@BronwenHughes

In ExB, the active time range is indicated above the slider, so it can be easily spotted (visually associated with the same-color dot of the slider); if you open the pop-up here, you will see the static entire time extent, which some may find unnecessary to display all the time, so we place it here:

The handle is shown on hover:

In addition, you can also change the style/appearance to build a different style of the slider

As for the labeling, we provide the ability to zoom in and out to check different levels of time accuracy. Thus, you can see different units displayed depending on the UI and the zoom levels.

Also, we do have some requests about enhancing it, like omitting the time, optimizing the label display, etc. We will continue to take a look at those. Thanks for bringing this up.

All comments

TonghuiMing

Hi @ScottDBjelland

Took a look at the second provided service (cannot access the first one), and it seems like the service is not temporal - it might not have the time extent configured in the layer definition when published.

Here is an example of a valid time-aware service, you'll notice it has the "Time Info" with Time Extent and all other properties:

However, I cannot find any time info in the provided service:

https://services.arcgis.com/nGt4QxSblgDfeJn9/ArcGIS/rest/services/NGA_ASAM/FeatureServer/0

I am curious how you've managed to configure the time successfully.

On the other hand, what kind of changes are you expected to see with the Timeline changes - is it in a Map widget, a List, or a Table? If it's a map, then you might need to save the feature service as a web map and then use the same data source between Timeline and whatever the other one is. A sample app might be more helpful to identify the issue.

ScottDBjelland

Hi @TonghuiMing,

I appreciate your response, and will try saving the feature service as a web map, as you say. Perhaps this is the way I should have approached the project in the first place. As I mentioned, I have just started experimenting with Experience Builder.

I would really like to find some good, thorough tutorials on how to use the nuances of the app, such as how exactly to configure the Timeline Widget (best practices, etc.) I really have not found much in the way of instructions. Can you recommend the best guides available for really digging into Experience Builder?

Many thanks!

dougbrowning

See here ExB cannot use a image service which is strange. https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-experience-builder-ideas/support-for-image-service-in-experience-builder/idi-p/1249855

BronwenHughes

I am also struggling with the timeline widget. I have created a web map with a feature service that shows the extent of our local flying fox camp every three months. Data capture began in 2019 and is ongoing.

The feature service has 2 sub-layers: quadrats (points) and camp extents (polygons):

...however, I have only added the polygon layer to the web map:

I have time-enabled the feature service and connected it to the timeline widget.

I have been fiddling around with the Action tab of the Experience Builder Map window, however, I am unsure what I am doing. Is this the way to link the timeline widget of camp extents to the camp extents in the map window? There doesn't seem to be any options under the Data action tab:

Any help is appreciated as I can't find any detailed instructions online and I feel like I am going around in circles

TonghuiMing

@BronwenHughes Once you connect the data to the Timeline widget, the rest of the time-related configurations should be done inside the Timeline widget:

I am a bit unclear about the workflow you want to achieve inside the map.

If you want the timeline widget to work with the map widget, add the layer as a web map and use the web map as your timeline widget's data source, as well as connecting it to the map widget.

TonghuiMing

https://doc.arcgis.com/en/experience-builder/latest/configure-widgets/timeline-widget.htm

The documentation might help, thanks.

BronwenHughes

Thank you @TonghuiMing

I mistakenly used the camp extent layer rather than the web map as the timeline widget's data source. Is there any way to edit the appearance of the timeline widget in Exp Builder? It looks a lot cleaner in the Map Viewer:

TonghuiMing

@BronwenHughes There are appearance choices available to customize your widget's look. When you said "cleaner" - what were you referring to? The labeling, or the UI (icon/button sizes), or something else?

ScottDBjelland

Thank you! Appreciate this detailed response..

BronwenHughes

@TonghuiMing thanks for the response and your help! I'm aware of all those features you pointed out, however, having the time in the active time range above the slider makes it harder to read the dates - the way it is displayed in the Map Viewer is much easier to comprehend:

It would be good to have the ability to edit the text style of the Exp Builder Timeline widget slider, much like one can edit the text style of a scalebar in Pro - eg increase the font size of the year labels, remove time etc I'll add this as a suggestion in the ArcGIS ideas page

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