idea Give Instant Apps the capabilities that Web AppBuilder had. in ArcGIS Instant Apps Ideas

Give Instant Apps the capabilities that Web AppBuilder had.

MichaelPielow — Thu, 15 May 2025 23:02:21 GMT

Simple since you are taking away Web AppBuilder, make Instant Apps the new Web AppBuilder. Instant Apps is currently too simple to be of use. Experience Builder is way over top more complex than I need. I need an App that I can add stock widgets to. I want to be able to change the basemaps, draw, measure, print, identify, change the layers. I can make apps with this in Web AppBuilder in 15 minutes or less. I can't add to the Instant Apps templates to meet my needs. Experience Builder is going to take an extreme amount of time to create something would be so simple to do in Web AppBuilder. Improve Instant Apps, so that we can make quick maps that are not embarrassing.

Re: Give Instant Apps the capabilities that Web AppBuilder had.

L77 — Thu, 15 May 2025 23:15:37 GMT

I'm sorry you are suffering. I felt the same way, I loved web app builder. For me experience builder has been cumbersome and glitchy so I have been using instant apps instead.

I have been recreating all of my apps using the "Sidebar instant app", it is my favorite. Have you tried that one yet?

There is a checkbox to add basemaps, there is a checkbox to measure.

I think "identify" is the pop-up toggle and if you click on anything it will show the pop-up information in the pane.

There is an edit widget, I don't think it is the same thing as draw.

The layers toggle will let you turn layers on and off. You can also use filters

For me the main thing it is missing is charts.

If you test out the sidebar instant app and want to learn really quickly I would suggest turning on every single toggle available, and all features. Then if you want to turn some off, find out which ones you need to turn off. That was alot faster for me.

Re: Give Instant Apps the capabilities that Web AppBuilder had.

KellyHutchins — Fri, 16 May 2025 15:26:44 GMT

@MichaelPielow this should all be possible with apps like Sidebar and Media. Can you elaborate on what is missing from those apps? We are continuously making additions to Instant apps based on feedback and would love to hear what is missing from those apps.

Re: Give Instant Apps the capabilities that Web AppBuilder had.

MichaelPielow — Fri, 16 May 2025 16:54:09 GMT

@L77 Thank you for your suggestions and sympathy. Sidebar contains most of the widgets I need. It is missing the drawing widget which is a tool that gets used often by our users. It might be the closest to what I was looking for.

@KellyHutchins There are a lot of different apps Instant Apps, but the apps don't have all the widgets as they vary from app to app. Sidebar doesn't have Draw. Media is missing a few more widgets. It does look like it has an attribute table which I need. Standard widgets that I need on pretty much all of my maps are Basemap, Layerlist, Legend, Draw, Measure, Select, Print/Export, Attribute table. The more functionality that Web AppBuilder had that can be added to Instant Apps, the better Instant Apps will get. Web AppBuilder was one of ESRI better products, it is a shame it didn't get a proper replacement when the technology changed.

Re: Give Instant Apps the capabilities that Web AppBuilder had.

KellyHutchins — Fri, 16 May 2025 19:46:09 GMT

@MichaelPielow thanks for the feedback.

Media does have the table option accessible via a button on the layer list if its been enabled via the configuration process.

I'm curious about the use cases for the draw/sketch tools. Are you users drawing sketches that they want to save back to the web map? Or do they want them to appear on an exported file?

We do have sketch support in a few apps (Atlas and Lookup) for specific use cases. In Lookup its so people can draw a selection zone and in Atlas the sketch geometry can be printed or saved to the web map

Re: Give Instant Apps the capabilities that Web AppBuilder had.

MichaelPielow — Fri, 16 May 2025 20:17:50 GMT

@KellyHutchins The drawing widget just creates graphics on top of the map. Users will draw or annotation something on map, then print/export as pdf and send it to someone. It is a very simple and rudimentary, but very common practice and effective I guess they can still sort of do it by exporting it out and bringing it into Paint or something else and draw on it there. It would be nice to be to continue to do it in the software.

Re: Give Instant Apps the capabilities that Web AppBuilder had.

KellyHutchins — Fri, 16 May 2025 21:07:02 GMT

Perfect that's the question I had about the workflow. We'll look at adding support where it makes sense in a future release.

Re: Give Instant Apps the capabilities that Web AppBuilder had.

L77 — Wed, 21 May 2025 13:01:46 GMT

@KellyHutchinsThank you for replying back to us in the chatroom. One of the main reasons I decided to go with instant apps is that you are active and helpful in these threads, so thank you!

For me, if the sidebar app had a table that the user could export out to excel, and if it had charts, and the draw tool aswell then the app would be the same that I had in web app builder.

I don't know if you can make it possible for the users to edit in the table aswell. In webapp builder they could only view the table and sort and export, and they could click on a line and the map would zoom to that location. But if they could edit it would be so nice.

Most of my users are public works employees who are using field maps and internal web maps to edit their data. If you have any question on our use case or want to see how I had the apps setup in web app builder, let me know. I find that the charts and filters help motivate them to complete their work and see their progress. The table with the export allows them to export out a subset of tasks to complete.

Re: Give Instant Apps the capabilities that Web AppBuilder had.

KellyHutchins — Wed, 21 May 2025 15:37:57 GMT

@L77 thanks for the feedback! You can currently export table results to csv using the table in Sidebar (and Media). You just need to use the menu that opens when you click the three dots in the top right corner of the table and choose "Export to csv".

We are looking into adding draw tools and chart support for a release later this year.

Re: Give Instant Apps the capabilities that Web AppBuilder had.

KellyHutchins — Thu, 22 May 2025 18:33:12 GMT

@L77 and @MichaelPielow we've added support for draw tools to Media and Sidebar for the next release of ArcGIS Online.

We've also updated Sidebar to add support for optionally enabling editing of the attribute table if the app contains editable layers.

Re: Give Instant Apps the capabilities that Web AppBuilder had.

MichaelPielow — Thu, 22 May 2025 18:34:47 GMT

@KellyHutchins Thank you!!!

Re: Give Instant Apps the capabilities that Web AppBuilder had.

L77 — Tue, 27 May 2025 14:55:36 GMT

@KellyHutchins Thank you so much!

Re: Give Instant Apps the capabilities that Web AppBuilder had. - Status changed to: Implemented

IanWittenmyer — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 23:22:39 GMT

Re: Give Instant Apps the capabilities that Web AppBuilder had.

SarahMcDonald_Esri — Thu, 26 Jun 2025 20:10:06 GMT

Hi @MichaelPielow @L77

Wanted to follow up on this, the sketch tools are available in Sidebar and Basic now. Also available now, is the ability to edit in the table in Sidebar

Thanks!
Sarah

Re: Give Instant Apps the capabilities that Web AppBuilder had.

L77 — Thu, 17 Jul 2025 16:04:32 GMT

@SarahMcDonald_Esri I am testing editing in the table.

In map viewer I set the road name to be read only.

In the sidebar app table, it is allowing me to edit the road name.

Should I be configuring which fields are editable and which are view only in another location? Or is this possibly a bug?

As a side note, the edit widget is not allowing me to edit the road name in the pop-up window, so that tool is working correctly:

Re: Give Instant Apps the capabilities that Web AppBuilder had.

SarahMcDonald_Esri — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 17:11:13 GMT

Hi @L77

Thanks for reaching out about this. The smart form that is configured in map viewer will only apply "Read only" to fields where the smart form is used - in the edit tool.

Editing in the table will not apply that read only setting from the smart form. Instead, if you go to the feature layer data tab in the item details page you can set read only on the fields there. The read only setting will be applied anywhere that layer can be edited.

Thanks!

Sarah

Re: Give Instant Apps the capabilities that Web AppBuilder had.

L77 — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 14:48:13 GMT

It worked, thank you!