topic Re: Has anybody written end-user Help content for WAB apps? in ArcGIS Web AppBuilder Questions

Has anybody written end-user Help content for WAB apps?

DarrenGemoets — Fri, 04 May 2018 15:02:01 GMT

Not sure if this should be a "question" or a "discussion," but it ends with a question mark, so...

Anyway, we're looking to deploy a public-facing app built with the WAB-- mostly out-of-the-box behavior, based on WAB 2.5. The problem is that while these OOTB apps are great for GIS folks, for the average person, the UI is a bit hard-to-use. We faced the same problem back in the FlexViewer days-- we ended up customizing the OOTB FlexViewer quite a bit, and still needed to write some decent help text for end-users. (Insert joke about users never reading help text...)

Has anybody tried to address this for WAB apps? Is there any well-written, plain language help text to describe the basic WAB app UI and some of the basic widgets? I realize this is probably a longshot, but I can't possibly be the only user who thinks WAB apps aren't quite usable enough for non-GIS folks. Does anybody have any help content to share?

BTW, in my search of the GeoNet, the closest thing I found was a two-year-old blog post, but the URL therein that links to the help content/sandbox is forbidden (403).

Re: Has anybody written end-user Help content for WAB apps?

SteveCole — Mon, 07 May 2018 18:36:50 GMT

Sorry I don't have anything to offer other than "yeah, good question!". The link works for me but here's a PDF copy of that URL content.

Re: Has anybody written end-user Help content for WAB apps?

DarrenGemoets — Mon, 07 May 2018 20:06:50 GMT

Sorry-- to clarify, the blog post loaded fine, but the link to the help content (sandbox) provided in the blog (http://maps.cityoftulsa.org/sandbox/crimes/helpfiles/ ) gave a 403. Edited my post. Thank you for going to the trouble of making a PDF, though.

Re: Has anybody written end-user Help content for WAB apps?

ChelseaRozek — Wed, 09 May 2018 18:45:04 GMT

We don't have written documentation, but for our main Geocortex sites I made video tutorials and posted them to Youtube. I think it's easier to understand since you're showing exactly what they'll be seeing, where they should be clicking, and how the app responds. A screenshot is worth a thousand words, but a video is worth a thousand screenshots.

Re: Has anybody written end-user Help content for WAB apps?

DarrenGemoets — Thu, 10 May 2018 23:29:08 GMT

Agreed...we had both online help and a video tutorial for our FlexViewer-based webapp. Would love to do that for this one, but realistically this probably won't happen (time/budget).

Re: Has anybody written end-user Help content for WAB apps?

DarrenGemoets — Sat, 14 Jul 2018 00:22:53 GMT

For what it's worth, I ended up writing my own help content. It's app-specific, but some of it could be useful for somebody: TOXMAP Help .

Re: Has anybody written end-user Help content for WAB apps?

AndresCastillo — Mon, 16 Jul 2018 15:06:56 GMT

Here is a help doc my team came up with.

Re: Has anybody written end-user Help content for WAB apps?

DarrenGemoets — Mon, 16 Jul 2018 18:16:11 GMT

Thank you so much for contributing!

Re: Has anybody written end-user Help content for WAB apps?

AndresCastillo — Mon, 16 Jul 2018 19:56:02 GMT

You too!