quite few support requests in the forum always lack very basic information like sample data, workflow or a screenshot. I’d like to suggest to add a dedicated field or at least a reminder to provide these. Maybe a dedicated category or tag for support requests would be nice as well.
Furthermore, having a feature at ones disposal directly in Knime, maybe a dedicated node, which allows to:
Upload sample data (with anonymization via scrambling if possible)
Screenshot and a description
to quickly create a topic from within Knime might be another opportunity. By the way, did the Knime team consider support plans for these cases? Basically logging in remotely?
Great ideas @mwiegand , I sometimes think that people asking questions believe that the forum regulars are either mind-readers or are capable of building complex workflows purely in their heads, whereas in reality other than for some very basic “patterns”, I for one almost always need to adopt the approach of "how about we try this as a starting point , and then see where that gets us… nope… didn’t work, ok then what about… "
There really is no excuse for a person asking a data-transformation question to not be able to provide basic sample data - I agree that the ability to anonymize data would be great, but I also think that the action of creating a minimal-but-representative dataset for the very specific part of the workflow where they have encountered the problem can very often guide the questioner in being able to ask the real question, and get to the heart of the issue.
Thanks @takbb. When I was the product owner of a global system I could very well understand team colleagues struggling with something and then being tasked to even write simple things as “In order to, I want to” with an URL and screenshot.
Providing some sort of framework, whenever via a simple post template like when you submit a bug in some Git projects like ZigBee2MQTT (btw, excellently executed):
Or more integrated approaches like the report issue feature in Google Ads where the URL and a screenshot are collected alongside submitting the request, would definitely make the Knime community - worth to note that this community is pretty much all competing tools lack - stand out even more.
A community isn’t something easy to gain nor maintain but it really can become the driving force behind a tools success.
