Notes in ArcGIS Mission – Can We Track Individual Contributions?

[gcarl34]

Hi everyone,

Earlier today, my department was collaborating with our public safety teams using ArcGIS Mission, and we noticed a potential issue with task notes. Specifically, when a task is assigned to multiple team members, each person can add notes and those notes can also be overwritten by others.

This raised a concern for us: we currently can’t see who wrote what, when they wrote it, and there doesn’t appear to be a history or log of the note updates. While I understand that sometimes notes may need to be edited (e.g., to fix a typo), in public safety scenarios, overwriting or losing critical information could be dangerous.

My questions are:
  - Is this expected behavior (a feature), or is this possibly a bug?
  - Is there a way to track who adds or changes notes on a task?
  - Is there a method to store or archive all notes, so that nothing is lost or overwritten without a record?

We’d really appreciate any guidance on how to manage this or if there are any best practices other teams are using.

Thanks in advance!

[DarronPustam]

Hello Carl, thanks for reporting this and for all the great feedback. I will have the team will look into it. Please keep this feedback coming, we appreciate you reaching out!

[PSHenderson]

Hello Carl,

     I wanted to take a moment to answer the questions you posed directly. 

Is this expected behavior (a feature), or is this possibly a bug?

• Currently this is expected behavior and is how the application is designed.

Is there a way to track who adds or changes notes on a task?

• Currently there is not, there may be a way to achieve this but it would take some creativity.

Is there a method to store or archive all notes, so that nothing is lost or overwritten without a record?

• I am not sure that there is however, your posting this email here has made us re open this issue and re-evaluate how to capture all of the notes, who authored them, and any edits that follow.

We are currently looking at ways we could achieve the behavior you are looking for and personally, (coming from a public safety background) I understand the importance of logging and retaining all information. 

Thanks again and if you would like to provide more detail, please feel free to reply to me.