Finding the answers that you seek

[#1]

The Atlassian Community is an amazing resource not only for questions and answers but also for sharing ideas and discussing various topics of interest. Certainly the primary traffic volume is associated with Q&A. As a longtime contributor to the Community, particularly in the area of Q&A, I thought I would take a moment and share my experience and thoughts about how to quickly get to those answers we all seek.

Is anyone here that can help me???

Where to start?

Quite often Atlassian product users start where so many of us these days look for answers…

And most often where this will lead you is directly to they Atlassian Community. Why, you might ask? Because, that is where the best answers are of course! 👍

However, Google isn't always the best place to start, or at least not the best place to end your search. Rather, now that you have found your way to the Community, why not try out the Community’s own search capabilities?

Finding the good stuff!

This search bar can lead you to a treasure-trove of answers. Many of these answers are very detailed, full of great discussions and ideas as well as links to other great content such as other posts and Atlassian documentation.

Bottom line…

If you feel incomplete with the first answer you landed on don't stop there, continue your search within the community. A little bit of effort will pay off.

When you begin your search in the Community search bar the auto complete will offer several great suggestions. If you find one you like just click away. However, I often simply hit the carriage return which will take me to a page of all possible answers with a brief preview of the content. I find this helps me zero in on the right answer.

Documentation

Don't just stop with searching in the Community. Atlassian has an excellent resource in there product documentation and knowledge base articles. Head over to support.atlassian.com , select the product you are interested in and hit up the search bar there. I often find the best and most complete answers here. Especially if you are using cloud. Given the frequent changes that occur in Atlassian's SAS products it is often difficult to keep answers current. So I find myself leaning on both the community and the documentation to get “today’s best answer”.

I seem to have hit a dead end…

Still no answers?

Don't forget about Atlassian support. I have reached out to Atlassian support on a number of occasions and have found them quite responsive. So if you're out of ideas and can't seem to get an answer from the Community or documentation, don't hesitate to reach out to the experts - https://support.atlassian.com/contact/#/

Note: If you happen to be on the free version of your Atlassian product you won't receive access to the official support team so keep hitting up the community in hopes of getting the answer you desire.

The final words…

I wanted to end with a final message to all those who seek answers within any community forum. It is always important and certainly greatly appreciate by other members of the community when a seeker of knowledge has taken the time to research their question first.

• Look for similar questions

• Check the online documentation

When posting a question:

• Give your question a good title

• In the description be as clear and to the point as possible

• Explain what you have tried so far, any sources of information you have looked through

• Screenshots are always a bonus

• Provide details about your specific environment

Closing

I hope that this article has been helpful. I realize that for many the content here is surely obvious, but it rarely hurts to restate the obvious and often what is obvious to some is not to others.

[Fabian Lim]

Great post @Jack Brickey

If everyone followed this post, it would significantly reduce the number of questions.

[delmario]

@Jack Brickey great post!!  Thank you!!