I spent the “better part” of the day…

[MarqueeCrew]

I am sure that it has happened to everyone.  I have struggled, lamented and even labored over a challenge only to wonder in retrospect why I didn’t take the easy way out and ask for help.  This morning I reached out to @TaraM in search of another set of eyes on a problem that was plaguing me.  Instead of posting to the community, I was hoping to review my application with someone who could see the error in my way.  Hard as I might try, I couldn’t get my Action’s formula to work:

IIF([#1],'FALSE','TRUE')

Having given up on myself, I created a simplified workflow in preparation for posting to the community.  That workflow operated flawlessly.  Aha!  There must be a bug in Alteryx that I am running into.  I thought to myself, I’ll review this one more time before I post this to the community.  What good will it be to post a working solution to ask for help?  That’s when I found the problem.  I hadn’t specified the right value to be updated with the formula.  The problem was with me.

On Friday, I helped @SWAJeff with his conundrum.  It started with, “I have spent the better part of an entire day trying to figure this out and any help would be much appreciated!”  I’m glad to say that beyond “any help” we got to the solution.  I’m no different than Jeff in my defiance to asking for help.  I’ve been conditioned to figuring things out for myself.  I am not afraid of appearing weak, needy or even incompetent.  Trust me, I’m the first person to be looking for the easy way out of a situation.  While ready to “Google” just about anything, for some reason I thrive on the victory over an Alteryx challenge and hesitate before posting to the community.  Saying that, I’ve asked more questions than many new users as I’ve marked more than a dozen solutions as accepted.

Somewhere between a problem and a crisis there’s a tipping point where a call for “help” precedes a “MayDay!” distress signal.  I don’t know if a title that includes the term “Urgent, Urgent! Or URGENT” gets answered any quicker, but it is does happen.  If you’re reading this, you’re likely not the kind of member that only comes to the community with issues.  You’re investing time in your career and looking for knowledge.  That question that you didn’t ask, may lay in waiting ready to confound others.  By asking the question, you’ll be adding to the knowledge base and possibly either helping another user avoid this trap or helping to shape the Alteryx product.  

If you have any ideas on how to make the community more accessible for seeking help, please let them know! Here’s the link:  https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Suggestions-For-Our-Community/idb-p/community-ideas or you can post your suggestion inside of this post as a reply.  By the way, it took me no longer to write this post than it did to figure out my issue this morning.  Instead of banging my head against the walls, I could have created twice the content here and created a much greater public good.

Cheers,

Mark