Latest Contributions by DaraBurlo

Esri Community’s Tools & Tips series provides a power-packed serving of “How-To” every month. These micro-sized guides make it easy to level up your platform knowledge and get more out of Esri Community.  The value: Direct Messaging another member, allows you to connect with other members by taking a conversation offline for a more personal interaction. For example, you notice another member is posting about a hot topic in your field of interest and you want to learn more about other trends they may have been investigating. How to do it: From a post or blog article, click on the member’s name and click ‘View Profile’. Scroll down to the ‘Contact Me’ section on the left-hand side. Click the ‘Direct Message’ button. This will open the ‘Create New Message’ form. The member’s username will already be auto filled in the ‘Send to’ field.   Alternatively, click on the ‘envelope’ button  in the top left corner of Esri Community. This will open up your Inbox. Click on the other ‘envelope’ icon  beside the ‘Inbox’ dropdown on the right-hand side of the screen. This will open the ‘Create New Message’ form. In the ‘Send to’ field, type or search for the member’s username(s).  Optionally, check ’Send as Broadcast Message’ if it is being sent to multiple members and you’d like the message to be sent out individually to each member.   From here, fill out the ‘Message Subject’ and ‘Message Body’. Once you have finished composing the message, click the ‘Send Message’ Button at the bottom of the form.   The message will be sent to the recipient(s). If the user is subscribed to automated Community emails in their email settings, an email will be sent to the recipient notifying them of the message as well as a notification on the envelope button  in the top left corner of Esri Community.   Keep in mind: If a user has turned off email notifications, unsubscribed to automated community emails, turned off push notifications, turned off all real-time pop-up notification, or turned off all mobile notifications, the member may only see the notification when checking their notification feed.  ... View more

This past October, I had the opportunity to participate in a workshop facilitated by Tamsen Webster, author of Find Your Red Thread. Her talk was all about getting your ideas heard. Of course, I was intrigued and all I could think of was how this could apply to you, the creators of many ideas on Esri Community. In her talk and her book, she goes through the process of making an idea delectable by turning it into a story with a process that covers more than the basic elements of having a beginning, middle and end. She discusses a blueprint and a process of defining the goal, problem, truth, change and actions. She makes it easy to create stories from your ideas with her worksheets found here by breaking it down into two parts: the pieces of the story and the case for it to be heard.   I thought it might be nice to help those struggling to get their ideas submitted and see this method in action by taking an existing idea and reframe it using her method. I chose this idea just to reframe it, not because it is good or bad or because it was implemented recently, I just chose it as an example. The original idea captures the concept of sorting by geometry type in the ArcGIS Pro Catalog pane.    First using Tamsen’s Red Thread Worksheet, I created the pieces of the story to reframe the idea as follows:  Audience: Who is this message for?  ArcGIS Pro Catalog Users  Goal: What question does the audience already want answers to?   How can I look at my data based on geometry type (i.e. point, line, polygon, etc…)?  Problem: What pair of words or short phrase captures your AND their perspectives on what’s in the way?  Organization & efficiency  Truth: What truth or provable fact makes the problem impossible to ignore?  When it comes to organization, seeing geometry types allows for confidence in adding the correct feature.  When it comes to efficiency, accessing large amounts of data by the geometry type will allow you to access the specific data quickly thereby creating positive impressions.  Change: What’s the new thinking or behavior?  Viewing data in a different way.  Actions: What’s necessary to create the CHANGE?  Sorting your data in the ArcGIS Pro Catalog pane by geometry type    From here, I moved the story pieces over to Tamsen’s Conversational Case worksheet to get the case to be heard (aka the idea to submit):  ArcGIS Pro Catalog Users often want to look at data based on geometry type (i.e. point, line, polygon, etc…) so users can add data efficiently. Currently, the ArcGIS Pro Catalog pane focuses on names and feature types rather than on geometry types. Yet users believe that seeing geometry types allows for confidence in adding the correct feature and efficiency when dealing with large amounts of data. That’s why it is recommended to sort data in the ArcGIS Pro Catalog pane by geometry type.    Next time you have an idea and are struggling on how best to write your submission, try this method for some assistance. Don’t forget the submission guidelines and include screenshots/images if necessary to enhance clarifying your idea.    Citations  Webster, T. (2021). Find Your Red Thread. Page Two Books.  ... View more

About the Share Tool The share tool is used by Esri staff and Esri Community MVPs to duplicate a message to one or more boards of the same type. For example, posting a question regarding sharing a feature service from ArcGIS Pro to ArcGIS Enterprise, could be created on the ArcGIS Pro questions board and then shared to the ArcGIS Enterprise questions board to provide higher visibility of the question.   How to Share a Message  To share a message, use the following steps:  In a Place or Group, create your question, doc or blog.   NOTE: Events and Ideas cannot be shared. Open your published question, doc or blog. Click the Share Message Button located beneath the title.  A dialog will appear. Expand the nodes and select a target location(s) to which you would like to share. You can share your message up to 5 boards at one time.  Scroll to the bottom of the dialog and click the Share button.  A thank you note will briefly appear and the dialog will exit.  NOTE: Labels and tags will not be shared with your message. You will need to go to each target message and add any labels or tags.  Your post is now shared. You will notice a new icon beside the title of your original message indicating that this is a source shared message.  (notice the direction of the arrow goes to the cloud symbol)  You can go directly to the target posts (those that the source post has been shared to) by clicking the status button located beneath the title.  A dialog will appear indicating the creation and any updates on the message for each board it is being shared to. Click the link under the Target Message ID to open the target message in a new browser window.  Click OK to exit the dialog.  The target message(s) will show a different icon beside the title indicating that it is from a shared source.  (notice the direction of the arrow comes from the cloud symbol). Every target message will show the author of the message as a system user named ShareUser. It will also contain a board name from which it was shared and the original author’s name. Below we can see this message was shared from the arcgis-pro-questions board and the Source Author is DaraBurlo.  NOTE: When a post is shared, all copies of it remain connected so that comments, thread replies, and Accepted Solutions added to any of those copies will sync across the others so that users can build on the same conversation from multiple locations. Syncing occurs on a 24 hour cycle.   ... View more

As stated on the ideas home page, “Your feedback is important to us and we take it seriously. Product team members are subscribed to idea exchanges and labels so that they can keep a finger on the pulse of what you are requesting and build software and services that best meet your needs.” With that being said, I want to offer a few reminders from our Community Resources regarding the ideas program.  What is ArcGIS Ideas?  ArcGIS Ideas is a listening channel comprised of a number of Idea Exchanges across Esri Community. Ideas are user-submitted requests for new features and functionality in Esri products. The community can engage with ideas by kudoing/voting or commenting, which helps product teams gauge interest and understand use cases. Ideas are subject to review by relevant product teams at Esri, and we use statuses and comments/moderator notes to provide a response when appropriate. How are ArcGIS Ideas considered?  While the amount of votes an idea has garnered is an excellent way for us to understand the demand for specific functionality, there are a wide variety of factors which can play a part in the decision to implement an idea. Factors such as the number of votes the idea has received; the feasibility of the idea within the current product plan; and the impact that the idea will have on other users and existing workflows are among the different factors which impact product teams’ decision making.  Where possible, we will try and be transparent when we communicate back to you about ideas which have been reviewed. We appreciate your understanding that while we love to hear all your ideas, unfortunately not all ideas will be a good product fit or it may take time to implement ideas as they are prioritized among many other development considerations. How do Esri Staff and Distributors engage with the Esri Community through ArcGIS Ideas? For each Idea Exchange, some Esri staff will act as Ideas Managers, who will be reviewing ideas and engaging with the community through status updates, comments and more. In addition, other Esri staff members and International Distributors will be able to comment on ideas to ask questions and provide tips or workarounds. Esri staff and International distributors are not able to submit their own ideas, and are encouraged to submit their requests through internal channels. Idea Submission Guidelines No questions please.  Idea Exchanges are designed to receive requests for new or improved features and functionality.  They are not meant to ask questions or request help.  If you have a question, post it in the appropriate question board to see if other community members are able to help.  If you need immediate assistance with an issue, or are seeking direct communication with an Esri representative, please Contact Us and select the relevant channel (Customer Service, Technical Support, etc.) No bugs please. Idea Exchanges are not the right place to log software bugs or crashes.  Keep in mind that just because it isn’t the right fit as an Idea does not mean that we aren’t here to help.  Bugs and crashes should be logged with Technical Support.  If working in ArcGIS Desktop/ArcGIS Pro, crashes can be reported by sending an error report.    What are the idea statuses, and what do they mean? We value your contributions, and it is important to us that we’re communicating with you about our thinking around specific ideas. We use statuses to communicate updates about ideas back to the community. For more information about the idea statuses and their meaning, please see the ArcGIS Ideas Submission Guidelines. For some additional questions related to status updates, please see Idea Status Changes below. One particular status I want to point out is the Closed status. Ideas may be closed for different reasons, and we will do our best to communicate and let the community know why this idea isn’t a good match for our current plans. That being said, please refrain from recreating an idea that has previously been closed. The timing for status changes on idea varies greatly. In some cases, statuses change quickly while in others it may take longer. Remember, just because it is closed right away does not mean that it has not been fully considered. Staff are very familiar with their development considerations and make decisions for the software after reviewing the idea. Community terms of use Furthermore, Esri reserves the right to review, modify, delete, reprint or redistribute all content that users contribute to Idea Exchanges. I want to highlight section 2.3 Improper Use of Services. Specifically, the following bullets: Content that is abusive, vulgar, obscene, hateful, fraudulent, or that discloses private or personal matters concerning any person. This includes language, information, or images. Content that is threatening, defamatory or abusive, either between forum members or directed towards a Esri moderator, or a Esri employee or manager. "Rants," "slams," or legal threats against Esri or another company or competitor. If the guidelines are violated, the post will be removed, and the user will be informed by the Esri Community team about the violated terms of use and the subsequent consequences. For more information, please refer to the Community terms of use. Thank you again for taking the time to share thoughtful, high-quality ideas.  We truly appreciate your contributions to continuously improving our products and services to help you do your work. ... View more