Moving from Web AppBuilder to Experience Builder data issues

Question

I'm attempting to replicate a Web Appbuilder app in Experience Builder in my organization's internal Enterprise Portal (11.4) deployment and I'm running into some frustrations with how EB interacts with my existing data.

In WAB we used referenced data in file geodatabases such that the data could be updated using python scripts and those updates would then be visible in the layers in the app. The widgets in the app would then be able to interact with that data.

It seems like this is no longer the case in EB? My referenced data is no longer able to be filtered using the Filter widget or searched with the Search widget in EB. Am I just missing something or must all data be hosted now for these functions to work? Has anyone else run into this and have you come up with a solution? I suspect I will have to start picking up the arcgis API and publishing the updates as hosted data rather than my previous solution but thought I should check if I'm missing something.

Thanks, Mark

KeiranBray · Answer

Hey @MarkOswald yeah nice, that's interesting, was the old map in map viewer classic or the new map viewer?

MarkOswald · Answer

Having done a bit more experimentation it seems like the issue has something to do with using an old map. If I add the same layers from that map to a new map the filtering and searching widget configuration now allows me to see those layers.

Thanks for confirming that I was missing something as it gave me impetus to keep checking things.

KeiranBray · Answer

Morning @MarkOswald Experience Builder in 11.4 does support referenced data in file geodatabase's and you should be able to use the filter widget within Experience Builder, without knowing the exact workflow used to set up the experience builder app, might be a bit tricky to trouble shoot through here.

Testing this morning on my own internal 11.4 portal the functionality has worked for me, I've just made a very basic app that has the filter widget and a list for the data to test, making sure I've added the referenced layers as a data source in EB first, then setting up the widgets.

If the widgets aren't working with the data sources or map (if you've added a map that has the layers), it might be worth checking if they are validating in server manager first to make sure there are no issues there.

If they are validating in there, then going through and checking to see if they're working in map viewer, if that seems all fine and they're still not working in EB it might be worth raising this with your local tech support to troubleshoot further as it might be something else.

Kind regards

Keiran