Experience Builder - Grave Concerns

[USLEOperations]

I am sure I am not alone w/r/t the following concerns with Experience Builder:

1. We were told that the Add Data widget would be rolled out by Feb 23rd of this year.  It is now Mar 13th.  Many, many people have stressed how important this widget is.  Esri has done an utterly poor, Grade-F job at communicating to the Esri community updates, esp. why the delays.  It is the lack of communication on Esri's part that is quite disconcerting.

2. ESRI recently announced Web AppBuilder is being phased out next year.  Folks will be looking to migrate to EB.  As we know, there are a good number of widgets in WAB which are still not available in EB.  Will Esri leave these poor souls hanging by not migrating ALL such widgets to EB (which should have been done BEFORE EB was ever rolled out)?

It would be great to get some communication from the EB team at Esri instead of leaving us in the dark.  If it sounds like I am frustrated, I am.  I am sure I am not alone.  Thank you.

[KenBuja]

Which version of ExB are you using? The Add Data widget shows up in AGOL

 

[USLEOperations]

@KenBuja I do not see it available in the download site for EB:
https://developers.arcgis.com/downloads/#arcgis-experience-builder

Has the download web page now changed?  If so, can you provide the link?  Thanks!

[GregKeith]

I have the widget in my organizational AGOL in the Data Related section. It's not available in Portal, at least for my organization.

[KenBuja]

The Developer Edition is always released three or four weeks after it become available on AGOL. For example, the previous version was announced on AGOL on November 15 while the Developer Edition was announced on December 2

[ThomasColson]

"Will Esri leave these poor souls hanging by not migrating ALL such widgets to EB (which should have been done BEFORE EB was ever rolled out)?"

Yes. I'm stunned that EB still has no edit/add related data as part of the edit widget, yet WAB does. But WAB is being deprecated, and edit/add related data isn't even on the roadmap  for EB. 

[QuantitativeFuturist]

Agree with all the points above. We have a hugely expensive, professionally deployed ArcGIS Enterprise environment on Azure. It is so unstable and lacking in features it's astounding how it was allowed to get this bad. Can't easily create/edit related records on the web???? it costs around $25000 a month to run this product (including azure and managed services) we have a relational database for a reason and we can't use the relationships? There's an absolute tonne of bug fixes at 11.1 but there's also new bugs that have web adapter issues so we can't upgrade until it's patched... Timeline: possibly in the next month. It's just not good enough. 

[AValenski]

Agreed. EB is not worth the investment. Stay in WAB and you'll actually get documentation, community support, functional community widgets, and the benefit of Esri not pushing updates means it won't break because someone decided to reinvent the wheel again.

[DanCopKac]

Just adding another victim's story: that the documentation from Esri's Experience Builder have landed me and my team in hot soup right now. 

When we're scoping WAB to ExB migration projects, we look at the documentation, which summarizes that like ExB has 80-90% parity (or more) with WAB and WAB is starting deprecation in July 2024. (It is now mid-June 2024.)

In the tech industry, video games, smart devices, etc., I believe we have come to expect that all new, particularly, replacement technology will have workflows in place to carry out existing processes before the old technology is deprecated so as to not leave a functionality gap.

Just look at the backlash and controversy of Warcraft 3 Reforged when Blizzard released it without pre-existing Ladder, Profiles, Automated Tournaments capability, just to name a few. Blizzard then issued a formal apology, and their customers were STILL very dissatisfied. It's STILL sitting at a 1.4 star review because of it. We have all been, and still are, far more patient and docile. 

It's not until one makes assurances to the brass, gets project funding, kicks off the migration projects, and gets heavy into development that the truth comes out about actual widget parity, only then realizing that the parity documentation (function parity matrix in this case) has been largely embellished (almost to the point of lying through one's teeth) and that claims of widget function parity only have to reach about 50% function coverage to garner a "Yes" on the documentation. (To a reasonable layperson, a "Yes" ought to mean... maybe 95% or even 100% function parity? Especially when it's just before deprecation of existing technology.)

While we can be patient and try to understand, 'tis often the executives that are far less understanding, especially when your executives entrust you with the responsibility to keep their systems up to date, and you go ahead and push Experience Builder upgrades as per Esri's recommendation, only to find your head now on the chopping block and your job on the line because you oversold Esri's Experience Builder.

Never again.