topic Re: Utility Network Widget Frustrations in ArcGIS Experience Builder Questions

Utility Network Widget Frustrations

ahargreaves_FW — Fri, 18 Oct 2024 18:29:09 GMT

While working with the Utility Network widget at v11.3 ExB I have the following questions/suggestions:

If I only have a single network configuration in my web map, why must I still have to pick that network configuration?
Why do trace results default to displaying their OIDs?
Why is only a single attribute able to be displayed?
Why is 'zoom to' the only option for the selected results?

To allow the end user to interact with trace results in a more user-friendly manner I have had to resort to creating several 'query' widgets that display the selected trace results by asset type. This allows the user to see as many attributes are needed as well as zoom, pan and flash each selected feature. However, there's a number of issues even with this, namely:

It requires manually triggering after a trace is run
The SQL capability fail to recognize AssetType domain values and instead seem to only recognise whatever attribute the data is symbolized by.
The query widget fails to refresh between traces, potentially leaving stale results in there unless the user hits 'apply' each time (see #1 above).

Does anyone have a better way to interact with features in a trace result?

Re: Utility Network Widget Frustrations

AlixVezina — Fri, 18 Oct 2024 21:41:27 GMT

Hi @ahargreaves_FW ,

I was playing around with options for representing the results and here may be one. You could setup the Near Me widget to show the results as follows:

Set the Search Method to Specify a location but set the Search distance to 0 so that only immediately intersecting features are included.
Set Proximity analysis for your layers
Add an Action on the UNT widget to Set Location in Near Me
You can also set actions in Near Me widget to zoom to features on the map when users will click them within the Near Me grouped list.
There is one limitation with this setup: you may end up with more line features in the Near Me count than in the actual Trace results because of that intersection analysis. Otherwise, it works pretty well.

There are some enhancements coming in Near Me in future releases that will improve this workflow. For example, adding support for Near Me to use the Selected features Data View from a data source will allow you to automatically display only the selected features returned by the trace for each layer. Near Me will also refresh analysis results automatically.

Another option coming soon, with the November update of Experience Builder in ArcGIS Online, will be a new Accordion layout widget. You may be able to leverage this to display your trace results in collapsible lists based on the returned selection from the Trace widget (show selected features or filter the data source). See a preview example below.

Unfortunately, this new Accordion widget and the new Near Me functionality won't make it into Enterprise until 11.5 and later releases. You will always be able to setup the Developer Edition of Experience Builder and connect it to your Portal to leverage the latest functionality.

Re: Utility Network Widget Frustrations

ahargreaves_FW — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 17:35:31 GMT

@AlixVezinathis is a great stop-gap measure! It works really well for us! One related question: There is a know bug in the UN whereby only AssetGroup and AssetType domain codes are returned instead of the domain labels (eg: '7' instead of 'Hydrant'). I believe this was fixed at v11.4. Can you therefore confirm it won't impact this 'Near By' widget at v11.5? May I also humbly ask that the OOTB UN trace widget just present results in this much more intuitive and useful way? 😁

Thanks for the great suggestion...

Re: Utility Network Widget Frustrations

AlixVezina — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 17:50:25 GMT

@ahargreaves_FW I believe all subtype group layer functionality should be resolved at 11.5, including displaying proper domain labels.

For the representation of results in the Utility Network Trace widget, I believe the consensus was that most people will want to customize the way those results are displayed using other widgets. If you have specific requests for the representation of those results, please add an Idea to: ArcGIS JavaScript Maps SDK Ideas - Esri Community

Re: Utility Network Widget Frustrations

LeoMontero — Wed, 19 Mar 2025 18:23:39 GMT

Hello @ahargreaves_FW.

Regarding your "Why is 'zoom to' the only option for the selected results?" question. Can you explain which other options are you looking for? Is it pan, flash functionality or is there something else?

Also, about your "Why is only a single attribute able to be displayed?" question. I'd like you to know that at 4.32 (Maps SDK for JavaScript) / 11.5 (ArcGIS Enterprise) the trace widget allows to click on individual result items to see the feature's attributes.

Should you have any comments or questions on this, please let us know.

Kind Regards,

Leo