Add group layer from MapService in AGOL/Portal

[NicolasGIS]

I think it would be good to be able to be able to add group layer from MapServer service in ArcGIS Online / Portal for ArcGIS.

The business need is the following : let's take "water burried network" for example, you have a groupLayer in a more general "Network" MapServer service that contains point, line, surface and you want to be able to add that on a map as a whole. I do not want to add every single item as a featureService (nor use a group of featureService as mentionned on the following idea which is in production plan) because the symbology is complex (complex dynamic labelling, arrow on lines to display flow direction, ...) and contains lots of items so it would be slow (though I know WebGL could help someday).

The only workaround so far is to publish it as an individual service but it would increase load on the server to publish every single group as a service as there are many other cases like the one I mentionned above.

Cheers

[Anonymous User]

This and lack of ability to group and re-group and move layers in a web map may perhaps be the main thing holding down more investment in AGOL for many.  And is why I won't host any data in AGOL until this is implemented.   On a related noted, the fact that when you add an individual sublayer, like  Util/Water/waterMain/mapserver/1  it adds as a feature layer. If it could add as a dynamic layer also that would be good. I agree Feature layers load much slower. There are a lot of reasons why and ways around it but the fact is out in the real world, the fact AGOL adds sublayers as featureLayers, combined with lack of being able to group, means you have to have everything perfect in the mxd before deploying a big app. And then another huge catch --  if you change the mxd by adding or removing layers, it ruins popups.  Oy. Even with 10.51 in my experience, it messes up popups and the layers get weird. You simply have to redo the entire webmap. I thought that was supposed to be fixed in 10.3 but it still seems to be an issue. And this can mean a lot of work.  Until every single item I mention above is fixed, AGOL is very limited.  I really only used it because WAB steers you that way. Literally every thing here, means a lot of work to both deploy and make changes to an app that is based through a webmap.  And why I might take a look at that LocalLayers widget sometime for WAB, to circumvent web maps altogether.  Getting organizations using AGOL is good revenue and thus a good business decision. Therefore hopefully these concepts will get implemented at some point.

We needs groups. Ability to move layers (from any source and to any order in the webmap), to add sublayers as dynamic/map image layers. And webmaps to not corrupt if layers change in the mxd.  It would be nice for end users to adjust transparency for each sublayer and reorder layers in the WAB layerlist on the fly but definitely less important.