Last year’s release of Geocortex Workflow 5 (the first product in our Geocortex Essentials 5-series) introduced the ability to leverage Geocortex functionality inside Esri applications, not just alongside them. This was a major milestone and presents a new realm of implementation possibilities for licensees of Geocortex Essentials 5-series technology.
Geocortex Workflow 5 allows you to deploy your workflows in Web AppBuilder for ArcGIS applications. In this week’s Geocortex Tech Tip, Ryan Cooney takes you through the set-up and configuration required to deploy 5-series workflows in Web AppBuilder for ArcGIS Developer Edition.
Video Transcription
“Hi, I’m Ryan. I’m a Product Manager at Latitude. Today I’m going to show you how to use Web AppBuilder [for ArcGIS] to run Geocortex Workflow 5. Let’s take a look.
Web AppBuilder [for ArcGIS] uses widgets to deliver custom functionality to your end-users. To get a workflow running in Web AppBuilder, we need a widget that’s going to run the workflow. Geocortex Workflow ships with some widgets, but to run a workflow, we’re going to have to make those widgets available to Web AppBuilder.
To do that, we’re [going to start] in Geocortex Workflow Designer. On the “info” tab, there’s a deployment section that has a link to download workflow widgets for Web AppBuilder, so I’m going to click that.
That’s going to download a .zip file, which we’re going to use in a second. And while we’re here, this page has a link to configure Web AppBuilder for ArcGIS to run a workflow. As we open that link, we’re taken to the [Geocortex] Documentation Center where we have complete instructions on how to set up the widget.
There’s actually two flavors of this set up. Today were going to look at Web AppBuilder [for ArcGIS] Developer Edition. It’s the slightly more complicated of the two, but we can also work with the edition of Web AppBuilder that’s built into Portal for ArcGIS. There’s slightly different steps that were going to take, but basically, it’s going to be the same process in which we tell Web AppBuilder where the workflow widget lives.
Once we’ve done that, we can use Web AppBuilder for ArcGIS to see that widget and configure it to run a particular workflow. So, these instructions are [in the Documentation Center] and I recommend reading them, but I’m just going to show you how it’s done.
First, I’ve downloaded that .zip file and I open it up (it’s just sitting here in my downloads). And then I need to go to where Web AppBuilder is running. So, in this case I’m just running Web AppBuilder out of this folder, and inside the Web AppBuilder folder structure, there’s a client folder, and in there is the stem app and the stem app 3D.
Inside of the stem app there’s a “widgets” folder, and this is where all the built-in and custom widgets live. What we need to do is just copy out of the downloaded one, so it’s got the same structure – it’s got a stem app, it’s got widgets, and there’s two widgets in 2D and two widgets in 3D. So basically, what we do is copy that entire client folder over top, and that’s just going deploy both the 2D and 3D widgets. And now we can go over into Web AppBuilder and start configuring these.
I have Web AppBuilder open right here, and I’ve got an existing application that’s basically empty. Web AppBuilder (if you’re not familiar with it) has all these spots where you can plug widgets in. Depending on the layout, it might be these buttons, or it could be in the tool bar.
But if we select widgets, and I hover over our widget place one, you can see that it’s highlighting it on the screen. And if I pick widget one, we have those two workflow widgets [that I copied over a moment ago]. The first one is just the in-panel widget, that’s your most common. And then we also have one that will run in a modal window, but they basically do the same thing. So, I’m going to choose the in-panel one.
Now, I’ve added that widget and what I need to do is tell this widget to run a particular workflow. So, that workflow that I was working with over here, which is called “autocomplete1”, it was really simple. It just had a form that had an autocomplete in it. I can look in my content and find it, or I can search for other workflows, but here it is right here. If the workflow happened to have input parameters (this one doesn’t) you could add them here. This was just a list of key value pairs, but I don’t need those in this case.
And there, it’s added that workflow. And if I run it, here’s my autocomplete. It’s not hooked up to anything, but that’s the workflow running inside Web AppBuilder. This will work for 2D and 3D. This is the Developer Edition we’re looking at, but also if you had followed the instructions on deploying to Portal for ArcGIS, you can get that too, it’ll work just as well in portal for ArcGIS’s version of Web AppBuilder. That’s all you need to do to get up and running running inside of Web AppBuilder for ArcGIS.
Want to take Geocortex Workflow 5 for a spin? Visit the Discovery Center today to learn more and get a feel for the product!
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