Add maps configuration options to kibana_vars docker list

[robcowart]

Kibana version: 7.8.1

Elasticsearch version: 7.8.1

Describe the bug: Can no longer select a coordinate map when creating a new visualization.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Go to visualize
2. Select create visualization
3. Coordinate map is not available as an option

Expected behavior: Should be able to select coordinate map

While the new Map app exists and has its uses. It also lacks some of the options of the coordinate map, is more complicated to setup and arguable looks worse. If it is still available in Kibana (which it is, see below) it should be able to be selected.

Screenshots (if relevant):

Coordinate maps are still supported...

[timroes]

This is on purpose, since the new maps application is the prefered way of creating maps in Kibana. You can set xpack.maps.showMapVisualizationTypes: true in your kibana.yml for now if you want to show the legacy maps in the visualization wizard.

[robcowart]

Preferred by Elastic? or preferred by users? From what I have seen the preference is user-case specific. Is it also disabled in the pure Apache 2.0 package, or only when X-Pack is enabled?

[timroes]

It is only disabled if the maps application is present. If the maps applications isn't present that setting does not exists and the maps visualizations will be shown by default.

[robcowart]

That makes sense @timroes . I did not see mention of this setting in the docs. In fact the entire documentation for the tilemap/ coordinate map has been removed from the docs... https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/kibana/7.8/tilemap.html.

As it is still a visualization for the Apache 2.0 licensed release, it makes sense for the documentation to be restored, including addition of the configuration you mentioned above.

[timroes]

cc @elastic/kibana-gis

[robcowart]

The option mentioned by @timroes does not work with the Kibana docker container. It is missing here... https://github.com/elastic/kibana/blob/master/src/dev/build/tasks/os_packages/docker_generator/resources/bin/kibana-docker

Can this issue please be re-opened (and perhaps renamed) until this option works with all deployment methods?

[nreese]

Can this issue please be re-opened (and perhaps renamed) until this option works with all deployment methods?

I have created a PR to add xpack.maps.showMapVisualizationTypes to docker list, #75035

While the new Map app exists and has its uses. It also lacks some of the options of the coordinate map, is more complicated to setup and arguable looks worse

That is unfortunate that you find the maps application difficult to use and lacking feature parity. Can you please add some details for this statement so we can address any issues? What options are missing from coordinate map? What is more complicated to setup? And what looks worse?

[robcowart]

@nreese Here a few issues...

1. Fit to data is a single mouse click on the tilemap, where it is three mouse clicks on the new map (four if you want to close the popup afterward). While it is good to have the ability to fit based on the data from a specific layer. A fit to data for the entire data set in the upper left options would be useful.

RANT WARNING: This issue of mouse-click explosion is not unique to the maps app. It is everywhere since the release of 7.0.0. The recent removal of the sidebar in 7.8 is another example. Instead of quickly clicking a sidebar icon to switch between apps, I have go to the top -> click -> perhaps scroll -> click again. All of those extra movements and clicks add up when a person is using the UI all day. It is now way more cumbersome than even the earlier 7.x releases. I compared 6.x and 7.x together with someone I often describe as "the best UI person that I know". His comment was, "this is what happens when website developers create application UIs instead of UX designers". Aesthetics only win when they don't negatively affect ergonomics.

2. I would like to create the view on the left using the new map app on the right, primarily because I find it more visually appealing.

This ends up being more challenging than anticipated.

2a. The data points are not combined when zoomed out. This creates a bunch of little circles piled up on top of each other. This is especially problematic when you get something like...

2b. You can only vary color or icon size based on a field. count is not an option (which is needed in this case), nor is any aggregation. Even if I was to use client.bytes as in the example below, it needs to be a sum of client.bytes to be valid. As it is I am not even sure what it is using. Is it the client.bytes of the most recent document?

2c. Finally it took A LOT more mouse clicks to get the new map app this close to what took only a few clicks in the tilemap.

3. If you are sharing dashboards between multiple environments, you have to know ahead of time which theme will be used on the target system, because unlike the tilemap, the new map app does not adjust automatically to theme changes.

4. The performance of the tilemap is much better than the new map app. After changing the tilemap to use a sum of client.bytes, so it is more closely configured to use the same data as the new map, I refreshed the screen and grabbed a capture as soon as the first visualization finished rendering.

You can see that the tilemap is already finished, while the new map hasn't even rendered the first pixel of the actual map, let alone any data. While actively monitoring the map for real-time changes, these render time differences have a negative impact on user experience.

There are definitely use-cases where the new map app provides useful options. For example, something like the following wouldn't be possible without it.

However, there are scenarios where the tilemap is the better option. And even when the new map is required (as above) it would still be better if the issues above were improved.

[nreese]

@robcowart thanks for the feedback. This is really useful

Fit to data is a single mouse click on the tilemap, where it is three mouse clicks on the new map. A fit to data for the entire data set in the upper left options would be useful.

7.8 added a global fit to bounds that is only a single mouse click.

2a. The data points are not combined when zoomed out. This creates a bunch of little circles piled up on top of each other.
2b. You can only vary color or icon size based on a field. count is not an option (which is needed in this case), nor is any aggregation

I suspect this is because you added a "Documents" layer instead of adding a "Clusters and grids" layer. Documents layer shows individual documents. Since the layer is dealing with individual documents, there are no aggregations and you can get multiple documents at the same location. If you want similar functionality as tilemap, then select "Clusters and grids" when adding a layer.

3. If you are sharing dashboards between multiple environments, you have to know ahead of time which theme will be used on the target system, because unlike the tilemap, the new map app does not adjust automatically to theme changes

This is also possible with the maps application. Be sure to select "Autoselect based on Kibana theme" when configuring your "EMS Basemaps" layer.

Balancing the number of clicks while handling additional functionality is a challenging problem. As more functionality is added, more user input is required since actions that used to have a single path now trigger multiple paths. Here is another issue about the number of clicks between the 2 applications - #74744

[robcowart]

@nreese that does get me closer. Coarse clustering was way too coarse in comparison. But Fine is fairly close. If there is anything I would tweak it would be slightly brighter colors when using the dark theme.

Interestingly the performance is also much improved, even marginally quicker to render than tilemap. So I guess that you addressed all of the concerns that I listed. Thanks for taking the time to share those tips. Despite having explored the Map app a lot, the difference between clusters and documents wasn't obvious to me.

I have one other thing regarding the map app itself (not a comparison to the tilemap), but I can open a new issue for that and not distract further from main topic of this issue.