Thank you for joining the SAS Support Communities. We hope you are finding it to be a valuable resource.
When you’re ready to post a question, here are a few helpful tips from Chris Hemedinger, manager of the SAS Support Communities:
Experts who respond on the communities have tremendous experience and intuition, but they aren't mind readers. You have to form good questions if you want to receive a helpful response.
Here are some tips for success:
- Search on the communities site or Google first, before posting a new question. The act of entering a new question helps with this because you'll see the subject line "autocomplete" with suggested matching topics, even before you post. Search Google, too, to turn up a broader range of possible solutions. You may run across papers that refer to your problem and pages outside of the SAS communities, as well as community posts.
- Post into the most appropriate board. There are boards for most SAS products, and these are monitored regularly by experts. Posting on the correct board ensures your topic is seen by the most qualified experts. Boards are listed under these categories on the communities.sas.com homepage.
- Use a precise subject line. Try to include your goal, error message, SAS procedure name, function -- whatever keywords will help an expert to "pick up" your question as something he/she could answer. (Pro tip: "Urgent help needed!" or "SAS question" are not effective subject lines.)
- Share example data. Many questions can be answered properly only when the responders can see the "shape" and characteristics of your data. Don't share anything proprietary, of course.
- Show what you have tried. Community members love to nudge you toward the proper solution, but it helps if you share what you've already tried and if you hit any walls...explain. If you have special constraints (must use an older version of SAS, product set, etc.), share that too.
- When you receive a helpful reply, come back and mark it as an Accepted Solution, or at least click Like for the replies that are helpful. This action will help you and others to find answers.
These tips are taken from a larger blog post, How SAS Support Communities can expedite your tech support experience. Check it out for more details on how to make the most of your communities experience.
