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Quick Introduction to the Forums for New Users

Welcome to the NI Discussion Forums!  These boards serve as a community meeting point where you can post any problems, thoughts, or suggestions you may have regarding NI products.  Thousands of people worldwide – including NI engineers – can review your post and reply with their input. 

 

If you are new here, there are a few things you should be aware of before getting started.

 

Posting Basics

  • If you have a specific question related to one of our products, you can search for related keywords in the search box, which is located in the upper right corner of the main page.

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  • If you have some general questions or are not sure what to search for, you can browse our forums manually by product type.
  • Sometimes, you won’t be able to find a thread that answers your question.  In this situation, you can post a new topic under the board that represents your product. Before you can post, however, you will need to register for the forums.
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  • Feel free to post a reply to someone else’s thread if you have further, related questions or if you have something to add.  However, please try to keep these replies related to the original post!
  • The more you post, the more recognition you will get – by both your peers and National Instruments! 

 

Posting Tips

  • In order to get the best help and support from other community members, always make sure to respectfully post as much detailed information as possible in the clearest, most concise way possible (i.e. refraining from languages such as SMS). Please provide a good background description of your system. Useful items to include in your first post would be the following:
    • Specific hardware being used (for example, PCI-6221 or USB-6008)
    • All software and drivers being used, as well as versions
    • Operating system
    • Snapshots/images of important code snippits
    • Error number and/or detailed error message description

Please keep in mind that not all forum members have been working with LabVIEW or NI software or hardware for years.  Many of them are new to the products.  Treat each member on the forum with common courtesy, respect, and understanding, please. This is a platform used to help users resolve their issues and gain knowledge from more experienced users. 

 

Any spam that is posted to the forums will be removed promptly. 

 

 

What to Expect

  • After posting on the forums, you will usually see a reply from someone within a couple of days. Sometimes this reply will come from a non-NI employee; other times, one of our applications engineers with jump in and assist you with your issue.  For more pressing, show-stopping issues, you might see a member of our R&D team hop into the thread and post any relevant information or updates.

 

People

  • The Knights of NI: These contributors have consistently given back to the community via the forums for years. Due to their wide breadth of knowledge, users worldwide have been able to successfully troubleshoot anything from single-board snags to system-level issues. Not only that, but their willingness to spread their own experiences and understanding to all users of the community also highlights these users as truly selfless fountains of information sharing.
  • NI Employees: NI employees stand out in the community due to their aliases’ blue names. Often, an NI employee will jump into customer threads in order to better help them reach answers and solutions. This enables even those without purchased service plans to reach assistance from our capable applications engineers or even, in some cases, R&D.

 

What about Recognition?

You may ask yourself, “Why should I post responses to other people’s questions on the board?  What’s in it for me?” The truth is, there isn’t anything more in it for you than earning the trust of other users, as well as recognition over time for being a trusted advisor that offers up useful tips, good suggestions, and valid solutions. Not only that, but collaboration with other community members may also help you gain new insight and other viewpoints on your own systems – thus serving as a benefit to you.

  • Kudos: Users may give one another Kudos on the forums for posts that they found particularly helpful or insightful.  Everyone can see the number of Kudos you have received – the more you have, the more people will turn to you for answers!
  • Accepted Solutions: If you reply to a question with what the original poster believes is the solution to his or her problem, then your post might be flagged as an Accepted Solution. This will mark your reply with a green border, indicating that it was the key to a working resolution.  Like Kudos, accepted solutions are visible to all – so, the more you have, the more trusted you will be!

 

 

Find Out More

To learn more about using the NI Discussion Forums, please reference the help documentation, which is accessible from the Discussion Forums home page.  And, of course, stay tuned for the next tip!

Stephanie R.
National Instruments
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