It would be highly beneficial to allow administrators or publishers to control which WMS/WFS sublayers are visible by default when an external service is added as a Portal item in ArcGIS Enterprise or ArcGIS Online.
Currently, when adding a WMS service with a large number of sublayers (e.g., 100+), all sublayers are treated as visible by default. In Map Viewer (new), this can result in no layers rendering initially, requiring users to manually disable all layers and then selectively enable the ones they need. In contrast, Map Viewer Classic automatically enables only the first subset of layers (e.g., first 10), leading to inconsistent behavior across clients.
This creates usability challenges, particularly for:
- Large services with tens or hundreds of sublayers
- Portals with many non-technical or occasional users
- Scenarios where users expect a “ready-to-use” map experience
Proposed enhancement
Introduce a way to define default sublayer visibility at the Portal item level (or derived from the service), such as:
- A Portal-managed configuration allowing all sublayers to be hidden by default
- Or the ability to designate a subset of sublayers as “default visible”
