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Field description capability

924
3
07-19-2023 04:47 PM
Status: Open
EmilyMcLean_onneer
Regular Contributor

Hey Team, 

It would be great if ArcGIS Pro could support the same field description capability that is available in ArcGIS Online under the Data tab and Fields option (see attached screenshot). 

At the moment, once data is produced in ArcGIS Pro, it is published into ArcGIS Online, and content managers have the option to provide additional contextual information using the field description field in the Item Details > Data > Field view. However, it would be great if the field description function worked in the way that field aliases work, whereby once field descriptions are provided in ArcGIS Pro, they populate throughout the system when published.

At the moment, there is an option to provide field descriptions as part of the metadata for the feature class, however that information is not pushed through to the service, and so the process requires double handling of this information. The field descriptions are then also removed when the feature layer is overwritten from within ArcGIS Pro. Because of this very few users make use of the field description functionality. 

This functionality would be particularly useful for datasets made available across the whole organization, as we can better educate data users what the data is specifically referring to and ensure that they are interpreting the data correctly. 

Thanks!

3 Comments
AllenDailey1

This would be helpful!

DuncanHornby

You say "...very few users make use of the field description functionality [in arcpro].". Well not me, I use that functionality in the metadata all the time to describe what the field is and how it was calculated.

What you have hit on is the inability of ArcPro to upload that vital information in the metadata into the AGOL field description of the hosted feature layer and ESRI need to tackle that break down in communication.

It's a shame that it is happening as it severs the data from all that valuable information one has spent time entering and as you say you have to end up doing double entry. ☹️

BranislavBlagojevic

Yes! It would be great!