First Thoughts on the February 2025 ArcGIS Online Update

[JeffreyThompson2]

I go away for one day and everything is different... Yesterday, was ArcGIS Online update day and now we have a new version of Experience Builder to play with. This is Experience Builder 17 and its been going through big changes all through it's teens. Experience Builder is really becoming a mature program, which is good, because daddy WebAppBuilder is getting old and wants to retire and Experience Builder is going to have to start taking over the family business soon. We are going to talk about what's in this update soon, but first we need to talk about what's not in it. Batch editing has been pushed back again for another update, hopefully we finally get it next time.

This is the third edition of this series, but if you're new here's how this goes:

• I read the official What's New in Experience Builder Blog post.
• I maybe try a few things for a few minutes.
• I attempt to translate the What's New page from developer to English.
• If I don't think something is going to be very important to many people, I leave it out of my notes.
• I might make some guesses how the new stuff can be used.
• You don't get mad at me if you can't actually do those things.

Map Viewer Updates

Technically not Experience Builder so I make this quick, but the ArcGIS Online Map Viewer has a couple new tricks that should translate into Experience Builder: Animated Symbols, Multi-dimensional imagery popups, improved attachment pop-ups and Display Filters. 

Action Updates

• Select - You just ran a query and would like the results selected. There's an action for that now.
• Show Pop-up - Make a Pop-up pop up from another Widget.
• Statistics - The statistics are smarter about what they calculate and don't try to do math with OBJECTIDs.

Builder

If you Duplicate a Page, View, Section or Window, all the Widgets within should be copied exactly with all their settings configured.

Data Sources

• You create a List Widget and spend an hour setting it up just the way you want it, then you realize it should show Selected Features instead of the Default View. Now, you can switch to the other View without losing all that work.
• Dynamic Imagery without fields is now supported.
• The exports should be smarter about what fields to export.

Export Options

• These exist now. That's a big improvement.
• You can choose what formats are allowed for exports. Use this to prevent clutter on your Portal or to prevent unsufficitated users from wondering who JSON is and why he doesn't have an a in his name.
• You can turn the exports on/off for all layers at once. I know this was a major pain point for some users. It took me awhile to find the option, but it exists. There will probably be a follow up post with how to find this magic button.

Layer Selector Component

They are really underselling one of the most powerful and interesting features in this update. This is a set of options that appears in many Widgets, mostly in the Build Mode, that allows people to do stuff to every layer at once. Highly requested options to instantly expand/collapse Layer Groups and turn on/off multiple layers at once. We have previously discussed Five Ways To Handle Groups of Layers. The first one involved using multiple Map Layers Widgets. I hope that that method with this new function will result in the best way to manage Layer Groups without a Custom Widget. If it works, there will be a link here within the next few weeks. And if it doesn't work, there will be a link here.

Sharing

Open up your phone camera and scan a QR code to see your in-progress application on your phone. Potentially a faster, easier and more accurate way of seeing what your application really looks like than this developer's trick.

Templates

New templates called Poster, Booth, FAQ, Catalog and Prism.

Theme

By default the keyboard focus color is very similar to the Primary App color. For accessibility reasons, it would probably be best to make them very different. This tool by Adobe is very good for making color themes and checking for accessibility. I found the setting to change this, but I didn't actually see it do anything in my testing app. 

Updating

I feel like this quote requires some clarification from the product team.

In the builder, widgets now update to the latest available version when you open at least one of their type of widget. Opening a widget means switching to the page or view that contains the widget. When you open a specific type of widget in the builder, all widgets of that type upgrade simultaneously. For example opening one Map widget updates all Map widgets in an app.

Do Widgets not update when ArcGIS Online is updated? Is it possible to run old versions of a Widget if an update breaks something? Do deployed apps not change with an update?

New Widgets

• Flow Row - Old Row has got to go. New Row has better flow...I don't know...how to make this all rhyme. It's a new Layout Widget. In my brief testing, this version of the Row Widget is just easier to work with than the original flavor. Maybe there's enough room in this town for both of them, but this one is probably the one you should reach for first.
• Oriented Imagery Viewer - Wait, this is new? Didn't we already have this? Yes, we did. Old Oriented Imagery Viewer is now Classic Oriented Imagery Viewer. Why do we have two? I don't really know. I think this new Widget does more stuff? I assume there is some technical issue that the old version couldn't handle, so they rewrote it by machine with new technology and now I understand the problem you can see. Oh-a-oh, ESRI didn't kill the old version, so your apps would keep working.
• Processing Templates - A Widget for applying raster calculations to an imagery layer. Does this cost credits? I don't see anything saying it costs credits. Sure looks like something that costs credits. ESRI has been doing some shady stuff lately around credits, like ModelBuilder in the Online Map Viewer charging by time it takes to make a model. The Raster Function Editor looks a lot like ModelBuilder, too.

Updated Widgets

• Add Data - End users can resize it, sort their searches by relevance and upload up to 30 files at once.
• Analysis - If a parameter is not required, you can hide it from the end user. New tools: Tabulate Area and Zonal Geometry As Table. New layer types supported: Map Service Layers and Subtype Group Layers.
• Chart - Control your axis spacing better and make their labels easier to read. The No Data Message is now editable.
• Directions - Add stops and barriers to your route. The Optimize Order option solves the traveling salesman problem for you to make good routes. Choose between metric and freedom units. Point layers can be used as search sources. Limit your search results to the map area or a country.
• Draw - Use Tooltips and press Tab to precisely control your drawings. Good luck training your users to actually use this feature, but it exists. The draw tools optionally have snapping. Who's option? Both builders and end-users. (Maybe make snapping an option for the Measurement Widget as well, ESRI, as it appears to be a huge memory drain.) Make a grid appear on the map and snap to it. A few new freedom unit measurement options.
• Edit - Also, gets the grid and snapping options above. Warns you if you try to quit without saving.
• Elevation Profile - Use one or more line segments at a time to make your profile. Matches to the map highlight color. Selecting features actually selects them.
• Embed - Autoplay YouTube. Very important for effective Rickrolls. HTML in the Embed Widget is in the app theme font if anyone still knows how to write HTML. Didn't they outlaw it ten years ago?
• Feature Info - Has a Clear Selection button.
• List - Flow template based on the Flow Row, oh no, let's go. Cool, Bro. Don't ya know, Fargo was set almost entirely in Minnesota except for one scene and yet it defines North Dakotan culture in the popular perception.
• Map - Decide how far in and out the end user can zoom. The Zoom To Action of the Search Widget should be smarter about how far to zoom with a Locator Source.
• Map Layers - In addition to the stuff in the Layer Selector Component section, end users can now set the visibility range of map layers, tables can also appear in this Widget and run-time generated layers can be excluded from this Widget. Additionally, the transparency controller is now a slider offering more control and better visual feedback to the end user. 
• Near Me - The changes were big enough to warrant its own What's New post. Export your results to a PDF. Save your search inputs to a layer if you want.
• Print - Print dynamically generated stuff.
• Search - Builders can turn off the user's option to turn off search sources. Do you ever search for stuff and the World Geocoding Service helpfully suggests something from the wrong continent in a language you can't even recognize? Try Local Searches. The closer to the map center, the higher on the result list. Really great if you are near the Bight of Benin.  If Local Searches aren't restrictive enough, you can completely exclude results that aren't in the map area.
• Table - CRUDy Attachments. For those of you that don't speak programmer, CRUD is an acronym for Create, Read, Update, and Delete.
• Text - You can put an image inside a Text Widget, now. So, this hack is now Enterprise only.

Alright, that's it for this update. See you in the summer for Batch Editing and Arcade.