New Tiller Community category structure

News & Announcements
1

:wave: Just a note we have made the below proposed structure official. You’ll now be able to take advantage of the new more streamlined Tiller Community structure. Read more about the changes below.

One key focus in 2022 is to level the playing field in the Tiller Community for Microsoft Excel. To do this and nurture community content and submissions, we are proposing a new structure for the Tiller Community.

This is the new category and sub-category structure.

  • News & Announcements
  • Ask Anything
  • Discussion
  • Google Sheets
    • Show & Tell
  • Microsoft Excel
    • Show & Tell

New Category Descriptions

Ask Anything

Need help or advice, but not sure where to ask? Ask anything here.

Discussion

Start a conversation with the community. Share your Tiller Money story, what inspires you, or chat about money.

Google Sheets

Ask for help, advice, or troubleshooting tips when you’re feeling stuck with Tiller-powered Google Sheets.

Google Sheets > Show & Tell

Share your solution, tool, or workflow for Tiller-powered Google Sheets.

Microsoft Excel

Ask for help, advice, or troubleshooting tips when you’re feeling stuck with Tiller-powered Excel workbooks.

Microsoft Excel > Show & Tell

Share your solution, tool, or workflow for Tiller-powered Excel workbooks.

News & Announcements

Latest updates, news, and announcements from the Tiller team.

What about existing content?

The proposed structure is less granular than our current category structure. You might be wondering where some of the existing content will go in this new structure.

Success Stories will be moved to the top level Discussions category and have a “success-stories” tag.

Wiki topics for Tiller Community Solutions templates, tools, and workflow will go under Google Sheets> Show & Tell with “Docs:” prepended to topic title. Essentially, we will remove the bifurcation between “Tiller Labs” shares and community shares. We will roll all of this content together.

Webinar topics under Wikis & Webinars > Webinars are removed and the webinar YouTube videos are added to the appropriate wiki doc for the solution.

Existing “Get Help” topics for “Templates” and “Workflows & Tools” will go under the top level Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel category and will be tagged with “workflow” or the appropriate tcs-[tag] for the Google Sheets solution. Again, Tiller Community Solutions add-on templates and workflows will no longer receive special treatment; they will be rolled up with all other solutions specific to the Google platform.

Bank Data Feeds category will be deprecated. We found that most of the posts in this category really shouldn’t have been posted at all and the community member should have reached out to Tiller’s support team directly via chat or email about the issue.

Start here topics for new community members will go under “Ask Anything” and be reframed as questions.

What do you think?

We’d love your feedback on this new structure.

4 Likes
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Excellent. I really appreciate the separation. I’m Google all the way and already get confused when I’m reading about an issue and then realize it’s Excel.

I also like the less granular approach. I tend to routinely ping the “Latest” list but when a new (to me) issue/question comes up it’s going to be very helpful to have larger but dedicated buckets to dig through.

But, mostly, I’m so impressed with the dedication you guys put towards the community. It’s one of the key factors for my moving to Tiller in the first place and it has done nothing but gotten better since I did.

2 Likes
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I also agree with the separation. I think it will help new and veteran Tiller users alike by seeing what features and community contributions have been made for each supported platform.

Moving the webinar video content directly to the solution wikis is a fantastic idea. Having all of the official Tiller documentation, text-based or otherwise, in a single location will make information much easier to find, rather than hunting around the forums.

I also like the idea move moving “Get Help” topics to their respective platform categories.

Regarding solution wikis, tags, and related posts, I’m not sure if there are official tags for published Tiller solutions and Community solutions, but I think an official tag could help list even more relevant topics, as well as make searches regarding help and contributions for each solution more streamlined. Just a thought. :slight_smile:

I’m glad to see that beyond the product, the community experience is something that is continuously evolving to meet the needs of the users! I’ll also second @susandennis in that making the community more accessible and encouraging active participation has helped me better understand Tiller’s capabilities and further tweak it to meet my needs.

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I concur wholeheartedly with the prior comments. I use both Excel and Sheets and it focuses the mind to have them separated. I also really appreciate and enjoy the dedication you guys put towards the community.

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5

Regarding the key focus in 2022. Tiller might consider combining the two categories of “Google Sheets” and “Microsoft Excel” into one unified category called “Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel.” After the click, then split the camps for practical reasons. The Pros: (1) Will reduce top line categories and may reduce complexity (2) Should the need arise, may allow Tiller to more easily and transparently deliver any unified message(s) to both camps at the same time and (3) as a visual cue, reinforces the key focus in 2022 to level the playing field in the Tiller Community for Microsoft Excel by sharing a category description with Google Sheets. For practical reasons, I understand the separation needs to occur. The question is at what point in the structure is best. Kudos to the Tiller team for this work.

1 Like
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What about having a Getting started section? Think of it like a Tiller Shallow-End of the pool It looks like there is need to easily point folks to the basics of using Tiller vs a post on the complexity of a query formula.

Also, having a seperate Beta section for Google vs Excel will be helpful.

1 Like
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Everything Tiller does is done well including your new suggestions. I still think though, something as simple as a searchable “Index” of all subjects would be extremely helpful. One index would replace or complement subjects by immediately drilling down to a specific subject search and eliminate the time it takes to find which of several broad subject categories the author on your end assigned it to.
Larry

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@heather, I think these are sensational ideas. Great work.

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Hi @richl - that’s what the “Start here” content is intended to do and will be reframed as questions under the “Ask Anything” Category with a “start here” or maybe “Getting-started” tag.

10

Hi @larry.cocarr,

this is an interesting idea. Though I’m pretty sure it would be incredibly challenging to maintain.

Discourse (our community hosting platform) has an advanced search feature that I think would fit the need you’re referencing here: Search results for '' - Tiller Community

11

Excellent. I did not know Discourse existed. Well done and thank you.
Larry Carr

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Like many others, I’m impressed by the hard work of the Tiller team and the members’ consistent kind professionalism.
And as a long time Excel user and VBA programmer, I look forward to a level playing field – thanks :slight_smile:

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13

I work in web search and I agree with this.

1 Like
14

Makes sense. Thanks for the update.

15

What about [Platforms, Apps, Tools, External Sources (call it what you want)|] => [General, Google Sheets, MS Excel, Power BI, ledger-cli, Quicken, Quickbooks] ? (Power BI and ledger-cli are my future thoughts right now, looking beyond just these 2 — I guess a general “Platforms” or “Sheets” or “Data” and then the rest of that as tags since many articles will be applicable to many of those sub-topics? Sorry I am stepping into this without reading anything and around 1 AM local time.

16

@rkbrison Are you entering anything for the 2022 Excel Builders Challenge? Entry deadline is June 6, about a week away, (.

I started something yesterday in hopes of getting Tiller’s attention for their Sr. Engineering job, without actually having to finish my resume, lol.

https://publish-01.obsidian.md/access/29884b7c70f99066e4067ed7817a36d9/organizations/tiller/Overview1%20After%20PowerQuery%20Model%202022-05-22.excalidraw.png(image larger than 4 MB)