I have noticed an issue with the Web App Builder's Add Data widget that I feel didn't used to exist. I have had this workflow in place for a few years now and do not remember this issue occurring, so I am wondering if this is a new change.
The issue: the Add Data widget, when uploading a zipped shapefile, way over-generalizes polygon features. See below:
You can see the 'real' version of the feature underneath it in red, and the 'Add Data' layer overlaid on top in blue. You can see how many vertices get dropped.
Contrast that with using the Add Data widget with a GeoJSON...
It also works equally well with using the widget with an existing feature service version of the data.
Every other method of adding data to the feature service preserves the vertices (appending to feature service vis Pro, copy/paste into feature service via Pro, appending data in AGOL using the 'Update Data' option on the items home page).
The only way it seems to be dropping vertices is through a zipped shapefile. This is quite problematic for our workflow, as most of our field staff will have data in shapefile format. I would rather not have to ask them to convert their data to another format, when the Add Data widget clearly accepts zipped shapefiles (and the rest of the AGOL platform seems to not have a problem with appending a zipped shapefile directly).
So, rest of the community: have any of you noticed this? How long has this been going on?
Esri folks: Why on earth would the platform do this? And how long has this been going on?