The New GeoNet Platform Launches on November 12
Take one last look around at the community as you've known it for the past few years.
As of November 12, 2020, everything you see here will have updated to our new community platform.
COMMUNITY OUTAGE NOTICE: Due to the GeoNet Community Platform Update, the community will be inaccessible from Tuesday, November 10, 2020 at 7:00 p.m. PST through Wednesday, November 11, 2020. The new platform will be accessible on Thursday, November 12, 2020.
Key Takeaways in this message
- Last Chance: Review the list of features or content that will not migrate to the new platform, and save content associated with your account by November 9, 2020.
- Learn about how we incorporated community feedback and about what to expect in the new platform.
- See details on the updated community structure, archival rules, and more in the GeoNet Platform Update - FAQs - November 2020.
Key Actions
Remember: Save Your Content
At this time, we recommend you take any last measures to save personal content that you may have accumulated since our previous announcement, including bookmarks, follows, notifications, inbox messaging, photos, personal blogs, and more. Review our last announcement for a list of content that will not migrate and will not be available in the new platform to take action:
E-mail Digests and Weekly Newsletters
Automated e-mail digests and weekly newsletters will expire once the new platform is launched. In the new platform, you will be able to recreate email subscriptions to places, content boards, and labels at a frequency of your choosing.
For curated Weekly Digests from the GeoNet Team, subscribe to our Community Blog board in the new platform where we’ll continue to post GeoNet Weekly News featuring highlights from around the community.
Listening to Your Feedback
More than 1,000 of you participated in community feedback loops, including our most recent survey!
From previous community-wide surveys (@mention survey article) and general feedback provided to us over time, we collected your thoughts on ways the community could be improved. We are pleased to report that you can expect the following updates in your community experience:
Top 7 Features to Look Forward to Based On User Feedback
1. Wayfinding and Navigation
- The community structure is flatter and organized by Places where Products, Developers, Industry, and other communities are located along with User Groups.
- A simple structure comes with simplified navigation. Users can browse the community from the top navigation bar that includes a mega menu to access communities and convenient areas to access help with the platform.
- The megamenu is a dynamic feature that will display the top 11 most viewed places in each product, industry, developer, and worldwide community for quick access.
- A pinned search feature in the top navigation will be accessible from any location within the community as a way to jump to other desired locations.
- Most noticeably, you will not see a double navigation bar as you do in the current platform.
2. Search
- More search and filtering capabilities are available to find content of interest in the platform. You will find additional options to sort results by views, kudos (the new equivalent for "likes"), and replies in addition to the sorting features you are already familiar with.
- If you are in a Place, you can limit the search to content within a place or content type.
- Auto-suggestions in search will remain a search support tool in the new platform, with the ability to turn the feature on or off.
- You can access a search feature in the top navigation menu to search content or places across the community from any location.
3. Content and Archives
- Many users noted that there is an abundance of outdated content in the community. To provide more current search results, we will be implementing an archival rule on questions, videos, events, and discussions from before 2019 with view counts that have less than 100 views. Blogs will be available with no archival rules applied. Any content that is in a Group will not be subject to any archival rules.
- Please note: Archived content will not be deleted, just removed from the general community's view or access. Content in the archive can be requested to bring forward by reaching out to the GeoNet team.
4. Subscriptions & Notifications
- Create your customized email updates on places, groups, labels (a similar concept to categories), or discussions that you want to follow.
5. Logging in
- We've aligned our accounts system more closely with Esri Accounts to reduce the issues around account connectivity and removed the duplicate "Sign In" features to the community.
- To login to the community when it launches: Login through ArcGIS Online using your existing credentials. If you are signed in an Esri.com website and come to the community from where you are signed in, you will automatically be signed into the community under that account with our Single Sign-On (SSO) implementation.
- For privacy, you can change your username associated with your account and control the display of your contact information in the community. Usernames can be updated by the user but must always be unique, meaning there cannot be duplicative usernames in the community.
6. User Interface
- The user interface is significantly updated to align with Esri's brand. You will notice a cleaner user interface that focuses on content without clutter. Places and Group page layouts are consistent across the community.
7. Added Solutions for Community Participation and Responses
- Members will receive automatic email reminders to respond to their posts with replies from the community. In the email, they are encouraged to mark answers as Accepted Solutions if one is provided to their post.
- New: More than one response can be an Accepted Solution to a post. Members can "kudos" the Accepted Solution that works the best for them to upvote a select reply.
- Questions will have increased visibility with members who subscribe to question content boards.
Additional Improvements to the Community Experience:
A new Rank feature will be applied to member profiles to help community members identify new and experienced community members.
New Badges are available to acknowledge your participation in the community and will feature in a section within your profile.
New Avatar Collections feature Esri's The Science of Where, Globie, and more.
Overall, this community offers the ability to grow with your needs. By selecting a leading community platform provider, we can enhance our platform to enrich your experience and serve 200,000 registered members and millions of visitors to the community. We look forward to implementing ongoing improvements to your experience.
We'll see you on the new platform!