Data Management - Working Notes on Items
Provide data managers/owners the ability to add "working notes" to an item, regardless of the Items sharing settings these would be visible to only users within the organization. A Notes tool would include the ability to create a quick link to jump to a related item or another web URL which is related to the item.
I can understand that this could be viewed as a need that is met via the "official meta data" info, however, while there could be a replication of meta data written as a "Working Note", the working notes would provide a place for Item owners (or whomever has permissions) to make notes that are more specific to data management.
Example Use Case might be:
I have a public facing dashboard (Operations Dashboard) and it would be great to be able to keep "working notes" with the item so when I win the lottery other's in my organization can look and see my notes flagging things such as:
- What other items/maps/apps are indirectly related to this dashboard/item (i.e. a map that directs people to the dashboard via URL, the dashboard is embedded as a Story Map tab, Survey 123 form feeding data, crowd source/field collection app, etc.)
- Which processes auto update the data (such as Python/FME/whatever) & where to find them (this way I don't have to click through the 10 tables that are being fed into the dashboard, I can aggregate notes about them together in one place).
- Where on the City's public website the links to the dashboard are being maintained (should the dashboard need to be replaced/superseded this would provide reference to links that someone on the web team will need to make edits and redirect the URL addresses)
- Comments related to any arcade expressions, HTML or other configurations; providing a means to flag aspects that may be considered "hidden" customization that the Item is configured with. This would be useful should an item (such as a dashboard) need to be dramatically overhauled to the point that a new AGOL Item is created then I have a quick reference for checking configuration details. Additionally, if I were to hand the Item over to someone else they need to know not to break these things (especially since at this time there's no undo/reverting back to a previous version).
Another Use Case:
Our City street crews have about 400 street lights that remain out due to the Northern California 2017 October Wildfires. In support of their efforts I've generated a number of AGOL tools (Collector App, Survey123s, Web Mapping Applications), keeping track of what Item is dependent on what has become difficult for me as the owner to the point that I became sorried about my ability to smoothly hand the project over to another co-worker.
In an effort to alleviate this I modified the Item Descriptions to include a simple descriptive reference of other related AGOL Items. For each related Item the following is listed: Item type, Name. AGOL Item ID, Item Description.
For my purposes, this is a positive step toward documenting item interdependencies & this is a good example of the role that I would utilize a "working notes" function for.
A huge limitation to adding this internal structure documentation to the Item Description is that I was not able to add this information to any of the items that are shared publicly... one could argue that those are the most important ones to document.
Thank you for taking a minute to look at this.
Edited to add the second use case example
