Feedback on new GeoNet Community site

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11-19-2020 12:20 PM
HilaryCampbell
New Contributor III

I have to say that I find the new site far less intuitive - there's no direct link to my Ideas, for example.  It's also much slower.  Every page loads at least twice - why is it so process-heavy on the back end?  Just navigating back and forth between pages is cumbersome.  And having a page flash twice every time it loads is very hard on the head/eyes.  Signing in is even worse! Why does the system have to hit four or five different URL's during login to get you started?  It just feels messy - it's not a pleasant user experience.

Timing out is an annoyance.  I get mismatched certificates a LOT!  Is there a setting on my browser that I can change to make a session remain open/valid for a longer period, even while inactive?  If not, if this change needs to be done on your end, please consider making one login last the length of a business day (8 hours).  People do get distracted by other things as they work.  It shouldn't be so difficult to pick up where we left off. 

What impact do labels have on posts?  What is the difference between labels and tags?  And why did votes get turned into kudos?  It's not obvious anymore that giving an idea a kudo is the same as voting it up to indicate user support for having Esri look into it. 

Thank you for reading my vent/rant/commentary.  Comments, pointers and suggestions welcome.  

 

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1 Solution

Accepted Solutions
MichelleMathias
Esri Community Manager

Hi Hilary,

Thank you for the honest feedback. I am sorry you are not enjoying the new community and finding it more difficult. 

I believe Kory has addressed your comments about Ideas, labels and tags. So let me try to address some of your other points. 

As for the performance issues you are experiencing we have reported some of this to our vendor and are planning to a site wide cache and refresh this evening that might help clear out some of the errors/ caching issues. You might also try clearing your browser cache as well, that seems to help in some cases.  Our session cookies are set to 8 hours, so you shouldn't be timing out, unless you are signed in with another ArcGIS Online account in another session or application. 

The navigation/menu drop down menu at the top under all communities should help you get started finding things. We also provided help docs in our Community Help Documentation  to assist with getting use to the new site, as well as community tips throughout ( look for the i icon).

Please bear with us as we work out some kinks and hopefully the navigation and performance will become smoother soon. 

Regards,

Michelle

Michelle Mathias
Manager, Community Experience & Programs

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6 Replies
DanDeegan
New Contributor III

I share alot of the same sentiments but have no had any problems with sign in.

My main issue is reading posts. When you 'Load More' you have to scroll up to read the new posts and it is easy to forget where you left off. 

KoryKramer
Esri Community Moderator

Hi Hilary,

Thank you for the feedback.  I'm not able to speak to all of it, but will try to address the parts about ArcGIS Ideas.

We received similar feedback about not understanding that to vote on an idea, you give it kudos.  We added some wording here ArcGIS Ideas - GeoNet, The Esri Community 

KoryKramer_0-1605817545479.png

 

And this is also part of the ArcGIS Ideas FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions about ArcGIS Ideas - GeoNet, The Esri Community

KoryKramer_1-1605817648079.png

 

For the question about Labels vs. tags, check out How to use tags and labels - GeoNet, The Esri Community

In the context of Idea Exchanges, we explain labels here Frequently Asked Questions about ArcGIS Ideas - GeoNet, The Esri Community and here Frequently Asked Questions about ArcGIS Ideas - GeoNet, The Esri Community .  But in a nutshell, they are helpful to the product teams who are watching those exchanges, and in some cases are used to get the idea in front of the correct development team, and in other cases they are used to help teams organize ideas.  

We realize that this is a change from the previous ArcGIS Ideas site, but we put a lot of thought into how it is structured and have coordinated extensively across the product teams to help ensure a more direct connection between teams with their specific Idea Exchanges.  Ultimately, we think that this will help more ideas be considered for inclusion into the products which we feel is a good thing.

One of the first things you mentioned was that there is no direct link to your ideas.  Can you give me more details around that?  Under My Profile, there is a "My Ideas" view as described in the FAQ here Frequently Asked Questions about ArcGIS Ideas - GeoNet, The Esri Community Is this related to your comment, or are you referring to something else?

I hope that this explanation helps.  Please let me know if you have any questions about what I've shared here.

Thank you!

 

MichelleMathias
Esri Community Manager

Hi Hilary,

Thank you for the honest feedback. I am sorry you are not enjoying the new community and finding it more difficult. 

I believe Kory has addressed your comments about Ideas, labels and tags. So let me try to address some of your other points. 

As for the performance issues you are experiencing we have reported some of this to our vendor and are planning to a site wide cache and refresh this evening that might help clear out some of the errors/ caching issues. You might also try clearing your browser cache as well, that seems to help in some cases.  Our session cookies are set to 8 hours, so you shouldn't be timing out, unless you are signed in with another ArcGIS Online account in another session or application. 

The navigation/menu drop down menu at the top under all communities should help you get started finding things. We also provided help docs in our Community Help Documentation  to assist with getting use to the new site, as well as community tips throughout ( look for the i icon).

Please bear with us as we work out some kinks and hopefully the navigation and performance will become smoother soon. 

Regards,

Michelle

Michelle Mathias
Manager, Community Experience & Programs
DavidColey
Frequent Contributor

Why can I not switch accounts anymore?  When I'm logged into our AGOL org and I go to geonet, i can no longer switch accounts.

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MichelleMathias
Esri Community Manager

Hi David, This functionality shouldn't have changed with the new community as your accounts are the same as they were before. Can you email me a screen shot of the error/ issue you see to geonet@esri.com so we can take a deeper look. thank you. 

Michelle Mathias
Manager, Community Experience & Programs
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DavidColey
Frequent Contributor

Hi Michelle, so there's nothing really to show.  When logged into my AGOL org, and going to GeoNet using a new tab in Chrome, GeoNet automatically takes me to the GeoNet account registration page because it doesn't recognize my AGOL org account, nor should it. So that's actually ok.

But, I am not getting bounced to a 'switch account' page.

Instead, I found that if I sign out of the GeoNet page at that time, I can then sign in again using my primary ESRI account, which is what I want and has all of my settings etc.  

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