Select/Send All Query Widget Results to Another Query Widget for Spatial Filter

BBarbs

Hello GIS Community,

I wanted to raise awareness of a software enhancement request I submitted with the help of Esri support: ENH-000162102 (Provide Functionality to Select All/Desired Results from ArcGIS Experience Builder Query Widget Output/Results for Further Analysis in Separate Widget(s)). Our case manager suggested I post this to the Ideas forum to run it by the community and see if there are others who could also benefit from this functionality. This occurs both in ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Enterprise 11.1.

Currently, Experience Builder’s query widget requires physical interaction to select results and pass them to another widget. The query results list also only allows for a single feature to be clicked and selected for use in another widget, such as a spatial filter for a second query widget. Attempting to select another feature deselects the one previously chosen. The screenshot below shows an example similar to one I am currently working on:

Only being able to select one feature from the results seems to defeat the purpose of being able to select the output of a query widget as a spatial filter input of another query widget. The software enhancement request we submitted proposes functionality to select all the results in a query widget, not just a single one. Automatically applying the results of the first query widget to the spatial filter of the second would be perfect, but an option to select them all in the Actions menu of the first widget would work as well.

The current workaround I found includes using a filter widget and the map’s select tool instead of the first query widget:

Turn off all but the desired layer that is serving as the spatial filter input (such as counties), otherwise all features in all visible feature layers will be selected
Use a filter widget to only display desired features (counties with population density >500 people/sqmi)
Use the map’s select tool to draw a select box across the entire map, selecting all remaining features
Turn back on the other layer and then run the second query to select features (in the case above, all Medicare-registered hospitals of a desired type within selected counties)

This works but can be tedious and has the potential to seem convoluted to some of my clients who may not be used to working with spatial data.

I'm hoping others here would be able to use this feature. Thanks all and happy mapping!

ChrisMyers_NewQuest · ‎10-19-2023

Great ideas. I think this is related to something I posted earlier in the year - this widget has a LONG way to go!:
https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-experience-builder-ideas/enable-query-widget-to-select-features...

EdliColberg · ‎10-19-2023

Excellent recommendations Blake. Thanks so much for sharing them with the ESRI community within TX Health and Human Services and beyond.

NiazMorshed · ‎10-19-2023

Thanks for sharing Blake. Great job for the GIS community!

CherieKeller · ‎12-06-2023

Thank you for this. And mostly I am here to emphasize what a serious issue 'selection' has been in working EB. I was just looking for an old post about the issue of selection where someone said that a way to 'select all' would prompt users to select too many items, and so....

But!!! - * a true 'selection' is required for many workflows (queries, spatial filters, triggers/actions), and yet outputs are generally filtered but not selected. That becomes an issue very quickly. And highlighting on the map looks like a selection but isn't. I found using a chart to filter also selects (but not always possible) and following that up with a 'filter' does not remove that item from the selected set for the next step.

Asking my users to interupt their true workflow to 'turn off layers, zoom out, select the whole map, and then zoom back in and mess with layers' to just get back to where they were and continue on, is enough to send most of them packing! I ended up having to scale back to a lesser version for my users. (If only had the time to learn developer...?).

And!!! The term 'selection' gets used and abused so often throughout documentation and elsewhere, that it can take a lot of experimentation to understand what is actually meant (does it mean chosen or 'selected' in necessary sense!). I just spent a couple of days trying to work out a workflow for an online tool, and each would break down at some point (90% were selection issues!). My procedures are not 'rocket science', but really basic things you need from an online spatial tool, just strung together.

EB is a great tool, but as yet the difficulty seems to be interfacing widgets into a workflow (and documentation thereof), and not enough users are sharing workflows and challenges as yet. I am on a mission to share what I learned from my 'experiment, just need to clean it up a bit.

AndrewVitale1

Really appreciate the detailed description of this. I totally agree -- this enhancement really needs to happen.