ArcGIS Experience Builder Custom Widgets — at a glance

1 The situation

ArcGIS Experience Builder is the most flexible web-GIS builder available, and Esri remains the platform of record for most enterprises and public-sector GIS teams. But the broader data and UX ecosystem has moved fast:

• Columnar analytics (DuckDB) and cloud-native lakehouses (Iceberg, Delta, Parquet on object storage) are now the default for analytical workloads — but connecting them to ExB means custom middleware.
• Real-time IoT (Kafka, GTFS, moving features) and earth observation (STAC catalogs of COG imagery) are mainstream — but require streaming infrastructure or image servers to surface in ExB.
• Indoor mapping (Apple IMDF) and immersive mobile UX (AR, voice, gesture) are expected — but demand specialist skills to integrate.

Each of these gaps typically means a custom development project, a new server to secure and maintain, or a vendor lock-in. That's friction every time a GIS team wants to modernize an experience.

2 The solution

TMG's portfolio is a set of drop-in custom widgets that wire each of these modern capabilities directly into an ExB experience. Two architectural choices make this possible:

• Client-first compute. Heavy lifting runs in the browser via DuckDB-WASM, Assimp, FFmpeg, GDAL3, MapServer, and SpatiaLite — all compiled to WebAssembly. No data leaves the client unless you choose to publish it.
• Standards-first interfaces. Widgets speak OGC API Features, Mapbox Vector Tiles, STAC, IMDF, CoT, GTFS, Iceberg, and Delta — so your data and services stay portable and vendor-neutral.

Each widget follows the standard ExB custom-widget pattern and shares a common foundation, so they compose cleanly within a single experience and are uniformly maintained.

3 Portfolio at a glance

19 widgets organized into six capability areas (17 available today, 2 on the roadmap):

Browse the full detail on the portfolio page.

4 Why it's different

• No new backend. Most widgets run entirely client-side, eliminating middleware, server hardening, and ongoing ops cost.
• Data sovereignty. Sensitive data stays in the browser — a strong fit for GDPR/HIPAA/SOC 2, air-gapped, and government-sovereign deployments.
• Production discipline. The flagship analytics widget ships with SQL-injection prevention, input sanitization, error boundaries, strict TypeScript, and Jest coverage thresholds — not prototype-grade.
• Extends Esri, doesn't replace it. Widgets integrate natively with FeatureServers, SceneView, Calcite/Jimu UI, and the ArcGIS Maps SDK.
• Permissive licensing. Apache-2.0 / MIT on the widgets, with commercial support and SLAs available.

5 Value to your organization

The portfolio compresses the build-vs-buy decision: instead of scoping custom development for analytics, lakehouse, real-time, or indoor capabilities, GIS teams adopt hardened widgets and focus their engineering effort on their own differentiating workflows.

Detailed ROI framing, costs, risks, and a recommendation appear in the business case.

6 Recommendation & next steps

For teams already standardized on ArcGIS, the portfolio offers a low-risk way to modernize ExB experiences without expanding server footprint or breaking data-sovereignty commitments. We recommend a focused evaluation:

1. Identify 2–3 high-value use cases in your organization that map to the portfolio (analytics, lakehouse, real-time, indoor 3D, AR, or earth observation).
2. Request a guided demo against your data and one of your existing ExB apps.
3. Scope a pilot with one or two widgets and the licensing model that fits your deployment.