August Amplify Challenge: Our very own Olympic Games of Retool Collaboration

[kbn]

Hello, Retool Community!

Get ready to vault into a month of collaboration, problem-solving, and friendly competition as we kick off our August Amplify Challenge from July 30-September 2. This month, we’re turning our focus to amplifying open questions and enhancing the experience of posting here in the community.

As the world comes together to celebrate the Olympic games, let’s bring that Olympic spirit to the forum and make this a month to remember in this global community! On-theme, we’ll award Bronze, Silver, and Gold in several “events”. Stay tuned within the next week for a "reveal" of the badge images you'll be playing for!

What’s the Challenge? In August, we aim to:

1. Amplify Open Questions: Bring more visibility to questions that haven’t yet received collaborative advice.

• Many topics do get a reply within 1-2 days here on the forum! However: Did you know that it’s rare for a fellow community contributor to comment on a topic after the first 2 days since it was created? Our forum UI shows topics with recent activity most prominently. If it's been a few days since the latest activity on a topic, that topic will be much harder for fellow contributors to notice.
• Through this challenge, we aim to boost visibility of slightly older topics (5 days after creation) that are ripe for engagement! If this works well, we'll plan ways to make this a continuous practice

2. Encourage Community Collaboration: Recognize various ways you’re all working together to provide solutions and support each other.

• Whether you’re commenting on another Retool user’s post right away, or checking in to help build momentum toward a solution on a week-old topic, we want to recognize your empathetic problem-solving endeavors!

Here’s How It Works:

• A new tag! Any topic that hasn’t received a reply within 5 days will be tagged as welcoming-replies. This tag helps everyone easily find and assist with these questions. The Retool team will handle the actual tagging. You can view the list of topics with the tag, and decide where you’d like to chime in!
• Recognition Events: To make things interesting, we’ve got some exciting recognition events lined up below – read on for how to earn each badge, and some Retool swag!

1. Helping Hand: Awarded to the person who replies to the most topics tagged with "welcoming-replies". Consider: What could add momentum toward a clear answer? Is there more information that would be needed to arrive at an actionable solution? Perhaps the topic hasn’t been replied to yet because folks aren’t sure how to help. You can help out by commenting to encourage the original poster to add important details!

• Gold
• Silver
• Bronze

2. Perseverant Solver: Given to the person who provides the most marked Solutions to topics tagged with "welcoming-replies". Think your comment might've solved the OP's question? Encourage them to mark it as the solution!

• Gold
• Silver
• Bronze

3. Fast Responders: A continuation of our June challenge, this recognizes those who respond to at least 5 topics within 2 days of topic creation. Collaborating when the question is still top of mind for the original poster is likely to lead to quicker, higher quality collaboration toward a solution!

• Gold
• Silver
• Bronze

4. Creative Expression: Continuing from previous challenge awards in July and in May, we'll reward the top 3 most liked Community Show & Tell topics that were created July 30-Aug 31! Cast your "vote" in appreciation for your favorite show & tell post by giving it an emoji reaction.

• Gold
• Silver
• Bronze

5. Top Fifteen Tooltips: Recognizing the top fifteen participants on the Tooltips leaderboard between July 30 - September 2. This takes into account all kinds of participation, including likes given/received, topic creation, and more.

Why Participate?

• Boost your skills: Helping others is a great way to deepen your own knowledge.
• Earn recognition: Show off your expertise and earn badges that highlight your contributions.
• Build community: Strengthen our global developer community by sharing your insights and solutions, and helping others feel welcome.
• Contribute to collective learning: In addition to learning answers to specific Retool questions, we'll also learn together which kinds of topics age past 5 days without a reply. This will help us plan better ways to facilitate earlier interaction within the community!

Let’s make August a month of growth, support, and community spirit. Ready to take on the challenge and commence the games? Let’s amplify our efforts and see who will rise to the top!

Happy collaborating and Retool building!

Side bar: Which Summer Olympics events have you been watching so far? I tend to watch Swimming, Waterpolo, and Gymnastics most but also enjoy discovering other sports like Race-Walking! I also stumbled across this beach volleyball matchup yesterday and was so impressed with both sides' level of play! Would love to hear what you've been most excited to see!]

Join the Challenge Now!

Start Contributing: New Topics, Aging Topics | View Global ToolTips Leaderboard (filter by week or month) | Forum Guidelines

[kbn]

Hello builders! It’s time for the great unveiling of the badges you’re working toward this month! See the badge images below

Also, check out a mid-month progress update for each "event" below to see who’s already earned some of these badges and who’s very close to doing so!

• (I can’t promise to be as compelling a commentator as Snoop Dogg or Laurie Hernandez or Julie Foudy or Michael Phelps, but I’ll give it a shot! ) In summary, y'all are doing:

A quick shout out before we dive into the specific events. Consider this an “up and coming community athlete to watch” in our mini Olympics challenge here:

• Everyone please give a round of applause to @jamesg31 who is already topping the chart as a Perseverant Solver, and is in second place in the Helping Hand event right now! @jamesg31 you’ve been really ramping up your interactions with fellow builders here in the community in recent weeks, and we see and appreciate you! Thank you for helping get momentum toward solutions alongside community members, and for sharing your feature request interest and detailed bug descriptions. Your contributions to collective Retool expertise in this community -- as well as your input on ways to improve the product itself -- mean a lot to all of us! Keep it up, can't wait to see what you'll do next!

A glimpse of another up-and-coming athlete in the middle of a "challenge" on the path to 4 golds this month (!):

Helping Hands:

We have @miguelOrtiz in first place, @jamesg31 in second place, and @stewart.Anstey in third place so far!

Kudos to @ddsgadget @thomas_k_x @pod2 @zeroCodez @amirsaifolo @siguy85 @jg80 @perelin for replying to 1 topic tagged ‘welcoming-replies’ each so far!

Thanks to all of you for your focus on chiming in to build momentum on topics that are still welcoming replies You are helping community members make connections and get traction on their topics! Keep it up.

The Helping Hand gold, silver and bronze badges:

Perseverant Solvers:

So far, we have @jamesg31 in first place, @miguelortiz in second place, and @jg80 @dominik_Poignee @rodrigo_Carrizo @M_0 tied for 3rd place with 1 solved each!

As a reminder, the Perseverant Solver award recognizes folks who jumped in and reached a Solution on topics that initially went un-responded to for 5 days (welcoming replies), but we persevered and finally arrived at a solution!

The Perseverant Solvers gold, silver, and bronze badges:

Fast Responders

So far: @jg80 @MiguelOrtiz @ZeroCodez @Milan_Kalem @MikeCB have already reached the threshold of 5 topics responded to within 2 days of creation! Thank you all, and keep it up!

As you can see below, @pyrrho @bobthebear @jamesg31 @abusedmedia @Steven_W @erispoe @stefancvrkotic @TobiasOhlsson @trz-justin-dev are all very close to the threshold of 5 topics replied to within 2 days of topic creation!

This badge is a continuation of an existing badge we introduced in June for our Pool Party themed challenge You can earn it twice if you already received it in June!

Creative Expression

So far, we've had one Community Show & Tell post created by @khill-fbmc since July 30th. Cool custom CSS solution to make copy buttons more pronounced!

The playing field is wide open for these 3 badges Let's see your creative Retool implementations. Have you solved a problem for your teammates or customers with Retool recently? Show it off by creating a topic in the Community Show & Tell category of the forum, and let the community shower you with emoji reactions and praise Here's what you're playing for:

Creative Expression gold, silver, and bronze badges:

Keep it up, team! We'll be spectating (and collaborating) throughout the month - can't wait to see what we all accomplish.

[kbn]

Hi community builders! Tune in for a "fourth-quarter" progress update and pep talk as we enter the home stretch -- the last week of this challenge! For each "event", see below who’s already earned badges and who’s very close to doing so!

I'll also tag in some of our past Challenge participants just in case y'all are interested to jump in during the final stretch of August to earn one of the badges described above (and potentially swag ) over the next week through September 2nd. cc @April-Solution-Hunt-Participants @Resolution_Roundtable_Participants @Solution-Challenge-Aug23

You can always follow along on current or past challenges via the challenge tag!

Helping Hands:

• As a refresher, Gold Silver and Bronze badges will be awarded to the top 3 people who replied to the most topics tagged with "welcoming-replies " -- topics that have been open for several days and are still open for community contributions.
• There's a battle for Bronze which is completely within reach -- anyone could swoop it up! Who's going to reply to some more of these topics this week to take the Bronze?!

Want to jump into the fray and reply on a few of those linked topics^ still welcoming-replies ?

• Look for especially the topics that only have one user icon in the list -- where only the OP has commented so far, and they're looking for our help! Then, consider:
• What could add momentum toward a clear answer? Is there more information that would be needed to arrive at an actionable solution?
• Perhaps the topic hasn’t been replied to yet because folks aren’t sure how to help. You can help out by commenting to encourage the original poster to add important details!
• Have you seen a relevant doc or other community topic? Share a relevant link and ask the OP if it helps move toward an answer!

Our Helping Hands Event Field so far, in the race toward Bronze, Silver, and Gold:

• @MiguelOrtiz @jamesg31 (told y'all that @jamesg31 was one to watch! ) @MikeCB @ZeroCodez @stewart.anstey @Milan_Kalem @bobthebear @thomas_k_x @pod2 @Amirsaifolo @siguy85 @Marcos_Alfonso @richschaeffer @JulianJohansen @leoncalverley @Denis_MLoan @jg80 @perelin @ddsgadget
  
  

Perseverant Solvers:

• @Willyham @esattav @314tko have joined the ranks of Perseverant Solvers this month, providing Solutions on topics that were still welcoming replies!

• @MiguelOrtiz @jamesg31 @Rodrigo_Carrizo are currently holding the top 3 spots to earn these gold, silver, bronze badges! One more week left to hold onto those spots or increase your lead!

Let's see if we can get more of these welcoming-replies topics toward solutions!

• Look for the topics that don't have a check mark icon at the front of the title in that list!
• Then offer your sage advice, your two cents, troubleshooting tips, docs, or even a full answer! You never know -- that tidbit of info you share could be what Solves it!

Fast Responders

• Since my last update, @bobthebear @jamesg31 @Steven_W @pyrrho have passed the threshold of 5 replies on topics within 2 days of topic creation! Well done, athletes! Keep it up and help others out with some quick wins -- even if you don't end up topping the charts, it's got to be great for karma and every comment will certainly add to your all-time ToolTips score!

• @abusedmedia @stefancvrkotic @trz-justin-dev @adam_grid @TobiasOhlsson @erispoe are close as well! Comment on some newly created topics this week to earn this badge
  

  

Creative Expression

There are two "community athletes" here who are battling it out in this challenge event!

Thank you @khill-fbmc for your Community Show & Tell posts this month! These are all awesome additions to the collective repertoire here in the forum

• Chat Component - Custom CSS
• Preact in Custom Components
• Type Hints for any code in Retool!

Sooo, who's going to bring some healthy competition? Anyone cooking up a Show & Tell topic this week? Or is @khill-fbmc a shoe-in for this badge having shared 3 awesome topics?! The more creativity expressed in our Show & Tell category, the better!

Folks -

• Cast your votes of support for one the above Show & Tell topics to determine which will take Bronze/Silver/Gold, and / or:
• Consider creating your own Show & Tell topic to share a cool project you built with Retool!
  • Doesn't have to be ground-breaking!
  • Learn how to solve a new type of use case that you think others could learn from? Share a how-to walkthrough with the community. We'd love to learn from what you've built and discovered on the platform!

Final week!

Whether it's commenting to lend a helping hand, persevering toward a solution, or showing support for creative expression in the Community Show & Tell category:

Go forth and amplify each others' topics here in the forum and we'll touch base next week to announce the 3 podium champions in each event!

[kbn]

Alright, one more update from your commentator here as we head into the final stretch of this Challenge through end of day Monday September 2! See where the standings stand, and let's give it one final push to the finish line

Side note - are folks getting up to something fun this weekend, interspersed with any Retool building you might have planned? Tell us about it! In the US, we're heading into a holiday weekend where we all get one last dose of summer -- or in San Francisco, we celebrate that summer has finally arrived

Helping Hands:

• Next week we'll recognize the top 3 contributors who replied to the most topics tagged with welcoming-replies after they initially didn't receive a community response!

• It's a close race for Bronze with @MikeCB and @jg80 tied and @Milan_Kalem @ZeroCodez @stewart.anstey close at hand! Thank you all for extending a helping hand to those who've been awaiting input from the community for several days before you chimed in!

Perseverant Solvers:

• These folks have persevered to provide the ultimate Solution on topics that initially didn't get a community response for awhile (welcoming-replies). Thanks for turning it around and reaching a solution that could help not only the OP, but many other forum viewers to come! :

• @MiguelOrtiz and @jamesg31 appear to be solidly on the podium at this point, but only 1 solution apart! This seems like those cases where only 1 one-hundredth of a second separates each medal, like we see in some of the Swimming and Track and Field races each Olympics!

• Bronze is also up for grabs -- let's bring it home!

Fast Responders

• Amazing speedy responses by all of these folks! Newly surpassing the threshold (5 replies on unique topics within 2 days of topic creation) to earn this badge: @abusedmedia @GuilhermeSilva !!
• Fun fast fact: looking at the past 3 months, compared to the previous 3, the Average First Response Time that our community topic creators can expect has improved by 35% quarter-over-quarter and is further improving each week! Teamwork makes the dreamwork - every reply you contribute helps make this community feel like a more and more welcoming place for learning and sharing!
• For Bronze, Silver, Gold, @MiguelOrtiz @jg80 @ZeroCodez are currently on the podium but with @bobthebear @MikeCB not far behind as we approach the finish line!
• Thank you all for extending guidance to your community members when it's most impactful for the person asking! Keep it up team!
  
  

Creative Expression

• In the past 5 days we've seen 3 new Community Show + Tell topics sharing cool things you've built in Retool! Thank you @stefancvrkotic @explore @weeks ! And thanks again to @khill-fbmc for your 3 topics from earlier in August! Thank you all for sharing these awesome additions to our Show & Tell category So cool to see what you've built and thankful for these hints that will live on in the public sphere to help many other builders!

• Cast your "like" for your favorite of these topics and we'll announce the winners of the top 3 (Bronze, Silver, Gold) podium badges for Creative Expression next week!

Topic	Contributor	Likes as of 12pm PT Aug 30th
Plotly AI helper	stefancvrkotic	7
Type Hints for any code in Retool!	khill-fbmc	5
Looping Through Multiple Pages of a REST API Using Recursive Workflows in Retool	explore	4
Chat Component - Custom CSS	khill-fbmc	3
A Dynamic Pivot Table Generator	weeks	2
Preact in Custom Components	khill-fbmc	1

Have a great weekend, everyone! And get ready for a victory lap next week!

[kbn]

Back with your final results!

Drumroll for the final results of our challenge, across multiple events of knowledge-sharing community contributions during the month of August...

Helping Hands:

Bronze: @trz-justin-dev -- swooped in during the last 2 days of this challenge to take Bronze! Thank you for your 9 super helpful replies on lingering topics within the span of 2 days!! Congrats!

Silver: @jamesg31 -- as it was foretold, as someone relatively new to the community forum at the beginning of the month, you kept up your highly useful advice on these topics in need of guidance, extending a helping hand to 19 topics still awaiting pointers. You added great questions to get momentum toward a solution! Congrats on the silver! Badge coming your way shortly!

Gold: @MiguelOrtiz -- you are everywhere in the forum and you were especially attuned to the topics still welcoming replies this month! You commented on 25 of them, making folks feel welcome and working toward meaningful technical tips, workarounds, and solutions! Impressive run, maintaining the top slot in this "event" from the get-go! Gold badge recognition well deserved.

Thank you also to @MikeCB @jg80 @ZeroCodez @stewart.anstey @Milan_Kalem for chiming in on several of these welcoming replies! As a community every contribution counts and adds up to the collaborative vibes we're all going for

Question for the group -- feel free to chime in here in the comments, or DM me your thoughts:

• Should we continue adding a tag like welcoming-replies to bump topics that initially went unanswered for 2-3 days back to the "latest" on the front page for visibility? We could automate this to give topics a second chance at community input Let us know if you think we should do this!
• From monitoring our metrics, it looks like bumping unanswered threads after the first several days had a positive impact on time to first response (39% better average first reply time in August than July) and lowered the number of topics that never got a reply (similar, slightly better in August than July).

Perseverant Solvers:

This 'event' required working toward a confirmed Solution on topics that had originally gone unanswered for several days. These could have been tougher ones, or initially couldn't be reproduced, didn't have enough info for the community to help, etc. but these folks persevered to get to a workable solution! Ah, that sweet taste of victory having helped to solve a tough problem that may not have been solved otherwise!

Bronze: We have a tie for third! Congrats @jg80 @Rodrigo_Carrizo!

Silver: @jamesg31 takes another Silver!

Gold: @MiguelOrtiz takes another Gold, by 1 solution! This is like one of those swimming or track finals that end in a one-one-hundredth of a second differentiator between the medals!

Well done and thank you to all of these folks!

Fast Responders

All of these folks contributed replies on at least 5 topics within the first 2 days since that topic was created! One of the best experiences one can have on a forum is receiving timely input from others, and feeling like we're all in this together to learn about and unblock Retool building

@MiguelOrtiz @ZeroCodez @jg80 @bobthebear @MikeCB @jamesg31 @Milan_Kalem @Steven_W @GuilhermeSilva @pyrrho @abusedmedia

Thank you and congrats to all 11 of you on earning this badge via your contributions in August!

Creative Expression

Such useful use cases and tips were surfaced in this month's Community Show & Tell topics! Thank you to all of these badge earners -- and everyone please do keep sharing your insights in that category

Bronze: @explore 's Looping Through Multiple Pages of a REST API Using Recursive Workflows in Retool

Silver: @khill-fbmc 's Type Hints for any code in Retool!

Gold: @stefancvrkotic 's Plotly AI helper

You'll all see these badges applied on your profile very soon!

Next up: our learning-focused 🍎 September Retool Community Challenge: Back to School Edition📚 - see you there!

Have feedback on our challenges? Please send me ( @kbn ) a DM here on the forum! We'd love to hear your ideas for future recognition and what fun community building efforts you'd like to see.

[khill-fbmc]

Great job everyone!!

I have to commend Retool and say, that no other company we work with is this engaged with their customers.

I come here so much I only have to type com

[MiguelOrtiz]

@kbn

Should we continue adding a tag like welcoming-replies to bump topics that initially went unanswered for 2-3 days back to the "latest" on the front page for visibility? We could automate this to give topics a second chance at community input Let us know if you think we should do this!

Hey @kbn, thanks for the kind words! I

With regards to your question. I did find it encouraging how the tag helped resurface some topics that were initially untouched, hence I think it a good idea and it has helped users get a response.

With regards to how to implement it for the future, would it be possible to add it next to the main categories here?:

these are the ones I'm using predominantly, and I don't think I'd make a habit of searching for awaiting replies tag. However, if it is in a more visible way I would be taking a look to them more often.

[kbn]

Thanks @khill-fbmc - that is high praise, thank you for the feedback and enthusiasm! I've shared the sentiment internally - lots of Retool team members contribute to keeping in touch with our customers! Love to hear it's having a positive impact on your experience. We even have an umbrella org for multiple teams (of which many of us interacting here on the forum are a part) called "Technical Customer Experience"

And really glad you're an avid community.retool.com user such that your browser just knows -- same!

[kbn]

@MiguelOrtiz thank you for the input! Great to hear that the tag has been helpful to resurface topics that were initially untouched. I've looked into ways to make this more findable from the main page, and found we could "pin" the tag in the Tags section in the left-hand sidebar. I've made an update so that these are the default tags -- looks like the only order option is alphabetical which puts 'w' tags at the bottom

You can further customize by going to the pencil icon to the right of "Tags" and select only the tags you want to see. So if you, for example, want to prioritize answering/seeing others' questions about JavaScript or SQL or topics that initially went unanswered after several days, you could select only those 3 tags for your own UI:

It's possible there may be other ways / some plugins we could explore in the future to make this a new tab up top next to Latest and Top, or add it to the menu when you click your Profile at top right.

Let's see how this left sidebar Tags section works to start!

[trz-justin-dev]

sorry for stealing bronze! i just wanted to give new people a chance to engage in the forum, and also i got busy. so at the end of the month i went to the remaining neglected topics

congrats everyone! haven't seen such an engaged community of developers like this before. reminds me of the old IRC chat days :')

[bobthebear]

I'm going to die a little on the inside if somebody asks what IRC is though. I already felt unnecessarily old when I heard someone ask what VHS was, I don't think I can take much more

[khill-fbmc]

And then there is my child is confused by music being able to be played from a circle of plastic with a laser.

I guess to a kid, how does that make any more/less sense than carving tiny tiny grooves in a piece of vinyl?

[kbn]

(Agree that all of the iterations of music-listening technology make about the same amount of sense as to how they work I was partial to the portable cassette tape player / walkman of the late 90s/early 2000s )

One more thing:
Realized I left out one category from the Challenge wrap up update! The Top Fifteen Tooltips event! So I'm circling back to make sure to recognize these folks who ranked in the top 15 for overall Retool Community participation during our August challenge (based on Tooltips)!

Thank you for being here and for all of your contributions last month, and congrats on being in the top fifteen during August: @MiguelOrtiz @jg80 @bobthebear @ZeroCodez @jamesg31 @trz-justin-dev @pyrrho @MikeCB @khill-fbmc @Steven_W @Scottsky @Milan_Kalem @agaitan026 @stefancvrkotic @PadenM @matei

Your contributions span feature requests, asking questions, helping each other out, 'liking' insightful comments, sharing cool workarounds and Show & Tell topics, visiting/reading topics on the forum regularly, and more! Appreciate your part in making this space collaborative, useful, and fun for fellow Retool builders.

Forgive me for also making a brief shameless plug to check out our current 🍎 September Retool Community Challenge: Back to School Edition📚 - and the recent Retool University launch - to continue to collaborative learning fun!

[Scottsky]

Wow!
Congrats to all the participants.

Say, could this screen you used for this illustration be available as a module for retool? I'm working on the gamification mechanic for a science project. Looks like something it really benefit of.

[kbn]

Hey @Scottsky - short answer is this leaderboard isn't something that integrates directly into Retool out-of-the-box. That screenshot was from here in our forum via a plugin, which is powered by Discourse. Still, happy to share more about our Tooltips system and some resources you could look at when building something like it!

More about the recognition leaderboard use case for our forum: Our ToolTips recognition system: How it works

What might be more useful for your purposes is the link at the bottom of that topic^ to the Discourse plugin that powers the leaderboard and points system: Discourse Gamification - plugin - Discourse Meta . That page links to the open source github repo.

If you're open to it, create a Discussion topic and maybe others here have some more ideas on how to create something similar in Retool! Either way, let us know in Community Show & Tell if you end up building a gamification/recognition leaderboard in Retool! Interested to learn about the science project too

[ZeroCodez]

Thank you for the recognition.