Experience Builder Roadmap in 2021 and Beyond

Jianxia · ‎03-10-2021

Many of you would like to know the priority list of widgets that Experience Builder team will be working on in 2021 and Beyond. Here it is. Please keep in mind that things are subject to change.

Thanks!

DavidRasner1 · ‎08-03-2021

Hello @Jianxia,

great product, are there any plans on enhancing expressions and text formating in the experience builder? I did a basic expression to divide two values and get a lot of decimals. That's not so great.

Also, would be great to see multiple columns in the list widget and more chart options to filter content. That would be amazing.

QuantitativeFuturist · ‎08-15-2021

The most basic widgets are not available - Edit, Measure, Print. Why have these been overlooked? These are probably the most fundamental workflows for the most basic GIS applications. There seems to be a disconnect between esri and it's customers requirements. These need to be prioritized and a specific timeline for delivery released, how do you expect customers to plan without knowing if and when basic functionality will be released? This is beyond frustrating.

DaveFullerton · ‎08-15-2021

@QuantitativeFuturist Your comments are helpful, though perhaps somewhat extreme. Believe me, I fully appreciate your concerns about planning, but as someone who writes software I must say that things never go as planned or as quickly as expected when building something - much less something as amazing as Experience Builder will one day be. It is much, much better that Experience Builder was released when it was than if Esri were to wait until everything was perfected before doing so. Why? Because software never is perfected until after multiple iterations after it is released. Of course the product is no longer in beta, but it is still in version 1, so we can't expect it to be 100% ready to do everything that Web AppBuilder does. Right now Experience Builder should be considered to be a collaborative project between Esri and it's early adopters. Unfortunately, you either have to join now and deal with the good and bad that comes with being an early adopter or wait until it is a mature product - it is up to you. I, for one, am glad that Esri has allowed me to work with the product before it is fully matured. This gives me the opportunity to express my opinions about how the product is shaped early in the process. On the other hand, your comments will probably be helpful for others who are trying to decide whether or not now is the time for them to take the leap!

The bottom line is that we don't actually have a very good way of knowing when a product is mature enough for us to decide when it is ready for us to adopt (a real problem that should be addressed). ArcGIS Pro for example is getting close to a major release (2.x to 3.0). I would bank on ArcGIS Pro 3.1 being the benchmark where most users thought it had the green light on everything it needed for migration from ArcGIS Desktop. That is more than 6 years into the process.

QuantitativeFuturist · ‎08-16-2021

@DaveFullerton thanks for your outlook on this - I do appreciate your opinion. You may be correct about the tone of my post however it is born out of frustration. ESRI has a huge amount of resources and probably have a fairly good idea of what widgets from WAB are most commonly used. I mean what's the point of having a version management widget but no editing widget, the prioritization seems off to me. It's not like this is an open source project, we pay a not insignificant amount of money for licensing so I would expect appropriate resourcing to migrate widgets from WAB to Experience builder. I do think that as customers we should be holding esri to account and demanding proper release schedules, not vague blog posts.

DaveFullerton · ‎08-16-2021

@QuantitativeFuturist I share your frustration, and I fully agree that communication is a problem that should be improved. Perhaps I don't know as much you do about about the amount of resources Esri has, so I won't comment on that. I can say as a developer myself that after many, many years I have gotten in the habit of saying as little as I can to the people who are awaiting a product (and sometimes I even deceive them for everyone's benefit - which goes against my nature). There are often hard to imagine reasons why things don't get built in the order that user's think they should. Perhaps something may be on hold in ExB because they are awaiting an upgrade to something in the Javascript API that would have led to a significant rewrite, or perhaps the person with experience that is needed for a particular widget is working on a different widget that had all of the pieces of the puzzle needed to start working on it. The possibilities are endless, and there is no point in them even starting to try to explain it. And I am sure they sometimes end up regretting how they set their priorities. Or it could be that things are mismanaged. I don't get that feeling myself. The only persons who can make that judgement would be the superiors at Esri (if they are paying attention). I hope the conversation we are in now reaches them. It is important for your frustration to be heard. Perhaps the ExB team will get more resources as a result!

DougBrowning · ‎08-16-2021

I agree with the frustration in priorities and communication. I have to base multi-million dollar decisions on random blog posts, slides, and geonet posts. I often pitch building new shiny tools only for users to wonder why it cannot even do the things the last one could do for years. I know it is a huge project to rewrite in JS 4 but I would rather wait then rush it out the door.

We planned to remake our whole system in the new Map Viewer and EB this year. But day 1 I found that there is no support for relationship classes. Umm like its the very first letter in RDBMS (Relational Database Management System). How can we have a RDBMS without it. I think I saw posts saying by end of 2020..then end of 2021..then no word. (It is not even on the roadmap above now.) Stopped the project on us day 1.

Design decisions can also be confusing. Like creating layer groups then splitting out tables to their own section - which has no grouping. I do not understand the use case here. Tables are mostly ignored across the board even though in almost every company I see they have more tables than layers. Part of getting companies to integrate with spatial data is linking tables. I believe Esri ignoring tables as been the biggest slow down in adoption that I have seen.

In other apps like Field Maps/Collector we have been asking for a simple filter for years now. I feel like Esri could use some experienced field testers on the team. (Or run things by Professional Services and they can help you relate it to the real day to day out there.) Us computer people are often bad at testing in the office vs outside and not really talking to the field crews. Again it is hard to explain to people why a 15 year old Access DB can do more than a Esri 2021 product. In this example I have posted (with lots of upvotes), spoken to our rep, and even talked to the team with Jeff himself and I still cannot get anywhere.

Consistency is also critical and I really hope using a common code structure now across apps will help. One simple example is that Editor tracking fields are named differently if added in ArcMap vs AGOL. How does that happen? There must be a Esri standards dept right? It is a programming nightmare. It is not even the first time - who remembers ETEdited?

This is all my opinion of course and don't get me wrong I love you guys. I just think you need to focus more on what is important vs creating all these tools that are half done and eventually abandoned. I would rather have a few thought out and tested tools.

Thanks for all you do!

RyanBohan · ‎08-19-2021

I am chasing print functionality. I created a Scrolling Page with a Feature Info widget set to auto. Experience builder does a great job displaying the dynamic pop-up in the Feature Info widget (some can be hundreds of related records)

It seems like printing in Chrome is almost there (default ctrl-p) I just need the added functionary to print the scroll as multiple pages. Of course by print I mean Save as PDF, but I someone could print on paper.

Jianxia · ‎08-23-2021

@DavidRasner1, enhancing the format in Expression and Text and supporting for multiple columns in thee List widget are known issues. Your requests have been added. As for the chart, more chart types and options will be added through incremental releases.

Jianxia · ‎08-23-2021

@QuantitativeFuturist @DaveFullerton @DougBrowning, thank you for sharing your opinions and perspectives on the widget priority and communication. Could you shed some light on how we can improve the communication on what's coming? During the technical session at UC, we opened a poll to ask attendees about which next widget you would like to see the most. Would it be helpful if we do something similar through the community?

@QuantitativeFuturist, we are working on the Edit and Print widgets currently. Agree they are fundamental. As for the Measure widget, could you let us know what is missing in the Measure tool on the Map widget?

@DougBrowning, related tables are important. It is on the near future road map of the new Map Viewer. We will try to bring it over once it is available.

As some of you may know, the widgets in WAB are collaborative efforts from many Esri teams, and each team may focus on various areas. The widgets in Experience Builder follows the same collaborative pattern, and more are coming.

Thank you all for such candid conversation!

Geoeki · ‎08-23-2021

@Jianxia regarding Measure widget and what should be included:

Measure Distance
Measure Area
Slice objects (for 3D Scenes...available in the basic Scene viewer, but was never implemented in the Web App Builder...)
Elevation Profile
Line of Sight analysis

All tools already available either in the basic map/scene viewer or the JS API.

What else I wish was available (but is nowhere to be seen): Measure Volume (based on a raster DEM or integrated mesh layer...one man can dream). That's such a highly requested feature from our drone operators.

RodWoodfordOld · ‎08-25-2021

Hi Jianxia,

Just on your charting comment. I have noticed when using charting with 3d scenes the map display does not render all 3d features. This is occurring from the top of the view. If you tilt the 3d view to a 2d perspective all information is rendered in the display. My question is, what is the chart displaying when this issue occurs? Is it only what's visible in the display or the extent of the map view regardless of what's displayed?

Looking forward to more charting options. Also the Line of sight widget would be a fantastic inclusion. I'm getting lots of requests for this corporately since we have been producing EB 3d apps.

cheers

LefterisKoumis · ‎08-25-2021

Jianxia, any updates on the graphic you posted last March listing the widgets planned to be included in future ExB versions in 2021. Thanks.

PaulSweeney3 · ‎08-29-2021

@Jianxia

Editing information via tables is something that I think could be improved on. The ability to select multiple features and edit together or run simple calculations vai the table widget would be very useful. Currently you need to click on each item and it makes the task very tedious.

QuantitativeFuturist · ‎08-31-2021

@Jianxia Thanks for your response. Very much agree with @Geoeki comments regarding the measure widget. I think that in terms of understanding the roadmap, having a single point of reference that is kept up to date that provides release dates and updates would be extremely helpful. Having to dig around in presentations to find an out of date slide with vague dates makes planning impossible, especially in enterprise systems.

henrilebon974 · ‎09-01-2021

Hello @Jianxia,

About the futur Add Data Widget. I would like to know if the widget is going to add the feature layers in group layer.

I think it is a better way because the ESRI JS API 4.x LayerList can show the feature layers as a group if the feature layers are in a group layer.

Regards.

QuantitativeFuturist · ‎09-01-2021

@Jianxia Thanks @henrilebon974 for bringing this up the Add data widget is one that I had missed in terms of importance - this is key functionality for flexible app design. Please make this available asap. Thanks

DawnMcCall · ‎09-03-2021

@Jianxia Have you seen any grids that layout the Web App Builder Widgets with their equivalent in Experience Builder or Configurable Apps basically a Java 4x version?

Jianxia · ‎09-03-2021

@QuantitativeFuturist @Geoeki, the measure tool on the map can do the distance and area measurement as shown below.

measure tool.png

As for the measure volume capability, we will let the imagery team know.

Jianxia · ‎09-03-2021

@RodWoodfordOld - Added @MingyangHan and @WeiYing1 to answer your question about charting in 3D.

Jianxia · ‎09-03-2021

Thank everyone for your input. To get your feedback more efficiently, we plan to do the followings:

1. Post a survey in community to collect feedbacks on which widgets you would like to see in the near term to help us prioritize the widget development.

2. Share a live document for the functionality matrix between WAB and ExB. Update it accordingly after each release.

3. Update the road map.

Have a great weekend!

David_Brooks · ‎09-05-2021

@Jianxia , looking forward to seeing a functionality matrix! It will really help us see where the parities lie.

I for one (as do others) strongly feel that the volume measurement capability would be an app killer for the drone industry, and push ESRI towards the top of the market in this sector. It's been missing for too long 🤞

When this tool is in the development queue, i'd greatly appreciate providing some more detailed low-level input., if possible.

DawnMcCall · ‎09-07-2021

@Jianxia, I would love to see the smart editor and near me widgets!

DaveFullerton · ‎09-08-2021

@Jianxia Sorry I had not been able to respond sooner to your direct request for ideas about communication. I think the things you are suggesting will be very helpful. It would be good to know if you plan to periodically redo the survey, and if so, how often. Seeing the results of the surveys would be helpful too.

Regarding the road map and the live document for the functionality matrix, it would be good to have something in the matrix that tells you where the widget is on the road map so we don't have to try to use both to find everything we need to know.

Finally, I think that what user's really want is to know your goal for exactly when (for example, 2021 Q4) you think it is possible that a widget will be released. I would not like doing that myself, but I could feel comfortable with it if I were also able to specify a level of confidence in reaching that goal (1-3 perhaps). And of course some (or many, or most) widgets could have no such specific goal listed (maybe indicate somehow if widgets are awaiting completion of work from another team?). Providing this kind of information would deviate from what Esri does for the rest of it's products. The road maps for all products seem to reveal the same level of information, so I know this may not be possible. However, during the conference and the developer summit, I have heard questions answered with that kind of detail ("We hope to have that out in this year's Q3 release"), so if you are comfortable enough to say it, please write/post it somewhere for those who are not able to attend every conference session.

GeorgeF · ‎09-17-2021

@Jianxia Thank you for this.

Are there plans to include Select 3D Features (from SLPKs) in Web Scenes (not 2D Features in a Web Scene).

At the moment, I dont believe that this very useful functionality is possible with SLPKs.

Thank you,

George

NaomiBegg · ‎09-26-2021

@Jianxia I'm super stoked to see that you guys have created the moveable search bar!!

I really need this search bar to be able to return arcade scripted fields. The majority of the time we use search on our property layer, however we heavily use arcade for the popups to show how that property relates to other layers. This means that we can keep our layers clean and not duplicate information between layers - less updates and maintenance required! For example I'm trying to build a page for our rubbish and recycling collection. We have this currently as an app where the person can search their property and it will return the results in a sentence including the intersecting collection day feature.

Jianxia · ‎10-01-2021

@NaomiBegg, Glad you like the movable search bar. Currently Experience Builder does not support arcade except for the pop up from the map. Could you help submit an enhancement or add it to the idea site? Thanks

mhargreaves · ‎10-24-2021

@Jianxia Do you have an update on the Print widget? Also, is there anyway to constrict ESRI Search to Map? Or should I add a layer of addresses and use that? Thanks. Mike

Jianxia · ‎11-03-2021

@mhargreaves The Print widget is planned for the Q2 next year around UC. As for the Search widget, the workaround I can think of is to add the same map twice in the data source tab. Rename one map to map1 and another one to map2, for instance. Add the map 1 to the Map widget, then connect the layer on the map1 to the Search widget and the same layer on the map2 to the List widget. In this way, the widgets think they work with different datasources, therefore would not interfere with each other even though two map datasources are identical. The List still can interact with the Map widget connecting to map1 datasource as long as the Map widget is set as target for the action triggered by the List widget.

Could you share the use case so we fully understand the question?

cc @ShengdiZhang for comments.

Jianxia · ‎11-03-2021

The functionality matrix for WAB and ExB is now available under the ExB Documentation tab.

@DaveFullerton

DaveFullerton · ‎11-03-2021

Thank you @Jianxia !

DougBrowning · ‎11-03-2021

I got an update on relationship class support. Will not be until the July update. Big bummer there and it puts us way behind.

Anyone hear a date when the now Classic Map Viewer will go away? At this point I would need until at least end of 2023, and if the current pace continues probably end of 2024.

thanks

mhargreaves · ‎11-04-2021

@Jianxia @ShengdiZhang

My question regarding search - in the instant apps, you are able to restrict suggestions from the ESRI World Geocoding to just the extent of the map. I don't see this ability in EB, and when I type something in the search box, I'm getting suggestions from all over the world... Here is the site I'm working on

https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/87435ddcca494ff78da8d1c617ae01a1

Also, I'm not seeing a way to reply to a post in this blog, only to add a new one...

Jianxia · ‎11-08-2021

@mhargreaves - Currently there is no option of "Only search current map extent" in the Search widget in Experience Builder. This option is available in Web AppBuilder though. Would you mind submitting an enhancement request to Esri Support?

OliverIshmael · ‎11-22-2021

@Jianxia we are currently missing the following functionality in EXB:

We can't configure attribute tables to hide columns from users.
- This appears to be possible in the Sheet Configuration window but the changes don't persist after publishing.
We can't define custom (bilingual) tooltips for all map elements and widgets.
- How to customise tooltips - Esri Community

Are there any plans to add this functionality in the near future?

Jianxia · ‎11-30-2021

@mhargreaves - For now, you can work around the map extent issue with Search widget by using the locator view, which is a hosted custom world geocoder. To do so, in ArcGIS Online, click Content->New item->Locator, and define the extent for the locator. Once it is done, share this item publicly, then copy the url to the locator source in ExB. (note: currently ExB only takes the public locator view). Understand this is not strait-forward.

mhargreaves · ‎12-02-2021

@Jianxia I tried that, and also deleted the World Service in ExB, but still giving suggestions outside my area...

Wolfgang_Grunberg_AZ_DFFM · ‎01-14-2022

@Jianxia any updates on EB print or PDF export widget timelines?

Are you aware of any AGOL PDF map/report generation workarounds (besides Survey123 which has awesome report templating)?

PDF reports/maps still rule in government because they can be treated as "immutable" documents.

Thank you for your time!

Jianxia · ‎01-14-2022

@Wolfgang_Grunberg_AZ_DFFM , the Print widget is planned for Q2, 2002 currently. See ExB 2022 roadmap. As far as the report templates are concerned, Pro team is working on it and hopefully we will have such capability in the printing/reporting service in the future.

Wolfgang_Grunberg_AZ_DFFM · ‎01-18-2022

@Jianxia thx - excellent news!

BTW: Survey123 report templating is surprisingly powerful and flexible (even supports MS Word's dynamic elements) - kudos to that team.

NaomiBegg · ‎02-07-2022

Hi @Jianxia

I'm having another attempt at using the search widget.

I can't see in the settings where to change the search settings for ArcGIS World Geocoding Service to be set just to my country/region. This is quite important as using the world geocoding without the filter is quite overwhelming for customers who only work within specific areas.

Jianxia · ‎02-07-2022

@NaomiBegg - you may create a locator view with chosen country/region, then use it in the Search widget. To do so, in ArcGIS Online, click Content->New item->Locator, and select the country/region.

Jianxia · ‎02-07-2022

@mhargreaves - if you still run into the issue after creating a locator view with the extent, pls submit a Support ticket. BTW, you can use non-public locator view in the Search widget now.

Danny_Thompson · ‎06-06-2023

Is all a bit embarrassing isn't it?! The differences between Enterprise 10.x and 11.x coupled with the compatibility issues between ArcGIS Pro 2.9 and 3.1 is leading to an absolute cluster bomb of compatibility issues. Do Esri really expect major organisations and corporations to just migrate maybe 2 or 3 years’ worth of stability over on a whim to match their sporadic release schedules - even if that were possible, it would only work if the same level of functionality was available, which it never is?

Custom Print Template functionality is still not available in Experience Builder, but we’re being told that at 11.x that Web App Builder will effectively be depreciated so content will have to be migrated. “Print widget is on the 2021 roadmap” – what does that even mean? It’s the middle of 2023 and it still isn’t available.

Map Viewer can even read the same WMS feeds as Map Viewer Classic = lots of data missing from projects!

Frustrated user trying to operation in a 10.9.1 & 2.9.5 environment and a 10.9.1 & 3.1.1 environment (note not a 11.1 & 3.1.1 environment – in which I’d still need custom print template functionality)

Jianxia · ‎06-07-2023

@Danny_Thompson, Thanks for letting us know the challenges you are facing. The Print widget is now available in ArcGIS Enterprise 11.1. See What's new in 11.1. Understand you are using ArcGIS Enterprise 10.9.1. The workaround is to use the latest developer edition to connect to 10.9.1 so you can use all the new features added to ArcGIS Online and the developer edition. This workaround is a common pattern for ArcGIS Enterprise users who can't upgrade their Enterprise versions yet want to use the latest features. Hope this helps.

Danny_Thompson · ‎06-07-2023

Thanks @Jianxia, but using the developer edition is outside our options. We're 60,000 employees over 3 continental regions with ~140 GIS users in each. Deployments move through specific IT gateways and Esri is increasingly frustrating to use. Periodic major re-writes with little thought to compatibility and consistency are harming the brand - we aren't all sat on individual developer laptops as admins doing exactly what we want when we want.

QuantitativeFuturist · ‎06-14-2023

@Danny_Thompson Just esri not understanding or listening to it's customers. I agree and we are experiencing many of the same issues. The planning and execution of software delivery is just appalling, they need to focus on the core products functionality and stop bringing out half baked shiny things. We are actively seeking a different solution as for the money esri charges and their lack of concern over the systemic issues there are likely other options.

Jianxia · ‎06-15-2023

@Danny_Thompson , ArcGIS Enterprise 10.9.1 has 5 years product life cycle and you can use Web AppBuilder if the capabilities are not there yet and you can't upgrade to the latest 11.1 version. Also the developer edition is not a desktop version. It allows you to create web apps on your desktop similar to what you do in ArcGIS Enterprise and deploy them to your web server so others in your organization can access these apps through web browsers. Since many features have been added to Experience Builder since 2021, share the 2023 roadmap and new features in ArcGIS Enterprise 11.1.