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Arcade Community

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01-07-2022 06:09 AM
Status: In Development
jcarlson
MVP Esteemed Contributor

It would be nice to have a separate Community space for Arcade.

Currently, posts related to Arcade end up in the community space where the user is implementing their expression. This makes a certain amount of sense, but there's often a lot of crossover between the various contexts, and sometimes a user's issue is specific to Arcade, and is less about, say, ArcGIS Pro or AGOL.

To differentiate between the subcategories of Arcade posts, there could be a series of labels for the different profiles.

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"Dashboard Expressions", "Popup Expressions", etc.

With Python, for example, we differentiate between standard Python and the ArcGIS Python API, and accommodate each with their own space. We don't have users post their python questions in the ArcGIS Pro / AGOL spaces, etc.

I believe it would make the various Communities on here more useful and focused. Users looking for help with anything Arcade-related would be able to look in one place, and users who aren't fiddling with Arcade, but are trying to do something else in Pro, or a web map, or their dashboard, will have fewer posts to sift through in those spaces.

20 Comments
JohannesLindner

Oh my god, yes!

MichelleMathias

Thanks @jcarlson for the feedback. We will share with our product teams for further discussion. 

JohannesLindner

Seriously, add another virtual Kudo. The headache when deciding where to post something relating to Arcade is stupid.

JohannesLindner

@MichelleMathias Just to reiterate why I really think this should be implemented (and because I couldn't fit it in the survey text box):

 

Arcade has become a big part in the ESRI ecosystem. You can use it in a vast array of products, like attribute rules and field calculation, dashboards, map popups, labeling, symbology, Field Maps, and probably many more I forgot... Naturally, that leads to many questions about Arcade, especially since many users are unfamiliar with coding in general and Arcade specifially.

Arcade not having its own Community space leads to problems:

When I post a question about Arcade, I have to think about where I will most likely get helpful answers. This is not neccesarily the Community space of the product I'm using. If I'm working with Arcade in an Attribute Rule, I'll probably use that Community space. But it's not very active, there are more users checking out the AGOL or Pro Community spaces, so maybe I should post it there... If I'm using Arcade for popups, I should not have to decide whether to post in AGOL or Pro, because both use popups, and both are very similar. How likely is it to get helpful answers to a question on Arcade used in FieldMaps in that Community space, as opposed to an Arcade Community space?

Same thing from the other side. Most of the question I answer in the Community are about Arcade. Right now, I have to actively search for those questions (browse the Latest Activity on the home page). That makes it more likely that I and other users overlook a question and it is left unanswered. I can (and did) subscribe to the Attribute Rules Community space, but I don't want to subscribe to all spaces where Arcade can be used just on the offchance that a question about Arcade pops up.

 

Arcade not having its own Product Community space is understandable, since Arcade is part of products, not a product in itself. But you do have that nifty Developers category and I really think Arcade should have its own Community space there, prominently placed above or below Python.

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Bud
by

Would we merge the Attribute Rules community into the proposed Arcade community?

Or call it Arcade & Attribute Rules?

Or something else?

JohannesLindner

I think it should stay its own community.

Questions that are specifically about Attribute Rules would be asked there. eg

  • "What does 'Exclude from application evaluation' do?"
  • "I published a service and my rules don't trigger"
  • "My validation rules don't create error features"

Questions about the Arcade used in attribute rules would be asked in the Arcade community. eg

  • "How can I edit another table?"
  • "How can I pull the parcel ID from the intersecting parcel to this building?"
  • "How do I get the date in this specific format?"
  • "Why do I have this null value error?"
  • "I need a key field that is formatted like this, how do I do that automatically?"

And the same goes for all other products. There are many questions users have about products, these would be asked in the specific community. Questions about how to do things with Arcade in a product would be asked in or moved to the Arcade community.

jcarlson

@JohannesLindner  I still think that just keeping specific labels for the different profiles would be useful there. There are other places where a certain Arcade profile is specific to one product, but we don't have a whole community board for Advanced Formatting or Tasks. Why do we take this one specific Arcade Profile and give it its own space, rather than lump it into its parent product?

If it's a post about Attribute Rules, then just use the Attribute Rules label! Or better yet, what about a community with more than one questions board? Enterprise is like that, with more niche topics separated off on their own board, but collected in a single community space.

jcarlson_0-1655129874182.png

There will always be some crossover, of course. Some posts in the Python space are specific to Pro / Desktop. Some posts in Dashboards are really just Arcade posts. I don't know that we're super stringent about moving posts between boards here, but it would be easier if there was just one dedicated space.

Bud
by

I agree that a separate community for Arcade is needed.

MichelleMathias

Thank you everyone for your insights and input. I will share this thread with our product teams. 

Currently we do have the Arcade label within different places, and in the future (later next year) there is an upgrade coming that will allow you to search a labels across all boards (instead of one board at a time). 

SimiBasu
Status changed to: Under Review