topic Re: ArcGIS Online - Need to prevent users from zooming in too close or out too far in ArcGIS Online Questions

ArcGIS Online - Need to prevent users from zooming in too close or out too far

RayCrew — Fri, 17 Jun 2016 14:51:20 GMT

I have not found a way in ArcGIS OnLine Web Mapping Applications nor Web Maps to limit how far users can zoom in or out. It is possible if there is a cached base map, but not otherwise. Setting scale dependencies and limits on REST services and layers does not negate this need. That will stop the layers from being displayed, but still allow scales that may cause users confusion, frustrations, and problems. Setting a default scale and extent will also fail to address this. This function was possible in an older ESRI platform, ArcGIS for Flex, by specifying LODs.

Does anyone know if this is possible?

Example of my user's problems: Have a global map showing total population by country. The current setup allows a user to zoom in very tight (like to 1:1,147) of automatically zooms to such a scale after searching for a point location. At that scale the user will most likely be deep inside one country's polygon requiring them to have to pan and zoom back out many times to see another country to compare to.

Re: ArcGIS Online - Need to prevent users from zooming in too close or out too far

JakeSkinner — Fri, 17 Jun 2016 16:48:00 GMT

Hi Ray,

You can do this with the Web AppBuilder. Under the Map tab, you can customize the visible scales the user can zoom to.

Map and Scene—Web AppBuilder for ArcGIS | ArcGIS

Re: ArcGIS Online - Need to prevent users from zooming in too close or out too far

KellyGerrow — Tue, 22 Jun 2021 08:28:29 GMT

Hi Ray,

How are you sharing this map with your customer? There are some options that you can try with web applications that may address your issue.

The most straight forward way is to limit the map zoom level in the web map is create your own basemap with your desired scale range. You have mentioned that this won't work, so some additional options:

1. As Jake Skinner mentioned, try using the Web AppBuilder using the functionality posted above

2. The Minimalist Configurable App also allows you to disable zooming

3. Consider creating a presentation with specific areas selected: Create presentations—ArcGIS Online Help | ArcGIS

You can also support the following ideas: https://community.esri.com/ideas/7015

https://community.esri.com/ideas/12160

Re: ArcGIS Online - Need to prevent users from zooming in too close or out too far

RayCrew — Mon, 20 Jun 2016 13:25:51 GMT

Hello Jake:

That option appears to only be enabled if there is a cached data layer. I am toying with making a transparent cached layer just to enable that, but that seems like an awful waste of time and server resources to simply control zoom.

Ray

Re: ArcGIS Online - Need to prevent users from zooming in too close or out too far

JakeSkinner — Mon, 20 Jun 2016 13:35:08 GMT

You can use an ArcGIS Online basemap and set the transparency to 100%.

Re: ArcGIS Online - Need to prevent users from zooming in too close or out too far

RayCrew — Mon, 20 Jun 2016 13:44:04 GMT

Hi Kelly:

Jake's idea above only works with cached data. I consider that an oversight on ESRI part, but that is the way it is. I still need to have user zoom in to different levels, so cutting it out completely will not work. And presentations will not work as navigating around the map and exploring the data is too important.

And on the idea to support, I am the one who submitted that. The only support so far has been me, so let me petition to you to vote it up.

Raymond

Re: ArcGIS Online - Need to prevent users from zooming in too close or out too far

RayCrew — Mon, 20 Jun 2016 13:55:11 GMT

Problem is I have my own required base map right now and therefor cannot use the ESRI base maps as well. I am making the assumption that if you have two base maps, you must have the base map chooser enabled and I cannot have that. I cannot allow user to turn on any of the typical ESRI base maps in this application. BTW, I will test my assumption later this week.

Why can I not have the base map chooser with the typical ESRI base maps? The US DOS does not allow any US Gov agency to use the ESRI base maps. The country names, coastlines, and boundaries are not the approved US Gov ones so thay cannot be used on any US Gov product. And yes, I know of many examples violating this rule, but that does not change the rule.

Ray Crew

Re: ArcGIS Online - Need to prevent users from zooming in too close or out too far

JakeSkinner — Mon, 20 Jun 2016 14:04:13 GMT

I would recommend caching your basemap. You will receive faster performance and then you will have the ability to limit the zoom levels. You can also host the cached service in ArcGIS Online. Take a look at the following document on how to do this:

Publish a Tiled Service to ArcGIS Online w/o ArcGIS for Server or Utilizing Your Credits

Re: ArcGIS Online - Need to prevent users from zooming in too close or out too far

RayCrew — Wed, 22 Jun 2016 13:23:09 GMT

Thanks, but it is simply not possible for me to cache this data. The hosting group here at the U.S. Census strongly discourages using caching. It is considered too much of a load on server resources.

Re: ArcGIS Online - Need to prevent users from zooming in too close or out too far

JakeSkinner — Wed, 22 Jun 2016 13:30:33 GMT

If the hosting group in concerned about the load on the ArcGIS Server instance, you won't have to worry about this. The document I provided shows how to create a cache using ArcGIS Desktop tools. ArcGIS Server will not be used at all.

Re: ArcGIS Online - Need to prevent users from zooming in too close or out too far

RayCrew — Wed, 22 Jun 2016 15:27:14 GMT

Regardless of how the tiles are generated, the tiles have to be stored on the server. That is discouraged since this group's servers are almost always out of disc space.

I know that must make people roll their eyes, but it typical for US Gov workplaces. Disc space is cheap these days, but the paperwork to get it is not.

Re: ArcGIS Online - Need to prevent users from zooming in too close or out too far

RayCrew — Tue, 22 Jun 2021 08:28:32 GMT

Please folks, go vote my idea up.

https://community.esri.com/ideas/12160

Re: ArcGIS Online - Need to prevent users from zooming in too close or out too far

Anonymous User — Thu, 29 Sep 2016 20:58:21 GMT

I found a confirmed / Reproducible bug with AGOL. I had the build a fresh webmap from a service and a vanilla WAB hosted online all on AGOL. The limiting of zoom out to max scale doesn't work.

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The reference number for the bug is BUG-000099639: Setting custom visible scales in ArcGIS Online Web App Builder fails when you remove scale values of 591,657,527.591555 ; 295,828,763.795777 and 147,914,381.897889.

Re: ArcGIS Online - Need to prevent users from zooming in too close or out too far

RayCrew — Wed, 05 Oct 2016 17:17:21 GMT

Kevin. I do not think this has anything to do with this topic. Honestly I am not sure since I do not understand much of what you typed.

Re: ArcGIS Online - Need to prevent users from zooming in too close or out too far

RayCrew — Thu, 06 Oct 2016 20:47:37 GMT

Marking this as assumed answered is not correct.

Re: ArcGIS Online - Need to prevent users from zooming in too close or out too far

RayCrew — Wed, 03 May 2017 14:38:19 GMT

Seven months later and still no real response from ESRI makes me sad.

Re: ArcGIS Online - Need to prevent users from zooming in too close or out too far

KellyGerrow — Thu, 04 May 2017 17:23:20 GMT

Hi Ray,

Thanks for your feedback. This is definitely something that we are considering for a future release in the software but is not available without the above mentioned workarounds. If this is specific to a search widget, you can set the default zoomn in most configurable apps and with url parameters.

-Kelly

Re: ArcGIS Online - Need to prevent users from zooming in too close or out too far

EricPeña — Mon, 25 Sep 2017 16:57:30 GMT

This is exactly what I need to do but it seems url parameters cannot be concatenated. I've tried query & scale as well as find & scale parameters but neither seem to take the scale setting, they just ignore the scale setting. See examples below:

find & scale parameter

query & scale parameter

In addition the Search Widget zoom scale settings are not available for Feature layer searches, only Geocoder searches.

Re: ArcGIS Online - Need to prevent users from zooming in too close or out too far

Ke_Xu — Thu, 27 Feb 2025 07:29:53 GMT

Hi All,

Now, for 2D maps, you can limit the scale range that users can zoom to. It has been released on ArcGIS Online in February 2025, will be released on ArcGIS Enterprise 11.5 and ArcGIS Experience Builder Dev Edition 1.17.

The map bar shows the level of detail(LODs) of the basemaps in the connected maps.

Thanks,