topic Re: Does any of the Experience builder widgets support Image services? in ArcGIS Experience Builder Questions

Does any of the Experience builder widgets support Image services?

Sil_ — Thu, 26 Jan 2023 12:11:12 GMT

I have a web map with an Image service (containing historical aerial photos) but I can't seem to get much use of it in Experience builder.

I especially wanted to use the Timeline widget, but have been told by my local Esri support that this widget cannot be used with an Image service. I've tried to work around this by using other widgets, but none of them seem to recognize the Image service in my map, specifically the List widget, the Text widget (using Connect to data function), the Table widget, the Filter widget, the Query widget and the Feature info widget. The Image service has a lot of useful data in its attribute table that I want to show in the app.

Am I doing something wrong or do I have to use Web AppBuilder, which seems to handle Image services without problems? I cannot see Image service mentioned in the Experience builder widgets' documentation.

The Image service I am using is password protected, but the url looks like this:

https://services.geodataonline.no/arcgis/rest/services/Geomap_UTM33_EUREF89/GeomapBilder3/ImageServer

Thanks in advance.

Re: Does any of the Experience builder widgets support Image services?

Richard_Purkis — Fri, 27 Jan 2023 12:38:58 GMT

Hi @Sil_

I cannot really answer your query regarding other widgets. I thought I would just comment on this thread that there is an open Enhancement Request for Image services to be supported in the timeline widget (ENH-000153737)

Thanks

Re: Does any of the Experience builder widgets support Image services?

Sil_ — Fri, 27 Jan 2023 14:03:04 GMT

Thank you @Richard_Purkis, this is good to know.

Re: Does any of the Experience builder widgets support Image services?

TilmannSteinmetz2 — Wed, 09 Aug 2023 22:24:23 GMT

Very good question Sil_! We have a pressing need to be able to do more with Image Services in web apps too.

I love Experience Builder as a modern replacement for Web App Builder, as it provides a vast range of tools and UI elements which make it extremely flexible for no-code-application development and, for background, I should add that we haven’t got the resource to develop custom apps using the ArcGIS API for JavaScript (or get them developed).

Here’s my understanding of what you can and can’t do in the various ArcGIS web apps at the moment (August 2023) – if you come to the conclusion that Experience Builder needs more Image Service Support please also see my previous ArcGIS Experience Builder Idea under https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-experience-builder-ideas/expb-working-with-image-services/idi-p/1273281 :

ArcGIS Experience Builder currently does not support (much) user interaction with what makes image services interesting and compelling – although of course you can display a web map with an image service added to it.
ArcGIS Web App Builder is/was not a lot better than Experience Builder, in that respect, when you use it out-of-the-box, but with some creative tricks and elbow grease, users can be enabled to filter from the various rasters in an image service that has many slices, for example.
In ArcGIS Web App Builder Developer Edition, it was possible to add the ‘WABIS’ widgets, a set of widgets made by Esri to work with Image Services https://github.com/Esri/WAB-Image-Services-Widgets . Those widgets were a godsend to us and we have used them in combination with the above filtering (using out-of-the-box filter widgets). An example can be seen here, where users can interact with hundreds of satellite image derived scientific rasters, selecting different parameters which are rendered according to server-based raster functions etc. https://pensive-lamport-e9f725.netlify.app/, all from a single image service. The application can be used by folks in central and regional government and scientists for getting crucial science output that we need to deliver. It’s not the smoothest user experience, unfortunately, as users have to chose products from different widgets so the filtering and rendering can work appropriately.
With Esri’s retirement plans for Web App Builder ( https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/web-appbuilder/announcements/arcgis-web-appbuilder-roadmap-for-retirement/ ), Web App Builder Developer Edition is now no longer a viable option for any future developments.
While Experience Builder does not currently have any widgets specifically for, say, allowing user interaction with Image Service Rendering or Mosaicking, our hope was that perhaps there would be an Instant App that we could use for such purpose, alas: there’s only a single Instant App at present for use with Image Services, the “Imagery Viewer” available here https://doc.arcgis.com/en/instant-apps/latest/create-apps/imagery-viewer.htm . Like all Instant Apps, the Imagery Viewer has very limited scope by design and can’t allow user interaction with rendering, product selection etc. - It can certainly be useful if you have a timeline of images where a user needs to choose from but it’s not sufficient for some other uses case that are perfectly reasonable for image services.

In summary, none of the current out-of-the-box web apps and application builders seem to be really ‘proficient’ at making the most of Image Service capabilities.

Here are a few more options:

The most recent release of the ‘modern’ MapViewer, both in ArcGIS Enterprise and ArcGIS Online, feature ways for someone who creates the web map to interact with the built-in capabilities of Image Services:
There are settings for working with Processing Templates, Image Display Order, Multidimensional Rasters, settings for Filters and for supplying a web map with a time-enabled service using a time-slider.
Unfortunately, once those options have been defined, say, for a public app, users won’t be able to modify them. That’s just the way the MapViewer works, nothing wrong with it, but it means that a MapViewer app doesn’t cut the mustard when it comes to letting a user choose from the different products in multidimensional services.
The above-mentioned Esri WABIS widgets are open source. Being based on ArcGIS JS API V3, they would have to be ported to JS API V4 and wrapped into Experience Builder Developer Edition Widgets to work. As of ArcGIS Enterprise 11.0, they can be referenced in an ArcGIS Enterprise-based Experience Builder app, after registering them. I could probably spend until retirement trying to modify the code. In the end it may even work.

Everything needed to build proper interaction seems to be there in terms of ArcGIS JavaScript SDK 4– there are some really nice examples in the developer documentation. The MapViewer web map ‘specification’ apparently also undergoes a bit of change, I am guessing, so web maps ‘know’ how to deal with what’s in an Image Service. The Raster Analytics capabilities which are now available in ArcGIS Enterprise and ArcGIS Online are right up there in terms of what a user can expect to do in raster analysis.

ArcGIS Image for ArcGIS Online is an incredible new feature and the Image Service capabilities make for super-powerful delivery mechanisms for sophisticated and demanding content.

Unfortunately, the readily available web apps for public data delivery and interaction do not really support most of the capabilities available in the Image Service API.

I would be immensely interested to hear from Esri what the plans for the future are in the “Widgets and Apps for ArcGIS Image Services” space.

It may seem a bit ‘niche’ to some, but for others it’s business-as-usual and I would be rather disappointed if there wasn’t a plan fully enable this. How about WABIS widgets for EXB = EXBIS?

Thanks,

Tilmann

@Richard_Purkis @Jianxia @PeterBecker @JianLange

Re: Does any of the Experience builder widgets support Image services?

PeterBecker — Thu, 10 Aug 2023 00:08:17 GMT

Thanks for the explanation of the value of Image Services with Experience Builder. I agree. I cant give too much detail here, but there is a WABIS replacement in the works. Hope to provide more details. "EXBIS" We need to think more about that as a name. Proposals welcome.

Re: Does any of the Experience builder widgets support Image services?

TilmannSteinmetz2 — Thu, 10 Aug 2023 00:50:47 GMT

Brilliant - that's great to hear Peter (feel free to scrap the name EXBIS - it never really rolled off the tongue...)

Tilmann

Re: Does any of the Experience builder widgets support Image services?

DougBrowning — Wed, 27 Dec 2023 17:52:51 GMT

Same here. Finally got a time aware image service to work (way, way harder than it should be) and got it working in a web map even. It is from a Mosaic dataset. Also tried multidimension and it works in Pro but almost all the tools I run on it give me a 99999. Both WAB and ExB do not work. They just show the first raster and nothing else. The apps know they are time enabled and are reading the properties correctly but still no go.

What data does the Time widget in ExB work with then? I was also testing from WMS layers and no go. I guess I am confused as to what the widget will take?

Been trying to use the imagery tools for over 10 years now and they have too many steps and it seems to fail a lot. Then even if a tool runs the output does not work.

Re: Does any of the Experience builder widgets support Image services?

Maritime_GIS — Mon, 12 Feb 2024 11:59:01 GMT

Hi Peter, is there an update as to when this will be released ?

Many thanks

Matt

Re: Does any of the Experience builder widgets support Image services?

DavidMcCorkindale1 — Wed, 14 Feb 2024 05:22:52 GMT

Hi Peter,

If there is something in the works maybe the status of this enhancement ENH-000157262 could be updated as we specifically lodged an enhancement request to convert WABIS to experience builder.

Thanks.

David

Re: Does any of the Experience builder widgets support Image services?

CherieBryant — Fri, 26 Apr 2024 13:58:36 GMT

Adding my support for Image Services to be supported in EB's Timeline widget.

Re: Does any of the Experience builder widgets support Image services?

FabianMarthaler_80 — Wed, 29 May 2024 06:20:27 GMT

We at the Swiss Federal Railways also support this. The Experience Builder should support Esri Imagery Layer as quickly as possible.

Re: Does any of the Experience builder widgets support Image services?

DavidMcCorkindale1 — Wed, 29 May 2024 23:22:26 GMT

@FabianMarthaler_80 ESRI provide a roadmap of the product ArcGIS Experience Builder 2024 Roadmap (esri.com). According to this the "raster data source" should be delivered Q2 so assume we should see it by the end of next month.

Re: Does any of the Experience builder widgets support Image services?

FabianMarthaler2 — Thu, 30 May 2024 05:59:51 GMT

Many thanks!

Re: Does any of the Experience builder widgets support Image services?

DougBrowning — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 14:05:54 GMT

Raster support came out today. I can now see my raster but cannot seem to do anything with it. No popup comes up except randomly when I am clicking the layer list widget. Select widget, feature info widget, and query widget does not seem to work on the raster either.

Time widget does not let me add the raster at all.

https://doc.arcgis.com/en/experience-builder/latest/get-started/whats-new.htm

Curious what others are seeing. thanks

Re: Does any of the Experience builder widgets support Image services?

Marshal — Mon, 23 Sep 2024 13:50:25 GMT

When I try to add a multidimensional image layer published from .crf in Timeline widget I get the following warning. I am still experimenting for work arounds, but I don't have ArcGIS Image Server license which seems to be the clear solution by enabling publishing mosaic datasets.

Re: Does any of the Experience builder widgets support Image services?

GeomaticsPublisher — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 10:25:04 GMT

Also adding our support for thee timeline tool supporting raster imagery in ExB. We capure, process and publish significant amounts of LIDAR elevation data using time-aware mosiac datasets which are currently used in a number of web app builder applications across our business. We use image services to publish these mosaic datasets.

With web app being no longer being support by end of 2025 we have a need to rebuild these in ExB however are unable to do this until the time slider supports raster image services and am dissapointed to still see what was an important OTTB tool for many organisations being used in web app still not having been migrated to ExB . A timeline for this would be much appreciated

thanks

Re: Does any of the Experience builder widgets support Image services?

Blevins_Mark — Thu, 13 Mar 2025 14:57:03 GMT

i just want to be able to filter my imagery services, as we have overlapping imagery in single services.

Re: Does any of the Experience builder widgets support Image services?

Laura — Tue, 08 Jul 2025 16:08:53 GMT

Adding my support. I am trying to filter based on different elevations but the filter widget does not recognize that layer.