How difficult is it to learn WebApp Builder?

Question

Everyone at work wants their own personal web app for their workflow. It’s going to be a lot from what I can tell and my boss wants me to do it. How difficult is it to produce fast maps that link with scanned documents etc? I know JavaScript so hoping that will help if at all.

LydiaWerner_MAC · Answer

I agree with @KenBuja that it's better to direct your learning to Experience Builder. I have found that WebApp is not comparable to Experience Builder and you will probably spend time realizing that your desired outcome wouldn't work in WebApp, only after investing several hours. I also agree that the learning curve isn't real steep on EB, but think of it as 1.0, 2.0, etc. You'll find new efficiencies, but if you're building something from scratch, take that at face value and still give it a good effort and then go back later and see if you can create the 2.0 version. Happy EB-ing!

kenbuja · Answer

If you can do it in Experience Builder, start learning that. Web AppBuilder is getting deprecated.

atonalwilson · Answer

You don't need WebApp Builder for that. But you can later. Stick with me a sec:

Let's say you have a layer of points, and each is associated with a scan. Maybe each is a PNG, or JPEG, or PDF. You can create a hosted feature layer for the points, and the scan as an attachment for each point. Or if your scan files are sitting on a web server somewhere, you can put the URL to the file in a column in that layer's attribute table. Either way, then open the Map Viewer, bring that layer in, and configure the popup to give users interactive access to those scans by clicking on each point.

Save that out as a web map. At that point you can share the map as-is. It even gives you an arcg.is short URL for the map if you want. If all you want to do is share a map with a layer that users can click on to open associated scans, maybe you're done.

But then.... if you want to use WebApp Builder to wrap a custom web app around that web map, it'll work the same, but then you have a lot more options for configuring and styling the app, as well as choosing from dozens of tools/widgets to put on the app for your end users to use with your map.

Everything described above has pretty good step-by-step tutorials on the web site. First time might be a little klunky, but the learning curve isn't steep.