idea Configure Feature Info Widget Separately from Map Pop-up in ArcGIS Experience Builder Ideas

Configure Feature Info Widget Separately from Map Pop-up

EmmaHatcher — Thu, 28 Jan 2021 01:29:28 GMT

I'm working on an Experience Builder for my organization that includes a map and a Feature Info widget and Image widget to display information about features. The Feature Info widget is configured by the layer's pop-up in the web map.

Several of our users have called out the redundancy of the map pop-up with the Feature Info widget. It would be great if we could design the map pop-up separately from the Feature Info widget to avoid that redundancy. That way, at least for this use case, the map can be used as a sort of introduction to the information, with the Feature Info widget providing a more full summary of the data.

Re: Configure Feature Info Widget Separately from Map Pop-up

ShengdiZhang — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 09:27:03 GMT

Hi Emma,

You can customize your map pop-up using Map Viewer.

Open your map in Map Viewer, go to Details - Content, and click the more option button under each feature layer. Then you can see "Configure Pop-up".

Regards,

Shengdi

Re: Configure Feature Info Widget Separately from Map Pop-up

EmmaHatcher — Thu, 25 Feb 2021 19:13:15 GMT

Hi @ShengdiZhang ,

My problem isn't configuring a custom pop-up (that's what I've already done, and it's looking great), it's that the Feature Info Widget in EB is configured only using the Map Viewer pop-up. Like I explained in my original post, this creates redundant information for users between the Map EB widget and the Feature Info EB widget. When they click on a point in the map, the pop-up is the same display and information as the Feature Info widget. They would rather only have the Feature Info widget with no pop-up. OR better yet, if the map pop-up could have just the site name, and a button that jumps to the Feature Info widget below the map with more detailed information, that would be great. But at the moment, you can't configure the two separately.

Here is my map pop-up:

And below the map, is the same information, which is the preferred view:

Thanks,

Emma

Re: Configure Feature Info Widget Separately from Map Pop-up

TanGnar — Fri, 02 Jul 2021 14:42:05 GMT

Absolutely agree with this. It would be good to be able to configure them separately.

Another use case for this discussion is that we have a primary layer for which we show the details in a list and feature info widget. For this layer, we'd like to disable popups, but still allow selection from the map (without the select widget, which is too cumbersome for this). Or as described in the original post, the popup could have just a title, but details are found in Feature Info.

Then, we have secondary layers that are not used in list or feature info widgets. For these, we'd like to keep the popups as the way to get more info. Because of this, we can't disable popups on the ExB map widget.

Possible options would be to allow the selection when popup disabled in web map (described in related post here) or for ExB to allow disabling (or perhaps configuring) popups for individual layers.

Thanks!

Re: Configure Feature Info Widget Separately from Map Pop-up

MarceloRosensaft — Sun, 22 Aug 2021 19:26:13 GMT

Hello,

I have the same situation as described by EmmaHatcher. Are there any news? Any ESRI person can comment?

Thanks,

Marcelo

Re: Configure Feature Info Widget Separately from Map Pop-up

ZacharyVavra — Fri, 05 Nov 2021 16:02:23 GMT

I'm also experiencing this same issue.

Re: Configure Feature Info Widget Separately from Map Pop-up

BrianD — Wed, 12 Jan 2022 22:25:37 GMT

Short answer: No.

Long answer: I would recommend reading the documentation for the feature info widget.

https://doc.arcgis.com/en/experience-builder/configure-widgets/feature-info-widget.htm

It specifically states that it inherits the popup content defined for the associated layer. It's not intended to supplement the pop up - just to give you the data in a different place so you don't obscure map content with it.

Re: Configure Feature Info Widget Separately from Map Pop-up

EmmaZHatcher — Wed, 12 Jan 2022 22:36:41 GMT

@BrianD Exactly- as my original post states: "The Feature Info widget is configured by the layer's pop-up in the web map." Unfortunately, the map content still gets obscured. You can't disable the pop-up in the map and retain the Feature Info widget functionality, so no matter what, if someone clicks a feature in the map, you get both: the map obscured with the pop-up and the information elsewhere in the app.

Re: Configure Feature Info Widget Separately from Map Pop-up

ShengdiZhang — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 02:11:07 GMT

@EmmaZHatcher @ZacharyVavra @MarceloRosensaft @TanGnar

You can disable the map pop-up from the map widget settings. When the pop-up is disabled in ExB, you can still keep the selection on the map. However, disabling takes effect on all layers used by the map widget and cannot be configured separately.

Regards,

Shengdi

Re: Configure Feature Info Widget Separately from Map Pop-up

TaraHaynes — Thu, 20 Jan 2022 22:04:14 GMT

@ShengdiZhang I am having an issue where if I disable pop-ups in this way, one of my maps will no longer allow me to select features, thus preventing the Feature Info widget from operating as it should.

Strangely, it is only happening on one of my maps - the rest allow me to select features when pop-ups are disabled.

Do you have any ideas why this might be? I am trying to trouble-shoot, but having little luck... the configuration/settings of the different maps and hosted feature layers are the same.

EDIT: I figured it out; it's because the layer I was trying to select was stored in a group in the new MapViewer. Once I moved it out of the group, I was able to select it (and populate a Feature Info widget) when pop-ups were disabled. Must be a bug around grouping?

Re: Configure Feature Info Widget Separately from Map Pop-up

TaraHaynes — Thu, 20 Jan 2022 19:06:18 GMT

@EmmaHatcher

If you are not using Arcade expressions for your pop-ups, ExperienceBuilder has a lot of ways to dynamically display content without having to rely on the Feature Info widget. To make a "version" of the Feature Info widget, for example, you can connect a Text Widget to your data and use the Dynamic Content option to read data from the dataset. The limitations are that you cannot use complex Arcade expressions or directly edit the HTML when working with dynamic content (the latter may eventually be available with the Embed Widget), and it might look wonky when nothing is selected... but this could solve some of the problems with displaying content differently from the pop-up, at the very least? The List Widget is another option that gets around the "things looking wonky" problem. Not perfect solutions, but hey.

Re: Configure Feature Info Widget Separately from Map Pop-up

EmmaHatcher — Mon, 24 Jan 2022 20:14:14 GMT

@TaraHaynesThanks for the workaround with the Text Widget. That's a bummer that you lose Arcade, but even still, I think that's going to work for the app that prompted this Idea post in the first place!

Re: Configure Feature Info Widget Separately from Map Pop-up

KatiePhillips1870 — Fri, 07 Apr 2023 14:25:18 GMT

I agree @EmmaHatcher this is redundant and these two features (Feature info widget and popup) should not be linked or interchangeable. When I tried to edit my Feature Info Widget I thought I could get around the redundancy by "selecting features" I wanted to display in the Feature Info pane, but unfortunately no its still linked to the popup which makes no sense. What is the point of having a Feature Info widget if we cannot control what information is displayed in Experience Builder.

It would be really great ESRI if we could get a solution to this or at the very least have an option to unlink the Feature Info widget from the popup.

Re: Configure Feature Info Widget Separately from Map Pop-up

CassNEGIS — Wed, 07 Jun 2023 21:14:09 GMT

A workaround for this that may be helpful, create a duplicate layer of the one you are working with, make it fully transparent and turn the pop up off. Create an action to select the matching feature, place it at the bottom, and then customize the popups. It may be necessary to have two separate maps included in the Experience, the one users interact with and a second one that controls the popups.

I'm still working the kinks out, but it seems to work.

Re: Configure Feature Info Widget Separately from Map Pop-up

KatiePhillips1870 — Thu, 08 Jun 2023 11:33:50 GMT

@CassNEGIS for most GIS users that probably would not cause any issues and would work. But where the problem comes in is when these Experience Builders are meant for a general audience with non-GIS users or even non-technical users. Having multiple maps on one application would cause further confusion. Most of the products my team creates is for that general/non-technical audience, so we try to make the Experience Builders as simple to understand as we can.

Re: Configure Feature Info Widget Separately from Map Pop-up

CassNEGIS — Tue, 25 Jul 2023 17:27:10 GMT

@KatiePhillips1870

It doesn't work well in practice, either, or maybe it would for a smaller number of features. For reasons I don't honestly understand, it struggles to know which layer to load and often freezes.

Experience Builder has a lot of neat tools, but I'm constantly frustrated by issues like this that seem like they should be simple but turn out unsolvable without custom widgets.

Re: Configure Feature Info Widget Separately from Map Pop-up

JesseLangdon1 — Thu, 04 Jan 2024 22:00:43 GMT

Just wanted to chime in and agree with @KatiePhillips1870 and @EmmaHatcher that the Feature Info widget essentially seems useless. Why would I want to have content in the FeatureInfo widget that is exactly what shows up in the pop-up for the same layer if I can't disable to the pop-up? In fact, what is the actual use case for the FeatureInfo widget? It seems like it just creates confusion and unnecessarily consumes screen real estate...

Seems like the only workaround is using the Text Widget or List Widget, or creating a custom widget.

Re: Configure Feature Info Widget Separately from Map Pop-up

TanGnar — Fri, 05 Jan 2024 13:59:12 GMT

@JesseLangdon1

There is a good use case for the feature info widget. See our Fishing Access app. When you select a list item, it zooms to the location. You can click or tap View Details, and the view in the pane changes to the Feature Info widget for details. I like having the details in a docked pane on the side like this (on larger screens) because it looks better than the popup and doesn't cover up the map area. I can also disable popups in the map widget (see the map widget Options at the very bottom) and configure an action so that clicking a feature in the map selects a record in the list and filters the Feature Info widget. That all works nicely.

The problem for me is this: I want people to be able to click a fishing access feature in the map. However, I have other layers in the map that I would like to have popups for. So I can't disable the popups on the entire map, thus I get the redundancy of the feature info widget and the popup on my primary layer in the app.

The best solution seems to be to allow the user to select which layers in the map to enable popups (on the ExB map widget options). I could keep some layers with popups enabled, but disable my primary layer that uses Feature Info.