Custom Widgets as an add-in?

[SteveClark]

After reading this thread (from March) that asked about custom widgets being exposed to non-developers, Deploy Custom Widget to Portal for ArcGIS

I am wondering what the latest on this workflow.

Simply put, I like the way Add-Ins work for ArcMap and Silverlight Viewer = anyone can create an application and then add in a custom tool/widget developed by developers. Should we not be able to do the same with thing with embedded WAB within Portal? I understand a developer can create an app with the custom widget and make that available but what about non-developers that want to use a custom widget that I have built? Ideally, I would like to publish this custom widget on an IIS web server and be made available to anyone making an app in Portal.

It appears I can create a Template with the custom widget but is this the only option for users wanting to create an app with the custom widget?

So, what is the latest on this workflow with 1.2 or later?

[JunshanLiu]

WAB embedded in portal doesn't support custom widget/theme.

[NartTamash · Accepted solution]

You could use the Developer Edition of WAB with Portal, and make that available to your non-developer users to build apps with. And of course they will be able to pick & choose any of your custom built themes & widgets.

[SteveClark]

Yes, that is the path I have decided we should go down to build apps with custom apps. It seems incongruent to set up a development environment with node.js on non-developers machines just so they can add in a custom widget.

Thanks for the answers.

[PascualBenito]

So actually you don't necessarily have to set up WAB Dev edition on each of your non-dev users' machines. You can configure WAB DevEd on one single machine that acts as a "Server", and then other users just access WAB Dev via the browser using the ip address of the "WAB DevEd" server.  For example, we set it up on the same server as our ArcGIS Sever machine, and opened up the relevant port to outside machines and added acces to our named users so that all of our developers can access via browser to create sites, etc... 

[RebeccaStrauch__GISP]

Pascual, I added a lin to you comment in the Web AppBuilder Developer Edition - Customization Resource List​  If you want to write up detailed info on the steps (i.e. so new users could also understand) and post it as a discussion or a blog post, I could like to that direct.  If it's working for you, others may be interested.  If you don't want to do this, that is fine...the link to the above may still help others.  Thanks.

[PascualBenito]

Thanks Rebecca, I will see if we can carve out some time to provide some more details on how we configured our set up. Briefly though, the steps were to install WAB Dev Ed on our web server (which had external IP address), and then we opened up the port neeeded for WAB DevED, so it could be accessed by other users via their browsers

e.g. http://YourServer_Name_or_IP:3344/webappbuilder/

When we registered WAB DevED app with our AGOL Organization account we granted access to all of our named users (or you can limit to smaller set of power users). So they can then login to WAB DevEd with their credentials  and create/edit new apps with our custom widgets.

the apps can then be accessed by others or by public (depending on permissions for the app and content) using following type of URL:

https://YourServer_Name_or_IP:3344/webappbuilder/apps/24

it should be noted that this is really not the final form  that apps are intended to be deployed for a production instance. In this case you really want to download the app from WAB DevED and then deploy  to your Web server, independent of WAB Dev ED. But for now this method seems to work well for us for our small development  team (3 devs) and for client user testing.

You also have to make sure that WAB DevEd (and node.js) are always running (e.g. when you reboot). At moment we do this manually, but I think there is way to set it up a service so it would start automatically when server starts.

This topic also relates to a previous thread about installing WAB DevEd on same server as Portal:

Web AppBuilder Dev Ed on same server as Portal for ArcGIS?