Chart Limitation Documentation

[SteveCole]

One of the constant aggravations with ESRI is the constant lack of adequate documentation of its products. For me this weekend, it was chart option in Storymaps (AGOL version). The documentation has zero information about the limitations of this feature. Specifically, how many rows and columns of information can be used with this widget. I wanted to create a line chart with six variables, each with 61 data points (a yearly value from 1962-2023).

This does not seem like an impossible ask but apparently it is? The chart widget apparently only supports 4 columns by 12 rows? When I attempt to copy/paste information that's all that will come over. Seems like something that should be documented. Even the blog post about using charts with Storymaps doesn't address this. i resigned myself with having to create a dashboard with a single chart but that's a frustration for a different community post..

[ChrisUnderwood]

Hello @SteveCole  , you don't say what documentation you are looking at, but this documentation does have a Limitations section.

https://doc.arcgis.com/en/experience-builder/latest/configure-widgets/chart-widget.htm#ESRI_SECTION1...

However, the data you have described seems quite modest compared to those limits. Are you able to post an anonymous sample of data here, so that we can try it ourselves ?

Many thanks.

[SteveCole]

You've linked to the EXPERIENCE BUILDER documentation. But this is the Storymaps documentation, which has decidedly less information and certainly no limitation information. Here is the ArcGIS Blog post about charts and Storymaps which, again, lacks specificity about limitations or restrictions.

I'll concede that the chart functionality available in Storymaps or Experience Builder is likely built on the same foundational tools but that in no way guarantees that the user has access to the full suite of functionality of any given tool/widget (instant app vs Experience Builder, for example).  This is precisely why I harp on the documentation.

I'll post a CSV in a second reply momentarily..

[SteveCole]

Here is the CSV with the data I am attempting to graph. Nothing earth shattering.

[OwenGeo · Accepted solution]

@SteveCole - Thank you for the feedback. I'm sorry you had such trouble tracking this information down. As it happens, we are currently in the middle of a complete re-write of our documentation. We've already released much of this work (you can read more about it here), and the next batch of updates to go out will be the topics covering each content block.

I've attached a screenshot of a portion of the new topic on charts running on our internal dev system. As you can see, we plan to add information about how many rows and columns of data are supported (see orange box), in addition to a lot of other information about charts and all the other types of content blocks.

This should be released sometime in the next few weeks. I'm sorry this info wasn't available when you were looking for it, but we are working to improve our documentation.

Please let us know if you have more feedback about what you'd like to see in the ArcGIS StoryMaps doc.

[SteveCole]

Clearly not the answer I was hoping for but that is the way it goes. Thank you for finally clarifying that.

[OwenGeo]

Charts are still relatively new, so they remain focused on simple scenarios and small datasets. But we are looking at ways to expand this feature in the future, which may include bringing in charts you've already created in the map viewer (be sure to vote for this idea if you're interested in that) or possibly creating new charts in the story builder from feature layers.