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What's coming in ArcGIS Business Analyst Web App (October 2025)

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10-07-2025 08:43 PM
LinweiZeng
by Esri Contributor
Esri Contributor
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‎10-07-2025 08:43 PM

The upcoming update of ArcGIS Business Analyst Web App, scheduled for release on October 22, 2025, adds new functionality to analyze nearby locations, provides improved credit estimation, and streamlines discovery of featured layers from ArcGIS Living Atlas. The release also contains updates to points of interest (POI) data in the U.S., Canada, and Puerto Rico, as well as the release of new 2025 data for Canada, France, and over 60 countries worldwide.

Please note that all planned updates are subject to change. Check out the full details in the What's New blog article and final documentation on release day.

 

Mapping and analysis workflow enhancements

New nearby analysis workflow: smarter insights from surrounding POIs

This release continues development efforts to support enhanced analysis capabilities for points of interest (POIs). It introduces a powerful new Advanced analysis workflow known as nearby designed to help users understand what places and POIs are within walking or driving distance of their sites. It applies to competitive analysis in retail, real estate, and restaurants, providing an instant snapshot of who is in the market and how close those competitors are. In health care, it helps to understand service delivery and network adequacy. The analysis is available for SafeGraph and Data Axle POIs. You can also bring customers, clients, patients, or any other point layer into the analysis to discover relationships and interactions between different categories of places, brands, consumers, or competition.

The analysis summarizes key statistics such as the number of points by type and distance, and points per 1,000 households. This insight is invaluable across industries:

  • Public sector: locating areas lacking access to services like food, education, or health care.
  • Retail and commercial real estate: identifying neighboring competitors and complementary businesses.
  • Residential real estate: assessing quality of life and proximity to key amenities like schools, transit, shopping, or parks.

For organizations with customer, client, or member data, nearby analysis can be used to model catchment areas by assessing the density of individuals based on different distances and visualizing the patterns of change across distances. This improved data-driven decision making provides a deeper understanding of local context and interactions between places.

 

Flexible benchmarking for smarter site comparisons

In the November 2024 release, we launched the map-based benchmark comparisons workflow, transforming the traditional comparisons report into a more visual and flexible experience. In the upcoming release, we are enhancing it further by allowing users to define benchmarks not just by location, mean, or median — but also by setting custom values for each variable. This added flexibility helps tailor comparisons to specific goals, making insights more relevant and actionable.

 

Improved discovery of Living Atlas layers: featured content

Finding the right data just got easier. We are introducing a featured content list for Living Atlas layers inside Business Analyst Web App. This enhancement streamlines the browsing and discovery experience by highlighting layers This update makes it easier for users to locate authoritative content for mapping, analysis, and reporting, providing greater insight into the data with enhanced metadata on data categories and included layers, which reduces friction and improves the overall experience.

 

Visualize distributions with more control

We are enhancing the histogram tab in the Results pane for mapping and analysis workflows, making it easier to explore data distributions. New visualization includes showing mean, median, and legends in the histogram view, plus styling controls to adjust chart types, bin counts, outlier visibility, and zoom.

 

Localization update: suitability analysis infographic

The Suitability Analysis infographic template is now available in Japanese, French, and Spanish. When you launch the app in one of these languages and select a corresponding translated data source—such as Esri Japan, Esri France, or Mexico INEGI—the entire template will appear fully translated.

 

Infographic updates

ArcGIS Tapestry panel: smarter comparisons and customization

Following the launch of ArcGIS Tapestry in June, which included new infographics and the initial rollout of the Tapestry infographic panel, the upcoming release brings meaningful enhancements to this experience. A new comparison view allows users to evaluate key variables—such as population density, median household income, median home value, median age, and diversity index—across their analysis area, overlapping geographies of their choices (like states, counties, or ZIP codes), and the top Tapestry segments—all in one consolidated view. This makes it easier to understand how an area differs from or is similar to other locations and the distributions of segments within each of these geographies.

These updates make the Tapestry panel more insightful, powerful, and user-friendly, providing better means to communicate similarities and differences within their areas of interest.

 

New infographic templates

Numerous new templates will be added to the app!

Data source

Type

Infographics

United States (Esri 2025)

Gallery infographics

Demographic Summary, Housing Market Summary, Spending Behavior Summary

United States (Esri 2025)

Standard infographics

Business Key Facts

Canada

Gallery infographics

Demographic Snapshot

Global

Standard infographics

Population Summary

 

Other enhancements

Know your credit costs up front

The upcoming release brings a much-requested enhancement: the in-app credit estimation tool, giving users up-front visibility into credit usage when exporting mapping and analysis results, infographics, and reports. Before completing an export, users will see an Estimate credits option that calculates how many ArcGIS Online credits the action will consume. This helps users avoid surprises, plan more effectively, and manage resources with confidence.

 

Improved accessibility

We are dedicated to making our infographics more accessible to all users. We have made considerable progress in ensuring 508 compliance and enabling more organizations to share infographics on their websites for public information. We have improved keyboard tabbing and screen reading capabilities as well as updated colors for proper contrast for the histogram in the Results pane. For infographics, you can now add alt text for images.

 

Support for ArcGIS Online settings

We have introduced two key enhancements to improve personalization and user experience in Business Analyst Web App:

  • Language preference sync: A new setting allows the app to automatically apply your ArcGIS Online member-level language preference. This means when you opt in, your Business Analyst Web App interface will now reflect your preferred language setting from ArcGIS Online, creating a more consistent experience across platforms.
  • User experience improvement program: Business Analyst Web App is now part of the Esri User Experience Improvement Program. By default, users are opted in, and the app will send anonymous usage data to help the team better understand user behavior and continuously enhance the experience.

 

Data and boundaries updates

The upcoming release will include updates to the following datasets:

  • Standard demographics for 26 North American countries and 46 African countries from Michael Bauer Research (2025)
  • Advanced Demographics for Canada from Environics Analytics and Statistics Canada (2025), and for France from Esri France (2025)
  • Business Summary data for U.S. from Data Axle (August 2025)
  • POIs: India POI from Esri India (August 2025), USA and Canada POI from Data Axle (August 2025), USA, Canada, and Puerto Rico POI from Safegraph (August 2025), Foursquare Global Open Source (August 2025)
  • USA Traffic data from Kalibrate (Q3 2025)

 

POI data enhancements

Other than updates to the latest data, here are a few enhancements to POI data to highlight:

  • For India POI from Esri India, Puerto Rico POI from SafeGraph, and Foursquare Open Source, there is a significant increase in record numbers.
  • The Top Retailers search option is now available for SafeGraph and Data Axle POI. You can quickly identify which anchor stores are located within your search area or near your sites.
  • Data Axle has an additional attribute: chain name.
  • Foursquare has been updated to support 2022 NAICS, which brings the dataset to parity with other datasets. Now you will be able to use the same NAICS code lists when switching POI data sources.

 

Canadian Advanced Demographics HouseholdSpend variable changes

Environics Analytics updated its HouseholdSpend dataset to reflect modern Canadian consumer behavior, based on major changes to the Statistics Canada Survey of Household Spending. This resulted in 145 new spending variables being added, 162 retired, and many existing codes revised. Users of ArcGIS Business Analyst Web App will need to update custom infographic reports accordingly. For more information, please refer to '25 Canadian HouseholdSpend Variable Changes.

 

ArcGIS Business Analyst Mobile App

Several bug fixes and minor enhancements.

 

ArcGIS Experience Builder: Business Analyst widget

Several bug fixes and minor enhancements.

 

ArcGIS Community Analyst retirement

ArcGIS Community Analyst retires March 1, 2026. Users must migrate to either ArcGIS Business Analyst Web App Standard or Advanced.

Community Analyst remains accessible to users until their license term end date, at which time they will receive a renewal notice containing Business Analyst Web App Advanced at a discounted rate. Negotiated enterprise agreement customers were migrated in September 2025.

For further details, refer to Deprecation Notice for ArcGIS Community Analyst: Transition to ArcGIS Business Analyst Web App.

 

We are hosting a live testing session on October 15, 2025, from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM PST. The Business Analyst development team and the Esri Demographics team will be present to gather your feedback and answer any questions you may have. If you are interested in participating, sign up here: ArcGIS Business Analyst Web App October Release Live Testing.

 

Additional resources

We’re so happy to share this upcoming release of ArcGIS Business Analyst Web App and ArcGIS Business Analyst Mobile App with you.

Below, we’ve added resources to help you with your ArcGIS Business Analyst journey:

Contributors