Improve the number of items marked as solved

[SeanAdams]

Hey @LeahK

you mentioned in your post here (https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Community-News/Alteryx-Community-Top-Contributors-March-201...) just how important it is to mark things as "solution" once they are solved so that people know a good solution to the problem (similar to StackOverflow)

However, I've been trawling through the discussion boards, and there's loads of old stuff out there that has not been marked.

I think that there's two relatively simple things we can do on this:

- Give people quickfilters (like you do on the ideas discussion board to see what's on the roadmap etc) to target problems that are unsolved.  This will allow the solution hounds in the community (see the top 10 list below) the ability to quickly target any spare time to focus on providing solutions.    Note - I'm pretty certain that there is a huge community of people providing solutions, but they are not getting the credit 'cause folks are not marking their original request as "solved"

- Additionally - we need the ability to clean up - I was trawling through the older ones, and there's items out there from 2012 where I'm pretty sure that the requestor is no-longer checking for updates on this thread.   We can do 2 things here:

     - the community can request that people mark these as solved if they are solved (the solution hounds can chase this)

     - we also need the ability to mark a solution if the original poster does not - almost like a community vote like Stack Overflow does - again, this will allow the solution hounds and to assist with cleaning up the backlog, and will also make the data in this community more valuable.   

     - Finally - some things cannot be solved - we need to mark these as "closed but not solved" in some way.    For example - I could easily post something saying "please let me know how to get Alteryx to automatically change variables through the workflow when I change them".    This is on the idea board (and on the roadmap I believe), but not currently solved.   Can we have a way of either marking these as "Closed" or "Closed as new product idea - moved to idea board" and then create an idea-board insert for this?

I think that this would really help in cleaning up the backlog of items on the discussion forum which are years old and still looking like pending discussions!

Thank you 

Sean

Top 10 solution hounds (people with accepted solutions) across the 4 discussion areas as of 09 Apr 2017

( @MarqueeCrew @alex @patrick_digan @Bob_Blackey @pcatterson @Garrett @Kanderson @jlefeaux @JohnJPS @ThizViz @Claje @Abiswal86 @munirsalim @mbarone @msbs48 @AmandaMS @patrick_mcauliffe @ShannonH @rpaugh @bsharbo @tlisti @jdunkerley79 @Evie @DavidVonka @dev_raut @brendafos @toddhowl @oliver_huber just to take the top 10 from the various boards)

[jlefeaux]

Hello!  Thank you for tagging me in this discussion.

I believe I was tagged because I have an accepted solution, but I also have a question about when a solution should be marked as Solved, and so this seems like a great opportunity to ask the community about it.

I have an open post in which I asked about some peculiar behavior I was observing in one of the Alteryx tools.  It turns out that the root cause will need to be addressed by the development team, but there is a workaround that I can use immediately.

(This is the post: https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Data-Sources/Input-Data-Inconsistent-results-from-Output-File-Name-...)

What is the protocol in this type of situation?  Do I mark my question as Solved, because I have a workaround, or do I leave it open until the development team fixes the root cause?

Appreciate the feedback!

P.S.  I would have liked to tag @SophiaF here, as she as the moderator who answered my question in the post I'm referring to, but I don't have @mentions yet, since I'm not yet an Asteroid, so maybe someone else could do that for me? Thx :)

[SeanAdams]

I guess that the other thing that we can do as a community is to start from the last page on the discussion thread, the oldest item still not marked as solved, and chase them for resolution.

did a few like this today - not sure if this will be more helpful or irritating, but let's see how we progress.

(cc @SophiaF per the request of @jlefeaux above)

[SeanAdams]

I've been working through the older posts to see if we can get some of these questions cleaned up (i.e. marked as Solved, or reopened for discussion) and interestingly several people have responded and marked questions as solved after the request.

So - this may be a useful practice for the solution hounds out there.

@chris_lovementioned on another thread the idea of marking posts as Information only so that they do not look like unsolved items, which would be another good way to handle this.

@LeahK- here's an example of a post that should be moved directly into the Ideas section (https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Data-Preparation-Blending/What-is-the-sort-order-for-the-tool-list-...).   As we think about the next version of the community (3.x?), it may be worth including this capability for folks like yourself to be able to take the appropriate action.    Question is - you can't be everywhere at the same time - so it may worth adding an action to the post for someone to "Suggest close" or "Suggest move" which then sends a ping to the community team?

[LeahK]

Thanks for the feedback @SeanAdams and for caring so much about the health of our Community.

Our intention in highlighting Top Solution Accept-ers in the Top Contributors blog this past month, was to make sure our members were aware of the positive impact this can have on the community as a whole, and more importantly encourage this behavior going forward. Here is an example of one of the things we do today to help encourage this behavior:

Original posters receive automated reminder emails, with instructions to mark accepted solutions. These notifications look something like this.

-----------

Subject:

Alteryx Community - Did you get the answer you needed?

Body:
Topic: Subject of Thread
Date: 04-06-2017 11:23 AM

Did it solve your problem?

[Click here] to view the reply and mark one as an Accepted Solution.

This will help others find helpful answers in the community too!

Haven't solved your problem yet? Follow up with the community and provide more details so they can continue to help you narrow down possible solutions.

-----------
Our moderators also have the ability to mark solutions as accepted, and we are considering extending this permission to trusted members in the future (sounds like this may be something you would be interested in).

We certainly have some work to do when it comes to cleaning up older posts in the community, and it is something we are actively working on. I am glad to hear that you've had some success in reaching out to original posters. However, it's important to keep in mind that responding to an inactive thread just to ask the original poster to mark an accepted solution, can sometimes be disruptive to the overall flow of the conversation.

The reason being, is that it resurfaces content/conversations that haven't been active for quite some time, and are oftentimes no longer relevant. Replying to old threads is completely acceptable and encouraged, if you have a legitimate follow-up question/thought that is relevant to the conversation.

Just something to be aware of, before publicly asking a user to mark a reply as a solution.

To avoid unnecessarily highlighting inactive threads, you can use the "Report Content" option. This essentially allows you to send a notification related to a specific thread (and include feedback) straight to our moderators. Please make sure to include notes with your recommendation. We can then evaluate whether or not it makes sense to identify an accepted solution.

-----

I have updated the status of this idea to "Under Review" for the time being. Thank you again for the excellent suggestion, and for helping us make the community as helpful as it can be. Great stuff!

[LeahK]

@jlefeaux -- My apologies for the delay in my response. This is absolutely the right place to ask a follow-up question, and am glad you are taking advantage of the opportunity :)

For the post in question, its ultimately up to you to decide whether or not you feel you have an adequate solution.  That said, it's likely that other users who come across the post, would benefit from the work-around, so marking as a solution is completely appropriate. Another thing to keep in mind is that, as the original poster, you always have the power to revoke and re-assign as you see fit.

If you change your mind or if another reply provides an even better answer, you can revoke the first selection and accept the second reply.

• To revoke an accepted solution, click Options > Unmark as Accepted Solution.
• You can choose another solution or leave the question unsolved.

Hope this helps!

[jlefeaux]

@LeahK:  Thanks!  I appreciate the feedback and the additional information.  I didn't realize that I could change accepted solutions later on.

Based on what you told me, I've marked the post in question as Solved. That's one more off the list :)

[WillM]

This idea is related to several others that have been submitted and has multiple components. Some of these submissions have been implemented already and others are not planned currently - for the ease of scoping and developing these requests, I'm going to move this to Not Planned for now as many of these are represented elsewhere.