A properly configured search experience allows your users to find your data easily. For this reason, we added new functionality to the search setting to the Basic Viewer, Elevations Profile, Filter, Edit, Legend, Public Information, Map Tools, Simple Viewer, and Time Aware configurable web apps in the ArcGIS Online July update. As an app author, you’ll find more search configuration options, which in turn make it easier for your users to find what they are looking for. Here are some of the most important enhancements.
Select Which Geocoders and Layers are Searchable:
Under Search Settings in the configuration panel (shown below), you can choose what content can be searched. You can select from the Esri World Geocoder, all organizational geocode services, and any searchable layers in your map. You can select which source is enabled by default so that users will not need to change to the most relevant source after opening the map. In the example below, the layer Water Treatment Centers is set as the default.
Support for searching by integer values is another new search-related enhancement included in the July update. Searching by integer values is especially useful when features have Parcel ID numbers, like the Water Treatment Centers do in this example.
If you include multiple geocode services or searchable layers as search resources, your users can switch between them using an intuitive drop-down list. In the Basic Viewer, that drop-down looks like this:
Configure Placeholder Texts, Search Fields and Suggestions by Layer:
More configuration options were added to the pane that comes up when you select 
for a geocode service or searchable layer in the configuration panel under Search Settings. This pane makes it easy to customize the search experience for each layer:
Key capabilities include the ability to:
- Set different placeholder texts that will appear in the search bar for each source source. You can use the placeholder text to let users know which search fields are enabled.
- Configure which field or fields within each layer that you would like to be searchable. Press and hold the Ctrl key on a PC or press the Command key on a Mac to select multiple fields.
- Customize a suggestion as either a field or a template. The suggestion template configured above would look like this:
Make an app using a configurable web app to make use of these new, exciting capabilities. The configurable web app gallery is a good place to look when deciding which configurable app would be best for your map. See some of the other enhancements made to configurable apps in the ArcGIS Online July update here and enhancements to the entire ArcGIS platform here.
Written by Chris Fitzpatrick, configurable apps intern.
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