July Challenge: Flags & Freedom

[Paulo]

This July, we are celebrating creative freedom in the Retool Community Forum, to recognize and reward creativity!

Did you know that Belarus , the United States , Venezuela , Argentina , Bahamas , São Tomé and Príncipe , Kiribati, Montenegro , France , Colombia , Belgium , Liberia , Maldives , and Peru all celebrate their Independence Day in July? Happy early Independence Day to our members celebrating this month!

Creative freedom is expressed in many ways in our forum. We are constantly amazed by your innovative workarounds and use cases. This month, we’re introducing the Freedom and Flags awards:

• Freedom Awards: For the three most liked Show & Tell topics created between July 1-31.
• Flags Award: For the user who flags the most outdated solutions.

How to Participate:

• Flag outdated posts to keep our content free of outdated solutions.
• Create and like Show & Tell topics to share your projects and innovations.

At the end of the month, we’ll recognize the top contributors with special badges and some sweet Retool swag.

The Challenges:

The Flagbearer

Awarded to the user who flags the most outdated posts, helping keep our community up-to-date.

The Freethinker Award

Awarded to the user with the third most liked Show & Tell topic.

The Maverick Award

Awarded to the user with the second most liked Show & Tell topic.

Ultimate Inspiration Award

Awarded to the user with the most liked Show & Tell topic.

You can also participate (earning ToolTips) by giving a like and showing your support!

[Paulo]

Hello everyone! We have about two more weeks of this challenge.

Here are our current top 10 on leaderboard since July 1st:

Big ups to @WidleStudioLLP and @GuilhermeSilva!

@WidleStudioLLP joined our community less than a month ago and already provided 3 solutions.

@GuilhermeSilva has been with us for 2 months and already provided 9 solutions.

We welcome you as heroes and appreciate the significant impact you've already made. We can't wait to see the continued contributions you'll bring to our community.

Awards

Currently, @sophie is in the lead for the Ultimate Inspiration Award. If you work with charts, or plan to in the future, we highly recommend you to checkout this topic!

Plotly Guides Part I: Basic line charts + cool features

We feel that charting with Plotly is a seriously underrated option in Retool, and most devs on the platform aren’t really utilizing the power of Plotly enough. So - by popular demand - we’re launching a series of blog posts around building great charts in Retool and harnessing the many options available using the Plotly library. In Part I, we start by breaking down the basics of line charts: Plotly in Retool: Pros and Cons Plotly Essentials Scatter plot/line graph step-by-step: Chart 1: Ba…

@JoeyKarczewski is in the lead for The Maverick Award with a topic that introduces what his team built to facilitate the making of Sankey diagrams!

More complex charting in Retool: Sankey Diagrams

Hey all ! Excited to launch this new Plotly guide because we’ve been building something we think is really cool: sankeygenerator.com. Anyone who spends any time on Reddit will know that Sankey diagrams are a bit of a passion for data nerds. They’re a great way to visualize things like budgets, data flows and anything that shows a flow of values between points. Nevertheless, most Sankey chart generators out there have clunky user interfaces and require complicated set-up through fairly outdated…

@khill-fbmc is in the lead for the The Freethinker Award with two different topics, one to help you build Retool URLs, and another one sharing his findings on how to make a Chrome extension out of your Retool App.

Chrome Extension - Retool Embedder

Hello again everyone, I have been learning about Chrome Extensions recently and had an idea for one for us Retoolers... What if you made a handy little Retool app, and you wanted it to live inside Chrome, following you around in the side panel while you browse... Now this is just barely working and my code is cobbled together with ChatGPT's help. See MessageBroker.ts if you are interested in one of it's creations. I wanted to see if I should take the time to polish it up and "release" it offi…

If you haven't yet, check them out and show your support by giving a like! On the other hand, we are still on time to create Show & Tell topics and make it to the top.


The Flagbearer is still up for grabs! So to make this more interesting, we'll extend it to topics that help keep our collective knowledge up to date. This includes reporting missing documentation, broken links, outdated solutions, etc.

[Paulo]

Here are the winners of the Flags & Freedom challenge!

@JoeyKarczewski is the winner the Free Thinker award! Thank you for creating the sankeygenerator.com and sharing it with the Community. Building Sankey diagrams can be tedious and you have now provided us with a tool to make our lives easier!

@khill-fbmc is the winner of the Maverick award! Thank you for pushing the limits of what can be done with Retool. Embedding an app to a Chrome extension opens a door to a new world of opportunities!

The Ultimate Inspiration award goes to @sophie! Thank you for taking the time creating a complete guide on how to work with Plotly! Everyone that has worked with charts in Retool knows that Plotly is highly opinionated and breaks easily. Your guide facilitates creating line charts of all levels of complexity, which is one the most common ways to render data.

Keeping our content up to date is as important as creating new content. @bobthebear, @jg80, and @ZeroCodez are the winners of the Flagbearer award! Thank you @bobthebear for your attention to detail, letting us know that one of our docs needs an update. On the other hand, @ZeroCodez found an outdated solution and provided a way of solving the problem with the current state of Retool. @jg80 flagged an outdated solution. Thank you for helping keep our collective knowledge up to date!

Final Thoughts

Creative Freedom is the reason why most of us fall in love with development. It allows us to explore uncharted territories, push boundaries, and bring our unique visions to life. Whether we're breaking conventions with a Maverick approach, inspiring others as a Free Thinker, or setting the gold standard with the Ultimate Inspiration, the ability to freely express our ideas fuels our passion and drives innovation. Each award we celebrate reflects the limitless possibilities that creative freedom offers, reminding us why we began this journey in the first place.

Happy Building!