Expose Tile Server Config at Visualization Level

[jeffreyeliotabbott]

When creating or editing visualizations, authors should have the option for an alternate tile server, as is currently available for a WMS server. This would allow users to select the most appropriate tile server for their content and what they are trying to encode visually.

[tbragin]

@epixa @spalger Configurability of the tile server at the vis level may be really useful (in addition to the global config we have in kibana.yml), so users can configure different style tiles for different maps. You can imagine one dashboard being more focused on terrain and another more on streets, served up by the same kibana instance. Not to mention, this will match WMS server configurability which currently lives on the vis level.

[jbudz]

I'm +1 on adding more map servers, but I think we need to be careful about it. Tile map requests are sent out automatically to potential external services when entering visualize or dashboards, and until advanced settings and saved objects aren't locked down I don't think it should be allowed. I realize this isn't the case now, and I think it would be good to move all external services to kibana.yml.

This would look something like adding a collection of approved tilemap, wms servers to kibana.yml and selecting them from a list when building a map. This would let us layer maps too, if we want a weather layer on top of a world map for example.

[tbragin]

@jbudz good point. whatever we decide, seems like we might consider aligning how we handle it for WMS vs Tile servers.

[spalger]

I really like the idea of defining a set of configurations in the kibana.yml file that are presented to the user, it also means that only the admin needs to know the underlying protocol each tile service uses (wms, png tiles, etc)

[tbragin]

From discussion with @spalger, @epixa, @jbudz and others on the team:

• Consistency is indeed important
• We are not fundamentally opposed to having tile map server config at the visualization level, like we have WMS configuration
• However, the visualization level configuration should be an over-ride and the global default should still live in kibana.yml

[thomasneirynck]

We are working on a new implementation of map visualizations and are not planning to add any new features to the existing implementation. We will take this suggestion under consideration for the new app.

[nreese]

This feature request has been implemented in the new Maps application. The Maps application will be available as a beta preview in the upcoming stack releases 6.7.0 and 7.0.0.

You can try the new Maps application today with the 7.0.0-beta1 release