Solution Challenge August 2023 in our Retool Developer Community Forum!

[kbn]

For the month of August, Retool is running a Solution Challenge to encourage, celebrate and reward top community contributors who provide confirmed solutions to each others’ questions on the Retool Developer Community Forum!

Join fellow builders, as well as Retool engineers, support engineers, and product managers by posting or responding to posts in any of our forum sections.

See the current top solution contributors from the past month here: http://community.retool.com/u?order=solutions period=monthly .

Huge shoutout to @ScottR, @Bradlymathews, @stefancvrkotic, @dcartlidge, @minijohn, @mdsmith1, @lamh_bytecode.io, @jocen who have been the top contributors of solutions, questions, ideas, and feedback on the forum over the past year! More recently, @lenti, @bonnyag, @mbruijnpff, @AnsonHwang, @Bruno_de_Queiroz have been rising as top solution contributors:

These folks make a BIG impact in creating active, useful resources for other Retool builders on the forums without any contest incentives in place!

Why run a Solution Challenge?

• When we solve a problem on the forum once, that solution is available for thousands of Retool builders in the future.
• We want to boost the visibility of the forum, and empower Retool builders to learn from each other, share advice and ideas on Retool use cases that solve useful problems!
• We’d like for this contest to inject even more energy and activity into the community forum, to keep making it even more useful and active as it scales.
• We hope this one-month challenge will inspire you to continue posting in the forum on an ongoing basis. Depending on this first challenge, we may run more of these Solution Challenges!

Rules:

• Contribute your Retool expertise by helping to answer other Retool builders’ and users’ questions on posts here at community.retool.com (see high level section overviews on our Welcome to the Retool community! post)
• You can answer older posts too.
• Retool Community Support Engineers review every post and mark Solutions as we see them. If a post is already marked “Solution”, we'll verify it to ensure quality and accuracy.
• A quality solution could include links to documentation, an app export, screenshots, or sample code. It should fully answer the original posted question. When marked as Solution, the post will be locked the next day for review by our team.
• Only the original poster or a forum Admin can mark posts as “Solution” (Solved | Discourse - Civilized Discussion).
• There will be 3 winners (non-Retool employees) with the top number of marked solutions during the period of Aug 1-31, 2023.

Timeline:

• The month of August 1-31, 2023
• Winners (top 3 community members with the most marked Solutions) announced by September 8th

Prizes:

• 1st place:
  • Opportunity to speak with our CEO, David Hsu, for 30 mins on the topic of your choice
  • $1000 in credits on your future Retool invoices*
• 2nd place:
  • $500 in credits on your future Retool invoices*
• 3rd place:
  • $250 in credits on your future Retool invoices*

*credits expire in 1 year on Sept 30, 2024. Credit prize can be applied to the Team or Business plan purchased self-service via credit card. Alternative prize available if credits aren’t applicable.

Questions? Ask us in the #solution-challenge-Aug2023 channel in our Retool Discord Community server. Sign up for the Discord server if you're not already in it

Let the collaboration and solution finding begin!!

[kbn]

Week 1 Solution Challenge Update
Hey solution challengers! Thought I’d drop in with an update now that our Solution Challenge has been live for 1 full week, with 3 weeks to go!

We’ve seen an exciting increase in engagement across the forum. So far as of Aug 7th at 6pm PT, a total of 28 members contributed at least 1 verified solution (keep it up @Solution-Challenge-Aug23 !)

A friendly competition is brewing as @AnsonHwang soared up the chart to 1st with 15 verified solutions in the past week, and @ScottR who was top solution contributor in July holds onto 2nd place. Looks like a close field going for 3rd place!

See the full leaderboard of all 28 solution contributors from the community so far

Metrics highlights from the past week:

• 35% increase in solutions, helping future developers find answers quickly
• 11% increase in page views, representing more learning from discussions and answers already here on the forum
• 33% increase in new contributors, adding nearly 100 newly active members to the community
• 27% increase in likes, as more people contribute thoughtful, useful replies to keep momentum toward solutions, and appreciate each other for it
• 58% of community topics got a reply from a member of the community who doesn’t work at Retool within 2 weeks of creation, compared to 38% in July. This metric has been steeply climbing! We all know it feels amazing to hear back from a variety of folks when posting a new topic!

Thank you all for participating – can’t wait to see what the next 3 weeks hold

[kbn]

Week 2 Solution Challenge Update!
@Solution-Challenge-Aug23 Here we are, halfway through the Solution Challenge! The field is heating up with a lot of movement and a flurry of empathetic responses and collaborative efforts to arrive at solutions.

Here’s the current leaderboard for all of August (8/1-8/14) including all community members who contributed more than 1 verified solution:

@AnsonHwang has been on lately, tallying 40 total verified solutions this month. @ScottR holds onto second place with 17 verified solutions, and @mbruijnpff has quickly surged into 3rd place this past week with 10 total verified solutions this month! @jocen and @dcartlidge are close by tied for 4th @bg1900 @bonnyag @mawdo81 have each shared 2 verified solutions

It’s been amazing to see many of you working together in the comments on forum topics, collaborating to build momentum toward a solution

Recent trends:
We can use this dashboard to view verified solutions contributed by community members in just the past week of August 9-14:

You may see some newer contributors popping onto the board for this month: Welcome to the challenge @DavidS @rober97752 @joshuachough @samve @Nyoma_Diamond @Christelle_Marfaing who have each contributed 1 verified solution in the past week! And keep an eye out for @mawdo81 who posted 2 solutions just today!

We’re now up to 35 community members who've contributed at least one verified solution this month See the weekly leaderboard of all 35 solution contributors from the community so far.

In other exciting metrics news this week:

• Last week I reported that 58% of community topics got a reply from a member of the community who doesn’t work at Retool within 2 weeks of creation, compared to 38% in July. Now, we’ve reached 64% of posts created getting a reply from the community within 2 weeks!

There’s a stretch of two weeks ahead of us before the end of the challenge - still plenty of time to contribute solutions and see what we can all accomplish together. You ready? Let’s do this!

[kbn]

Week 3 Solution Challenge Update!
We're in the final stretch of the Solutions Challenge with under 10 days left till the end of August

Recent trends:
In the past week, we've seen 14 more people contribute at least one Solution, bringing us to 49 total community members contributing at least 1 solution during the month of August! Awesome knowledge sharing and collaboration @Solution-Challenge-Aug23 - keep it up! See the leaderboard for the past week showing all 49 folks who've contributed a verified solution during August.

Solutions from @mathfour, @haj, @David_Roegiers, @jackLai, @nmz, @totaltool, @Sydney_Runkle, @aking43, @WolfSheep, @number15, @Aussie, @stephen1215, @CWhite, @igordisco were recently verified, marking their first solution contributed this month. Thank you all for contributing confirmed answers here in the forum - others will be able to see and learn from your solutions for a long time into the future!

Meanwhile, here is the current leaderboard of folks who have contributed at least 2 verified solutions in August (8/1-8/21)

See above for the prizes on the line for the top 3 solution contributors

We may also throw in a separate surprise prize, as we want to share appreciation for things that help build a community of Retool builders and facilitate learning besides just marked Solutions. For example, welcoming newer users to the forum, contributing comments that help move a topic toward resolution even if a different person ultimately shared the confirmed solution, etc.

In the metrics:

• We're still hovering around 63% of posts receiving a reply from a member of the community who doesn't work at Retool within 2 weeks, up from 38% in July and peaking at 65% last week:
  
  

We love seeing all of the collaborative efforts happening here every day! Stay tuned for another update next Tuesday, when we'll have just 2 more days of August to go for this particular challenge!

[kbn]

Week 4 Solution Challenge Update!
tl;dr: TWO more days till the end of our August solution challenge Please read on for a near-complete look at metrics highlights from the past month of activity in the forum! And stay tuned here on this thread for the official announcement of the top 3 solution contributors August 1-31, to be posted next Tuesday, September 6th by 6pm Pacific time.

Recent trends:
In the past week, we've seen 17 more people contribute at least one Solution during August, bringing us to 66 total community members contributing at least 1 solution during the month of August! Thank you @Swift @Theo @edurmush @27shutterclicks @Bogdan_Mind @CCM @Que @EdiEz.Online @Roberto_Torres @Davidkm @a0527128448 @hpurmann @asmarcondes @BoscoDomingoSamara @DavidM @lamh_bytecode.io @minijohn for contributing solutions that were marked within the past week!

Awesome knowledge sharing and collaboration @Solution-Challenge-Aug23 - keep it up! See the leaderboard for the past week including all 66 folks who've contributed a verified solution during August.

See below for the current leaderboard of folks who have contributed at least 2 verified solutions during August (8/1-8/29)

In the metrics:
Comparing the month of August so far to the month of July (looking at July 29-Aug 29 vs June 28-July 28):

• 68% increase in Likes on the forum compared to last month (from 640 to 1100), as folks appreciate each others' contributions
• 33% increase in comments (from 2300 to 3100)
• 22% increase in topics created (from 517 to 632)
• 18% increase in Daily engaged users (from 44.8 to 53 – number of users who have liked or posted in past day)
• We're averaging 61% of posts receiving a reply from a member of the community who doesn't work at Retool within 2 weeks, up from 38% in July and peaking at 65% earlier this month. More recently we see a slight drop-off to 59%, but still well up from July!
  • Time permitting, encourage y'all to keep on responding to your fellow builders soon after they create a post, if you have any ideas or suggestions for how to move the post toward a Solution Thanks to those already helping move threads along by asking for details that will help us all move toward a Solution!

I'll re-share again that we LOVE seeing all of the collaborative efforts happening here every day! Keep sharing ideas and Retool expertise with each other. Consider sharing gratitude and appreciation with a like or a comment when you see another contributor post a really useful comment!

Coming soon:
Official announcement of the top 3 solution contributors August 1-31 will be posted on this thread next Tuesday, September 6th by 6pm Pacific time!

Also, next week with the announcement, we'll be sharing out a survey requesting your feedback on this challenge and what you'd like to see in the forum. We'd love to learn from your thoughts on this experiment, and invite you to help us plan for continuing to grow the forum's activity and usefulness in the future!

Got some final solutions to share to answer your fellow Retool builders' questions? Get those comments in by ~5pm August 31st Pacific time, so our team can mark the last verified solutions of August by the end of the day Pacific time - let's do this!

Your fellow Retool community members ready for you to pass them solutions to their questions on the forum:

[mdsmith1]

Kayla:

Thank you very much. This is a great analysis.

I am glad you are recognizing the volunteer contributors. They deserve to be recognized.

I get good answers from both the volunteer and employed contributors.

Mike

[kbn]

Thanks for the feedback @mdsmith1! Glad you've found these updates useful. I share your gratitude for both volunteer contributors and Retool employee contributors!

We're all here to help each other learn and reach our goals while building with Retool, and to work together on improving both our own apps and use cases and the Retool platform itself So thankful for folks' contributions to these goals every single day.

Final update/announcement for the August Solutions Challenge coming up soon

[kbn]

Final Solution Challenge Update

Thank you to all 78 volunteer community contributors (@Solution-Challenge-Aug23 ) who added at least 1 verified solution to the forum last month!

Below is the final leaderboard of 20 people who contributed 2 or more verified Solutions to the forum during August 1-31, 2023! Thank you @AnsonHwang @ScottR @mbruijnpff @dcartlidge @jocen @Swift @bradlymathews @edurmush @number15 @pyrrho @PatrickMast @bonnyag @bg1900 @27shutterclicks @vinnie @WolfSheep @mdsmith1 @Konstantin_Kiss @Maineac01 @mawdo81 for spending time sharing solutions with other Retool builders here on the forum!

I also want to recognize @edurmush who contributed 4 solutions at the very end of the month between August 29-31 (and 2 more since)!

Drum roll for the top 3 contributors during August:

• Coming in first place, we have @AnsonHwang with 78 verified solutions contributed

• In second place, we have @ScottR with 36 verified solutions contributed

• And in third place, @mbruijnpff with 20 verified solutions contributed

These three contributors share their knowledge from 3 different continents and provided a combined verified 134 solutions (!) to questions on the forum, plus many more helpful comments and interactions with fellow builders. Thank you for your time and generous knowledge-sharing! We'll be in touch with you directly and you'll receive your prizes (as described above) soon! @AnsonHwang we hope you enjoy your conversation with David Hsu, our CEO

You can see the solutions board here on an ongoing basis.

Metrics we achieved together last month:

• More solution contributors: Combining volunteer contributors with Retool employees who contributed at least 1 verified solution, we had 97 total individuals contributing solutions in August, compared to 80 in July and an all time high

• More verified solutions added: Together we added 329 total verified solutions in August, compared to 224 verified solutions added in July. That's a 47% month-over-month increase in solutions added and an all time high, with 105 more solutions added than last month!

• Higher rate of new forum users: we welcomed 482 new user signups in August - an all time high

• Greater daily engagement: 28% increase in daily engaged users, up to 55 in August from 43 in July (number of users that have liked or posted in the past day)

• Greater visibility: 20% increase in page views by logged in + anonymous (not logged in) users, up to an all time monthly high of 364,655 views in August

This is huge, and trending in exciting directions. Thank you all!

A surprise prize: Community Builder

During this challenge, we honed in on recognizing Solutions , because one clear Solution to a question here in our public forum can help hundreds or thousands of Retool builders in the future. However, simply the number of solutions contributed is not the only thing we care about on the Forum.

We'd like to additionally recognize @dcartlidge for being an empathetic Community Builder who consistently helps other community members work toward resolution and explore possible approaches. Dave welcomed new users on their first post at least 7 times this month, creating friendly first impressions and useful suggestions, shared workarounds to popular feature requests, and helped other Retool developers learn how to approach a problem rather than only share the answer. Dave's been part of the Retool developer community forum for over 2 years now and we're all lucky to have such a consistent and empathetic contributor here in this space.

Examples of Dave's community-building contributions in support of others' learning:

• Asking for more information quickly after a topic was created in order to keep momentum toward resolution, then sharing a solution the next day. The new forum user that Dave helped in that post (@spatel) then contributed their first solution to knowledge-share on the forum themselves a few weeks later!

• Commenting with a high degree of empathy: In this reply, Dave shared appreciation for types of context (like videos/screenshares) that help community members understand the original poster's question. Dave's answer was clear and thorough, walking through the pro's and con's of several possible approaches to help others understand the "why" of his response. This encourages others to post detailed questions with context, and helps folks learn the thought process that will help them solve problems in the future, not only the specific answer.

• Sharing workarounds to popular feature requests: There's nothing quite like the gift of a good workaround, like this one that Dave shared while also voicing support of other contributors' feature request to support google fonts in the Retool product out-of-the-box

• Responding within hours to new contributors' posts

Thank you @dcartlidge , we appreciate you! We'll reach out to you directly about a prize to say thank you.

We have many community-builders here in the forum - thank you to all of you for making this space the kind of community we all want to be part of! Shoutout to everyone mentioned up top who was an active contributor before this first solutions challenge. We see you.

We'd love to hear your feedback!

Your friendly neighborhood Retool Community Support Engineers (@Tess @victoria @Kabirdas @joeBumbaca and I) would love to hear your thoughts on how the Solutions Challenge went from your perspective during the month of August, and what else you'd love to see in the forum!

Please fill out this survey form, and share as much or as little as you'd like. Thank you

[dcartlidge]

Congrats to @AnsonHwang @ScottR and @mbruijnpff !
It's been great to see so much activity on the forum these last few weeks and hopefully this momentum continues. I'm also very humbled that simply continuing to do what I do has been recognised in this way, many thanks