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

[DarrenGemoets]

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).

[SteveCole]

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.

[DarrenGemoets]

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.

[ChelseaRozek]

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.

[DarrenGemoets]

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).

[DarrenGemoets · Accepted solution]

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 .

[AndresCastillo]

Here is a help doc my team came up with.

[DarrenGemoets]

Thank you so much for contributing!

[AndresCastillo]

You too!